City councilors tell petitioning residents any new restrictions must come from the Legislature. City councilors in Gardiner, Maine, say they are not interested in moving forward with new restrictions on where some sex offenders can live, despite some residents’ pleas it would make their neighborhood safer. Residents making a case for an ordinance at a meeting Wednesday were told hat the state Legislature is responsible for sex offender residency restrictions, not the city.
Read MoreCategory: National
Life on the List
Does publicly posting names of convicted sex offenders actually reduce the number of sexual offenses? Freelance writer Steve Yoder has written a very informative article about the history of the Nation’s sex offender laws, and outlines many of the consequences (and failures) of these severe laws. He makes the point that despite the fact that legislators “are increasingly adopting a ‘smart on crime’ approach grounded in research on what works, the legal treatment of sexual offenders is moving in the opposite direction.” Increasingly, more people are being added to the…
Read MoreSex Offender Laws May Do More Harm Than Good
End Registration of Juveniles, Residency Restrictions and Online Registries One of the world’s leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights, Human Rights Watch, believes, as many of us do, that “Laws aimed at people convicted of sex offenses may not protect children from sex crimes but do lead to harassment, ostracism and even violence against former offenders.” Read more here: http://www.hrw.org/news/2007/09/11/us-sex-offender-laws-may-do-more-harm-good
Read More“Unjust and Ineffective” Says The Economist Magazine
America has pioneered the harsh punishment of sex offenders. Does it work? The Economist magazine, in this online article describes many of the disturbing issues regarding the sex offender registries, including the fact that teenagers are, in increasing numbers, being made to register—many for a lifetime.
Read MoreOhio To Intensify Monitoring with Three New Initiatives
New sex offender tracking technology. The development of three new initiatives in Ohio will intensify the State’s ability to monitor the more than 19,000 convicted sex offenders living in the state.
Read MoreSex Offender Residency Restrictions Impede Safety Goals
Recently, the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled that a policy banning registered sex offenders from entering Albuquerque’s public libraries is unconstitutional. Over the past decade the availability of online sex offender registries has enabled widespread awareness of sexual offenders living in the community, increasing concerns for the safety of children and leading politicians to pass laws restricting where sex offenders can live, work and even be present. Residence restrictions in 30 states and countless municipalities typically prohibit individuals convicted of sex crimes from residing within 500…
Read MoreSex offenders and Halloween is frightful
One state lawmaker says a lawsuit filed in California allowing sex offenders to participate in Halloween is chilling. The lawsuit argues that local ordinances in the Golden State are denying the right of the sex offenders’ free speech and right to celebrate the holiday. Abbotsford Republican Scott Suder has a preemptive warning for sex offenders in Wisconsin. “Any petition is dead on arrival; it’s not gonna happen in the state of Wisconsin. Sex offenders are not going to be able to participate in Halloween trick-or-treating any time, any where in…
Read MorePennsylvania, U.S. Virgin Islands To Substantially Implement Provisions Of The Adam Walsh Act
The Justice Department’s Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking (SMART) recently announced that Pennsylvania and the U.S. Virgin Islands are the latest jurisdictions to implement the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), Title I of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006. Since the passage of SORNA, which establishes a comprehensive national system for the registration of sex offenders, a total of 16 states, three territories and 36 tribes have met the requirements for implementation. The Act is named in memory of…
Read MoreNY: Oswego passes law prohibiting sex offenders from driving taxis
OSWEGO — Amy Warner is a mom who says she’ll sleep easier after the city of Oswego voted unanmiously to pass a law which prohibits sex offenders from driving taxi cabs. “Having young kids who aren’t always making the best choices, I don’t think it’s a good idea putting them in any unnecessary danger,” says Warner. Prior to the vote, Jeremy Zielisnki called the law a form of discrimination. “If a person is going to be denied employment it should be based on a rational decision and factual information. It…
Read MorePerverted Justice: Sex offender laws represent the triumph of outrage over reason [2011]
“If we had been aware of his record,” says Maureen Kanka, “my daughter would be alive today.” She is referring, in a statement on the website of an anti-crime group she founded, to Jesse Timmendequas, a neighbor in Hamilton Township, New Jersey, who raped and murdered her 7-year-old daughter, Megan, in 1994. Three months later, the state legislature enacted Megan’s Law, which created a publicly accessible registry of sex offenders. Full Article
Read MoreNY: Niagara County Sex-Offender Laws May Be Repealed
The Niagara County Legislature has scheduled a public meeting for October 2nd at 6:45pm to discuss plans to repeal the county’s tough sex-offender law. The move comes after recent court rulings said local laws cannot be more strict than the one enacted by New York State. Full Article
Read MoreNM: Repeat Sex Offender Numbers Low in County
Every Halloween night, between 30 and 50 Bernalillo County Sheriff’s deputies spread out all over the county and knock on the doors of registered sex offenders, as a reminder that the county knows where they are and what they’re doing. The Halloween blitz is just one of the tactics the Sheriff’s Department says could be behind the county’s remarkably low sex offender re-offense, or recidivism, rate. Of more than 1,200 registered offenders that include sex offenders as far back as the 1970s, the sex offender registry unit has identified only…
Read MoreMedia from RSOL Conference in NM
A collection of media reports about the National RSOL Conference. Quote from one attendee: “The media coverage, which began with great concerns and some misunderstandings about our purpose, changed to fair, balanced, and very favorable reporting and stories, primarily because they did what all good journalists and reporters do; they came; they listened; they interviewed; they asked questions; they recorded and filmed. We thank them for their kindnesses.” http://www.krqe.com/dpp/news/local/central/sex-offender-conference-begins-dr http://www.koat.com/news/new-mexico/albuquerque/Conference-on-sex-offender-laws-passes-without-incident/-/9153728/16546406/-/9bwnmoz/-/index.html?absolute=true http://www.krqe.com/dpp/news/crime/sex-offender-law-reformers-draw-warning http://abcnewsradioonline.com/albuquerque/conference-to-reform-the-sex-offender-registry-ends-without.html http://www.kob.com/article/stories/S2753195.shtml?cat=500 http://www.krqe.com/dpp/news/crime/apd-to-hold-sex-offender–town-hall http://www.abqjournal.com/main/2012/09/04/abqnewsseeker/city-to-host-town-hall-meeting-over-sex-offender-conference-safety-concerns.html http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/e88c4f828e07493182f620adc7c1ab20/NM–Sex-Offender-Conference http://www.kob.com/article/stories/S2751352.shtml?cat=500 http://www.abqjournal.com/main/2012/09/05/news/meeting-draws-negative-attention.html APD to hold sex offender town hall9.4.12.flv <http://db.tt/ehxRyY8z> Sex offender conference opens…
Read MoreFBI: Crimes Against Children Spotlight – Child Abductions
Known Relationships Are the Greater Danger – According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), every year, more than 200,000 children are abducted by family members. An additional 58,000 are taken by nonrelatives with primarily sexual motives. However, only 115 reported abductions represent cases in which strangers abduct and kill children, hold them for ransom, or take them with the intention to keep.1 Media news outlets have portrayed that abductors primarily consist of strangers or registered sex offenders (RSO), which has proven invalid in the past 2…
Read MoreWA: Man who killed sex offenders gets life
PORT ANGELES — A man who gunned down two sex offenders on the Olympic Peninsula was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison without possibility of parole, but a judge warned those sympathetic to his cause to back off. Patrick Drum, 34, shot Gary Lee Blanton, 28, on June 2 at a home Drum was renting near Sequim. Blanton was renting a room in the home. Drum then drove to the home of Jerry Wayne Ray, 57, in the Agnew area near Port Angeles where Ray was killed the next morning. Full Article
Read MoreYou can request to have your address removed from online mapping services
Did you know you can request your home address be removed from Google, Yahoo, Bing and other mapping services? Well you can, and we recommend you do it for your own safety, especially if you are wearing the “sex offender” label. Many online registries use these mapping services, and if you request yours be removed, then it will also be unmappable from the many registries as well. Below is a link for Google Maps, but other mapping services have a similar process: http://tinyurl.com/9tsedws Instructions
Read MoreCommentary
click image for larger view © S. Meyers, Sunday Maine Telegram
Read MoreMN: Study finds state program for sex offenders effective
Sex offenders can stir up a lot of fear and anger in a community. But an innovative program from the Department of Corrections (DOC) is preventing new crimes by matching a sex offender about to be released from prison with a group of four to seven volunteer mentors, according to a study that will be published in Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment. Full Article Also see here.
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