DENVER (AP) — The suspension of a 6-year-old boy for kissing a girl at school is raising questions about whether the peck should be considered sexual harassment. The boy’s mother said officials at Lincoln School of Science and Technology in Canon City, a southern Colorado city of 16,000, are over-reacting. Jennifer Saunders said her son was suspended once before for kissing the girl and had other disciplinary problems, and she was surprised to find out that he would be forced out of school again for several days. Full Article
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CO: Freeing sex offenders (Opinion)
The backlog of sex offenders waiting for treatment in the Colorado Department of Corrections has gotten a lot of attention lately, and with some justification. If these child molesters and rapists want to admit to the grievous harm they’ve caused their victims and learn how to manage their deviant behavior, by all means, they should. And Colorado taxpayers ought to gladly ante up for more counselors to provide that treatment. But that doesn’t mean these offenders automatically should be released by their minimum eligible parole date. Note the word “minimum.”…
Read MoreTX: Sex offenders banned from S.A. parks, River Walk
SAN ANTONIO — City Council on Thursday unanimously approved an ordinance to restrict registered sex offenders from city parks and a portion of the River Walk. The ordinance creates park safety zones that registered sex offenders can’t enter. They can’t live within 1,000 feet or loiter, whether standing or in a car, within 300 feet of a park safety zone, the draft ordinance states. Full Article
Read MoreWA: Michael’s Story of Neighborhood Action
I have an interesting tale to tell about how I brought my work home earlier this year. My next door neighbor told me she had learned from another neighbor there was a Level 2 and a Level 3 sex offender living in the neighborhood. In Washington, the registration and community notification system uses a three-level system, using an actuarial risk assessment measure. The lowest risk offenders, according to this instrument, are Level 1’s. The highest risks are Level 3’s. Seattle Police had printed up flyers about these two men and given them…
Read MoreU.S. Profits from Baiting Viewers of Child Porn…
Yesterday Google and Microsoft (which operates Bing and Yahoo search engines) announced that they will reprogram their search engines to block more than 100,000 unique terms / phrases associated with illegal child pornography. When a term is searched that is associated to child abuse a clear warning message from Google and child safety organizations will appear explaining the consequences of the searcher’s actions and pointing them toward expert help. (See numerous articles below) This reprogram proposal to protect children, to stop them from being re-victimization by having their abuse viewed time-and-time-again is…
Read MoreNC: Registered sex offenders given the boot at local homeless shelters
No more room at the inn for sex offenders. That’s the word from the Mecklenburg County Sheriff. We’ve learned that a number of offenders have used the uptown shelter as their registered address, but no more. 1210 North Tryon is a well known address near Center City Charlotte. It is listed as the Uptown Men’s Shelter. Type in the address in this state run search engine, and a place known for housing homeless still comes up as a residence for sex offenders. Keeping tabs on offenders here been a thorn in the side of Sheriff…
Read MoreCO: Draconian sex-offender laws need reform (Op-Ed)
In 1855, a 19-year-old woman named Celia was executed by hanging in Missouri. Her crime? She had murdered her owner, a man who purchased her when she was just 14 years old and had been forcing her to be his concubine ever since. There was no dispute that she had killed him. She had even confessed. But Celia’s defense attorneys boldly argued that Celia was permitted to use deadly force to protect herself from rape, basing their argument on a Missouri statute intended to protect white women. Elsewhere in the…
Read MorePA: Judge made right ruling on juvenile sex offenders (Editorial)
In the twilight of his career, York County Common Pleas Court Judge John C. Uhler recently cemented his legacy as a legal lion of Pennsylvania with what might amount to a landmark ruling. It was the right ruling — deeply grounded in constitutional principles. Unfortunately for the judge, though, it’s probably not one that will make him popular among the lock-’em-up-and-throw-away-the-key crowd. In fact, the decision will likely be unpopular among the many people who believe sex offenders should receive death sentences — or at least life without parole. Full…
Read MoreJurisdiction Substantially Implements SORNA (Colorado)
WASHINGTON, Nov. 13, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Justice Department’s Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking (SMART) today announced that Colorado and five federally recognized Indian tribes are the latest jurisdictions to substantially implement the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), Title I of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006. Full Announcement (pdf) A list of the jurisdictions that have substantially implemented SORNA (17 states, three territories, and 57 tribes) can be found at: http://www.smart.gov/newsroom_jurisdictions_sorna.htm
Read MoreHandbook: Sex Offender Registration and Notification in the United States (2013)
US Dept of Justice: The SMART Office is pleased to announce the release of the 2013 version of Sex Offender Registration and Notification in the United States: Current Case Law and Issues. This edition updates the 2012 version with new cases, issues raised, and corrections where prior case law has been overturned or modified. There were a number of developments in case law, federal legislation, and administrative policies regarding sex offender registration and notification during the last year. Below are some highlights of those changes. Readers are encouraged to review…
Read MorePA: Law requiring lifetime registration for juvenile sex offenders is unconstitutional
In a decision that seems destined for the appeals courts, a York County judge has ruled unconstitutional a two-year-old Pennsylvania law that imposes lifetime registration requirements on juvenile sex offenders. Senior Judge John C. Uhler issued his ruling against the juvenile registration provisions of the Sexual Offender Registration and Notification Act while weighing the cases of seven county teens adjudicated as having committed serious sex crimes. Uhler found that the registration mandate “unconstitutionally forecloses a court’s considerations of the many unique attributes of youth and juvenile offenders” under age 18…
Read MoreAR: Sex Offenders, Experts Question Effectiveness of New Restrictions
LITTLE ROCK, AR – After serving their time, some sex offenders can be on another list for the rest of their lives. Convicted sex offenders are required to register with their local law enforcement office for at least 15 years, often much longer than that. Now some registered sex offenders and their families are saying this branding is doing more harm than good. Full Article
Read MoreOR: Sex offenders commute to easy registration sites
… Recently, Fairview Police Chief Ken Johnson reported an unusually high number of sex offenders registering in Fairview. Even more odd, a majority of them don’t live in Fairview, but are arriving from Portland and elsewhere within Multnomah County. Full Article
Read MoreCO: Denver Post article, shows eight amendment violation, for lack of treatment
An article in the Denver Post on November 3, 2013 was titled “Unintended effect of 1998 Colorado law: More sex offenders in for life”. This article brought to light that Colorado has not been offering treatment, as is required by law to people who have been sentenced for crimes. These people can only be released after receiving effective treatment and the state is not offering that treatment supposedly because of facilities and financial issues. Full Article
Read MoreStatic-99 developers embrace redemption – Sex offender risk plummets over time in community, new study reports
And now — drum roll — the authors of the most widely used actuarial tool for assessing sex offender recidivism are conceding that even sex offenders cross a “redemption threshold” over time, such that their risk of committing a new sexual crime may become “indistinguishable from the risk presented by non-sexual offenders.” Tracking a large group of 7,740 sexual offenders drawn from 21 different samples around the world, the researchers found that those who remain free in the community for five years or more after their release are at drastically…
Read MoreTX: Is the public sex offender registry fair?
Kids across Southeast Texas are gearing up for Halloween, and with the holiday season upon us, parents should be aware of who lives in the homes their children are visiting. As part of a special report, 12News has researched which cities in SETX have the most registered sex offenders per capita. According to city-data.com, Woodville has the highest percentage, with one in every 79 residents being a registered sex offender. Next is Kountze, with one in every 86 residents being an offender. Third is Buna, with one sex offender for…
Read MoreWI: Sex offender ordinance is working, Sheboygan officials say
Five years after Sheboygan first enacted strict limits on sex offenders seeking to live here, the city’s sex offender population has slowly waned, with the city now denying about a quarter of all residency requests it receives, records show. The 2008 ordinance essentially barred most registered sex offenders from living here without first receiving a waiver from a city committee and ultimately the Common Council. Since then, the city’s sex offender population has fallen by 13 percent, state records show, with 184 offenders now living at a Sheboygan address — some…
Read MoreTX: Online solicitation statute ruled unconstitutional
In a surprising decision – both for its unanimous outcome and the unlikely reference to Miley Cyrus “twerking” in a Texas judicial opinion – the Court of Criminal Appeals today declared Texas Penal Code §33.021(b), criminalizing online solicitation of a minor, “facially unconstitutional” in a habeas corpus writ styled Ex Parte John Christopher Lo. See their unanimous opinion (pdf) written by Judge Cathy Cochran which ruled that the statute is “overbroad because it prohibits a wide array of constitutionally protected speech and is not narrowly drawn to achieve only the legitimate objective of…
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