CA STATE REPORT INCLUDES 1.9 PERCENT RECIDIVISM RATE
According to a newly released report of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), the recidivism rate for those convicted of a sex-related offense (“sex offender”) is 1.9 percent. That is, those labeled by CDCR as “sex offenders” have a conviction rate of only 1.9 percent for a “new” sex crime.
“The information in this CDCR report demonstrates that those convicted of sex-related offenses are unlikely to repeat their behavior,” stated Janice Bellucci, President of California Reform Sex Offender Laws. “Therefore, laws passed by counties and cities that prohibit the use of public recreational areas by registrants are misguided in that they do not increase public safety but instead violate the state and federal constitutions by denying the civil rights of registrants.”
According to the CDCR Secretary, this report is the third in a series of annual reports on the outcomes of inmates released from CDCR correctional institutions. The report notes that recidivism rates for all offenses have declined for the second straight year. The Secretary added that CDCR hopes the information in the report “will provide new insights to policy-makers….that will be useful in moving the state forward with regard to efforts that increase public safety.
“It is essential that policy-makers and the public be educated regarding this report which reflects the actual, low recidivism rate of registrants,” stated Bellucci. “For too long, policy-makers and the public have based important decisions on misinformation and fear.”
The CDCR report also states that 86.9 percent of offenses committed by registrants are based upon parole violations. Parole conditions required of registrants are often unreasonable and unrelated to either the original offense or the likelihood to commit a subsequent offense.
A copy of the report can be found online. Information regarding the recidivism rates for registrants can be found on page 30.
CDCR – 2012 Outcome Evaluation Report
Thank you, CDCR, for shining the light! Elected officials can no longer hide in the darkness, claiming that once an offender, always an offender. We need to share this information with anyone and everyone who will listen.
This report is very encouraging, and I will use this statistic someday when my own city council tries to impose further restrictions on RSO’s. For comparison purposes, what are the actual recidivism rates for drug dealers, gangbangers, thieves, kidnappers, etc?
The relevant 1.9% statistic is on page 30, section 4.5.5. However, if this report is used in a legal filing, the abundance of other sex crime statistics may cloud that positive aspect.
Now that we have new information that shows the problem is much less than previously believed, my concern is that those who have been peddling fear will turn around and say, “See? Our crackdown efforts are paying off.”
Huh, the DA of Orange County stated it was much more than 1.9%? This can’t be incorrect? I thought that whatever he stated MUST BE TRUE? THE CDCR must be incorrect? I find this report very disturbing. FIrst, cities throughout the country have been stating the opposite. We have city after city enticing the community with false reports and enacting new law after new law?
I have always lamented that, across the country, lawyers arguing our side of the case have not heavily invested part of their case in the stunningly low recidivism rate. Most of the anti arguments are based upon this “high recidivism rate” statistic that would seem prevalent based upon media and politicians, except for the facts.
Indeed, in any criminal case involving the right to object, a lawyer defending a client must immediately and forcefully interject himself with a strong objection once the state brings out any semblance or reiteration of the “high recidivism rate,” and in any civil case argued in front of a judge cases where objections are not part of the rules of proceeding, then the rebuttal time must always be secured to ensure that the “high recidivism rate” myth is totally and absolutely (redundancy most certainly intended) blown out of the water.
This report uses “recidivism” to refer to all returns to custody, so at first it looks like sex offenders on parole have a very high recidivism rate of 69.1%. It is only when looking closely that one sees that 86.9% of those returns were for parole violations, while only 1.9% were for new sex offenses. Note that this is 1.9% of the 69.1% who were returned to custody. Hence it represents 0.019(69.1%) = 1.3% of all sex offenders on parole. While this is good news, it would be easy to argue that sex offenders on parole are heavily supervised, including wearing of GPS at all times, and kept on a short leash. They spend a large part of their parole back in custody on petty parole violations. Consequently it is very difficult for a sex offender on parole to get into a situation in which he can commit a new sex offense, if he is so inclined. The recidivism rate that really matters is the rate for sex offenders who are no longer on parole or probation, when they have much more freedom to choose whether to resume offense behavior or to live an offense-free life.
Michael –
Your comment here and the points made within is, in total, very close to the reality of the defeats the attorney’s of registered offenders have tallied in federal, state, county and city courts nationwide. Many state attorneys have cited perhaps one of the first Supreme Court rulings regarding probably of our/the only losing argument that truly matters:
That lost aregument was this: Are any additional restrictions or requirements manufactured in a different time, promoted by legislatures voted for by a more advanced citizenry conciousness, creating new restrictions and/or requirements now concieved in a vastly improved technology enviornment and which have been ultimately legislated in a quite entirely new climate of knowledge and public perception…but yet these new restrictions and requirements are applied retroactivley to a sentence already handed down and complete, punitive in nature?
If punitive, retroactive application of newly invented & concieved requirements and restrictions legislated even a day after a criminal’s sentence has handed down would clearly be a direct violation of the Ex Post Facto Clause of the United States Constitution and/or Double Jeopardy. This is one of the cornerstones of our free and democratic social structure.
Americans have a near innate understanding as young as 10 years old that a man cannot be punished twice for a single crime.
And we have understood in our better natures, whether he be plaintiff or he be the defendant, that American humanism has always held in the highest moral standard, in near hallowed justice, that in matters of parental discipline to the sentencing of a mass serial killer…the punishment must fit the crime. When it fits, lessons are learned and balance restored. To homework, to sneaking out, to stealing cars, to murder…
Further punishment is only necessary if the crime is repeated.
The Ex Post Facto law, also called “retroactive law”, is a law that retroactively changes the legal consequences (or status) of actions that were committed, or relationships that existed, before the enactment of the law.
Eliminating Double Jeapardy is such a clear and pure truism of what humanality at it’s finest is all about that it has been written into the Constitution of the United States at least twice…Ex post facto laws are expressly forbidden by the United States Constitution in Article 1, Section 9, Clause 3 and The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides the Double Jeopardy Clause, which prohibits state and federal governments from … or imposing more than one punishment for a single offense. Also, each of the 50 states offers similar protection through its own constitution, statutes, and Common Law.
Unfortunatley, in an Alaskan case in 2003, the Supreme Court of the United States, Smith vs. Doe, 538 U.S. 84 (2003), regected an Ex Post Facto challenge to offender registration. The District Court in Alaska ruled for Smith (state). The Appeals court ruled for Doe. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 for the State…and thus, Federal Law. Recidivism rate reports by the DOJ from 2001 were “frightening” according to the 6 justices who voted against the Constitutional rights of the offenders.
This was a heavily loaded conservative Supreme Court under Bush.
The dissenting justices held that the law was punitive and imposed severe deprivations of liberty.
“It is also clear beyond peradventure that these unique consequences of conviction of a sex offense are punitive.
They share three characteristics, which in the aggregate are not present in any civil sanction. The sanctions (1) constitute a severe deprivation of the offender’s liberty
(2) are imposed on everyone who is convicted of a relevant criminal offense, and
(3) are imposed only on those criminals.
Unlike any of the cases that the Court has cited, a criminal conviction under these statutes provides both a sufficient and a necessary condition for the sanction.” (Justice Stevens’ dissenting opinion)
This ruling must be challenged by a competent team of Supreme Court attorneys and over-turned. I see this as the only path to provide enough legislative precedent for city, district and state attorney’s to begin winning relief cases for offenders that have been retroacrivley affected/punished continually since 1994.
You can review a Kansas State Attorney General utilizing this case to block an Ex Post Facto case currently in a court filed against the Sheriff of a county and the Kansas Bureau of Investigation’s Director.
http://www.josephhollander.com/articles/Kansas-Sex-Offender-Registration-Laws/2
Open the 5th PDF in the list.
I’m going to read this post three or four times..do some homework..and and post a developed response.
At first blush, it would seem that you are coming to grips with the essence, but please understand that we are confronted with mania.
First! We have to calm those inflamed by the tortured prosecutors.
Bill –
I look forward to your comments. You are right.
Jay
Jay:
The rationale for maintaining the sex offender registries rests in the mistaken belief that sex offenders are so deeply character-flawed at no amount of psychiatry or behavior modification can cure the perpetrator. So the continued reporting requirement and associated limitations on the relative freedoms of the individual are described not as additional punishment after-the-fact, but necessary administrative controls levied against otherwise obdurate miscreants.
The difficulty lies in the public’s acceptance of the term “punishment”. I think it is fair to define “punishment as a term used in operant conditioning to refer to any change that occurs after a behavior that reduces the likelihood that that behavior will occur again in the future. While positive and negative reinforcement are used to increase behaviors, punishment is focused on reducing or eliminating unwanted behaviors. It would seem that this is exactly what the stated purpose of the registry would be i.e. the elimination of the sexual offense. So quite literally, the registries are designed to punish.
When one becomes a registered sex offender, one is placed in a special class of sub-citizen. Although you are enfranchised to vote, drive, pay taxes, receive public assistance and otherwise enjoy yourself, you may not be protected from abuse by those in authority who see themselves as the sole defense against those who would prey on the innocent. This is why I say that the prosecutors are tortured. They are educated attorneys who know full-well what a slippery slope they tread and only by continuing to inflame the emotions of the ignorant can they maintain their posture vis-a-vis ex-offenders.
They have to keep ratcheting up the volume because as soon as the public wakes and realizes how dangerously malevolent and entirely illegal the registries are, their goose is cooked. The strategy is to point at sex offenders and create terror so the People are distracted and lulled into a false sense of comfort while throwing their constitution under the proverbial bus. You can observe how they have quietly added misdemeanors such as public urination or nudity to the list of “sex crimes” that require registration. What’s next? Exhaling before inhaling?
They will *never* put an end to child molestation, and they know it. It will occur in the family, church, school, playground…you name it – it’s as ancient a malady as prostitution. The problem is that they know this and have found a willing horse to ride into their battle to craft the United States of America into a fully totalitarian police state. WE are obliged as patriots to put a stop to this.
Bill –
Yes. You are correct. Although, can Supreme Court cases be won or struck down arguing in essence we are approaching Nazi Party like Germany now because one group is persecuted unfairly, like sex offenders?
I’m leary of depending on that. It makes non affected citizens think “conspiracy theory” nothing-ness.
I see winning the war by first defeating the Alaskan Supreme Court decision and another one out of Connecticut decison that went to the Supreme Court that I just found. They are heavily based on Megan’s Law arguments.
The major flaw from the 1990’s is this…Megan’s Law was created…and nothing was done later by sex offender attorney’s to define what the terms “registry” and “community notificaton” meant in 1996 in that Law.
Let me try to explain:
1. “On May 17, 1996, federal efforts to strengthen the Jacob Wetterling Act got a boost when President bill clinton signed an amendment to the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (42 U.S.C. 14071); the amendment is known as Megan’s Law.
This legislation directs all state legislatures to adopt laws requiring convicted sex offenders to register with their local law enforcement agency after release. Additionally, the federal Megan’s Law mandates states to grant access to sex-offender registries to the public. Although sex-offender registration for law enforcement purposes had been required previously, the idea of community notification was relatively new.”
So…it’s scope was to demand that the state and local authorities must define narrow (hopefully uniform) methods to register offenders, store that infformation, and ways to notify the local community when a high-risk offender was moving into thier small community. The law used the words registry and notification, which had certain meanings back then.
The reality in 1996 was that a “registry” was known only as a computer database in early database programs, usually stored on one computer in the sherriffs’ or. Or, it was a file cabinet “database” of alphabetical folders in a sheriff’s office. I said “computer database”…not an online internet database. There was actually no such thing in the public conciousness of the concept of an internet database. It had not been invented yet. I now that sounds strange, but it is the truth.
But…here in 2013 and in 2008 and in 2003…articles just like this one below have been written inacurratley and pervade tv news stories, magazine and newspaper stories, court arguments and are disseminated in current forms of modern internet databases and infromation sites. These articles are formulations like this…
“Prior to 1994 few states required convicted sex offenders to register their addresses with local law enforcement. As recognition of the severity of this problem grew, Congress passed the Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Act, 42 U.S.C. §§14071, et seq. (“Wetterling Act”). This requires state implementation of a sex-offender registration program or a 10 percent forfeiture of federal funds for state and local law enforcement under the Byrne Grant Program of the U.S. Department of Justice. Today, all fifty states and Washington, D.C. have sex offender registries.
The realization registration alone was not enough came after the tragic murder of 7-year-old Megan Kanka by a released sex offender living on her street. The public outcry created a call for programs to provide the public with information regarding released sex offenders. In 1996 Congress passed a federal law mandating state community notification programs. Megan’s Law, section (e) of the Wetterling Act, requires all states to conduct community notification but does not set out specific forms and methods, other than requiring the creation of internet sites containing state sex-offender information. Beyond that requirement, states are given broad discretion in creating their own policies.”
Do you see it? “…requiring the creation of internet sites containing state sex-offender information”.
That statement is 100% false. The Megan’s Law Amendmant does not include “internet sites” in it’s language. It only includes the term “registry”.
I have defined what “registry” meant in 1996. Articles like the above are ALL OVER the internet and are revising history (most have been created by activist group lawyers who recognized early in this war…probably arounda 2003…that Megan’s Law never legalized offender web sites to be utilized as ‘registries” or “community notification” tools). Why Megan’s Law never legalized offender information to be used as communicty notification in 1996 is because no one was using the internet in 1996. What I mean by “no one” is that 80% of people in the US had yet to have their first email address in 1996.
In fact, only 37 million Americans had ever accessed the internet by 1998…2 years later. That is less than 13% of the population in 1998.
Furthermore, the corporate community was avoiding the internet like the plague. So was the Governement. Why?
It was mostly a very difficult “thing” for individuals to access and connection was limited to 56k speed. Connection was billed on an hourly rate basis by AOL, Compuserve and Prodigy. It took more than a minute for an average image to “build” on your screen. The few sites out there took a long time to build on your screen. The errors the browsers and connections created during each online session made it a very frusterating experience. Most simply thought of it as a fad or a young person’s toy…much like a Nintendo.
The mass of active users were accessing gaming networks on peer-to-peer protocols often based on USENET…not www. Or they were accessing pornography web sites. These were the 2 most popular intenet uses in 1998. The only application that others utilized, and then only 22% of the population in 1999, 3 years after Megan’s Law…were using it, and that was email.
That is the truth in what the internet actually was in 1998 and 1999…let alone 1996.
It would have been as close to impossible (or would have required being able to read the future) for any legislature to have had the forsight in 1996 to incrporate any idea of what the internet was going to become in and after 2001 or 2002…which required huge leaps in many technologies each year from 1997 to 2001, one of them being the invention of the new technology of “high-speed” access (which phone companies started slowing selling in 1999)…to create the internet as a useful mass information dissemination tool. Again, to have written it into any law in 1996 would have been insane. It wouldn’t of been. And wasn’t. It simply was not a tool allowing for easy online database accessing in 1996…in fact, it was far, far from.
However, we forget true history when revisionist history story-telling based on more of a confused timeline can influence millions of people that a certain, non-factual account of history is actually true. It makes it easy to even make a person believe they were able to access web sites in the 1980’s.
Make sense? Attorney’s have to ruin Megan’s Law as legalizing web sites as soon as possible.
That other info…
To see the Connecticut Supreme court info…go here:
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Megan's+Law