A sex offender ordinance adopted by National City, a city in San Diego County, is the subject of a lawsuit filed on April 4 in federal district court on behalf of a registered sex offender (“registered citizen”). This is the third lawsuit challenging a city’s presence restrictions. The first lawsuit was filed on March 24 against the City of Pomona and the second lawsuit on March 31 against the City of South Lake Tahoe. The National City ordinance includes restrictions regarding where more than 105,000 individuals can reside or be…
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County Launches New Sex Offender Registration, Tracking Site Available to Public
San Mateo County will now be part of a nationwide network of over 5,000 law enforcement agencies, including over 45 California agencies. Full Article
Read MoreDHS Official: US Not ‘Routinely’ Notified When Sex Offenders Enter the Country
(CNSNews.com) – A Homeland Security Department official testified Friday before the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security that U.S. authorities are not “routinely” notified when foreign sex offenders enter the United States. Full Article
Read MoreVA: Underage Virginia ‘sexting’ ring ensnares 100 teens, uncovers 1,000 pictures
A sprawling central Virginian “sexting” ring was busted up by authorities after pictures of naked 14- and 15-year-olds sprang up on Instagram, cops say. The disturbing investigation revealed more than 1,000 pictures, some videos and more than 100 involved teens through six different counties who may not realize sharing such photos of underage kids can be a felony, police told the Central Virginian. Out of those thousand images, there are some of them that are not sexually explicit, but are what we would call inappropriate or provocative — in their…
Read MoreIL: Two men charged after child left with child sex offender
A Davis Junction man is accused of leaving a child in the custody of a child sex offender. ___ ___ ___, 45, was charged with leaving a child in the custody of a child sex offender, according to a news release from the Ogle County Sheriff’s Department. Also taken into custody was ___ _ ___, 57, also of Davis Junction, on a charge of violating the provisions of the state’s child sex offender registration law and trespassing, the release said. ___ was being held Wednesday in the Ogle County Jail in lieu…
Read MoreMO: Students to be charged with distributing child porn
ST. CHARLES COUNTY – St. Peters police say some St. Charles County students are likely to be charged with distributing child pornography. NewsChannel 5 has exclusively learned the case involves nude selfies taken and texted out by students at Fort Zumwalt East High School. Full Article / Video
Read MoreNew School Bus Comes with “Predator Finder”
A brief glance won’t tell you the new buses are equipped with voice-over-IP communication systems, or that they transmit data on speed, location and acceleration in real-time. The “Thumbs-Up!” thumbprint scanner, which keeps track of which kids are on the bus and whether they’re supposed to be there, is also hard to see unless you’re really pressing your face to the glass, as are the multiple interior security cameras. Slightly easier to notice is the rear-facing camera, dubbed — no joke — the “Pedophile Finder.” “I wish we could have…
Read MoreLet’s Rethink Our Love of Prisons
Delaware Judge Jan Jurden just helped to destroy the market in human souls, and for that, I am grateful. She refused to send a self-confessed child rapist to prison, letting him instead walk out the courthouse door, to begin a lengthy period of probation and treatment as a sex offender. Robert H. Richards IV, an heir to the DuPont chemical fortune, pleaded guilty to sexually abusing his 3-year-old daughter. According to press reports, he penetrated the child with his finger, a twisted and disgusting act. The allegations came to light…
Read MoreIn defense of the judge who sentenced the man who raped his three year old daughter to probation (Op-Ed)
From one of the many, many articles and op/eds written about this case: “A Delaware man convicted of raping his three-year-old daughter only faced probation after a state Superior Court judge ruled he ‘will not fare well’ in prison.” Those words, “will not fare well” in prison may go down as among the most, if not the most, infamous words ever attributed to a judge. What was the judge thinking, critics ask, and the cynical and even not-so-cynical find ready answers: he was rich, one of the DuPont family heirs;…
Read MoreDA plans rare strategy to try to keep sex offender in Atascadero State Hospital
The San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s Office plans to present victims from decades-old crimes to a jury in an effort to keep a convicted sex offender with an intriguing past off the streets. But a defense attorney says ___ ___ has served his time and does not pose a threat to the public. Full Article
Read MoreIL: It’s time to take juveniles off the sex offender lists
A new report by the Illinois Juvenile Justice Commission takes aim at the disturbingly common practice of forcing juvenile sex offenders to comply with sex offender registries, often for life. Its conclusion: “Remove young people from the state’s counter-productive sex offender registry . . . There is no persuasive evidence that subjecting youth to registries improves public safety or reduces risks of future offending. The research does not indicate registries repair harm to victims.” Full Article
Read MoreOne size fits all isn’t always wise (Op-Ed)
Few public policies galvanize bipartisan political support like measures that target convicted sexual offenders. Lengthy prison sentences, registration and civil commitment for the most dangerous offenders are among the tools used to mete punishment, protect the public and serve justice. But as The Pilot’s Louis Hansen reported Sunday, Virginia’s practice of committing violent sex offenders to a lifetime on a public registry, and requiring them to jump through bureaucratic hoops long after they’ve served their prison sentences, can sometimes prove problematic. Hansen’s report on Willie Combo, an aging offender who recently…
Read MoreRecently identified Fresno sex offender murdered
FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) — Days after a Fresno man was identified as a sex offender, he turned up dead. Now, two people will stand trial for his murder. ____ ____ was stabbed to death in Sept. 2012, just days after a sex offender sweep. An autopsy showed ____ was stabbed 58 times before his body was dumped near Chandler Airport. When U.S. Marshals and local police went door-to-door tracking sex offenders, ____ ____ was right where they expected him. The sting apparently blew his cover, though, and made him a target. Full Article
Read MoreOpEd: Teens and the Sex Offender Registry – No Good Outcomes for Anyone
Last week, I hailed a taxi in Washington, D C, and asked the driver to take me to the Keck Building for a meeting with a committee of the National Research Council. The cabby recognized the address and asked if I was a scientist. I explained that I am a retired judge and that applying science and research to juvenile court could make us all safer, save taxpayer dollars and improve the futures of kids in the justice system. He said, “That makes sense but just how can that happen?”…
Read MoreAus: Sex offender squad faces axe
A specialist WA Police squad responsible for monitoring thousands of convicted sex predators could be axed as part of a push to shave millions off the police budget’s bottom line. A high-level razor gang has been examining the operations of the sex offender management squad, which tracks the movements of more than 3000 rapists and paedophiles living in the community. Full Article
Read MoreSex offender therapy: A battle on multiple fronts
Working with individuals with sex offense convictions is a specialized area of counseling. There are also “specialties within the specialty” when factoring in the different venues for treatment, including programs in prison, in private practice (often with those on postprison supervision or probation) and in mental institutions. The individuals within this population are generally quite different, and the dynamics are made even more complex when considering whether the offenders are adult males, adult females (yes, there are female sex offenders) or juveniles. The research on each population varies considerably. There…
Read MoreEditorial: This ‘answer’ for sex offenders is not right
They commit heinous sex crimes on children and women. They take online offers from children, hoping for sex. Their computers are libraries of pornography. Some decide to expose or relieve themselves in public. They are convicted of their crimes and sentenced. When they leave prison, they are forever known as sex offenders. Their crimes are despicable. There is no disputing that. But how long should they live with the label and the past, if somehow they become legal and productive contributors in their communities? Our front page today displays a…
Read MoreLet the Burden Fit the Crime: Extending Proportionality Review to Sex Offenders
Under current due process doctrine, punitive damages awards against civil defendants are reviewed for “proportionality” with the underlying misconduct, in accordance with traditional principles of retribution in punishment. This Comment argues that the same proportionality analysis could and should be applied to review statutes imposing harsh civil restrictions on the lives of released sex offenders who have already served their criminal sentences. The argument first proceeds by way of analogy. Like punitive damages in the civil context, sex offender restrictions are (1) in tension with the principle of fair notice…
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