Residency Restrictions

Residence Restrictions

E3 "At the time of JonBenet[ Ramsey]'s murder [1996], three states had restricted where convicted child molesters and other sex offenders could live. By 2004 another 11 had done so, according to David Singleton of the Ohio Justice and Policy Center. Similar laws are being considered in other states and a rapidly growing number of towns."

N2 "[T]he solutions to sexual predation are not solutions at all, but frustratingly inadequate, and often legally and ethically murky, tools...While officials ponder what to do, many states and cities have adopted another flawed and dangerous strategy: severely limiting where offenders may live...That faith in buffer zones ignores the fact that offenders move around and that zones drive predators into ghettos or homelessness. Sick people living marginal lives, away from the stability that jobs, medication, parole officers can ensure, are more likely to offend again, not less."

C6 "[S]ex offenders have among the lowest recidivism rates of any class of criminals."

[See Recidivism section of this site.]

E3 "The last time the Justice Department looked in detail at this matter, in the late 1990s, it found that just over 3% of child molesters were re-arrested for a similar cime within three years of being released from prison. Seven 'ordinary' ex-convicts -- robbers, burglars, and the like -- were arrested for molesting children for every one convicted child sex offender who was collared for the same offence. So much for history being destiny."

W2 [11] "Perhaps the most popular and empirically ineffective sex offender policy is that of residence restrictions."

A10 [411] "[T]o date, studies have not found residence restrictions to be effective in reducing child sexual abuse. (Colorado Department of Pubic Safety, 2004; Levenson & Cotter, 2005)

"[The researchers ih the 2007 Minnesota Department of Corrections study] found that residence restrictions would not be an effective measure in reducing recidivism."

Z5 [482] [Abstract:] "Residential restrictions for sex offenders have become increasingly popular, despite the lack of empirical data suggesting that offenders' proximity to schools or daycares contributes to recidivism. Using a matched sample of recidivists and nonrecidivists from Florida (N=330) for the period from 2004 through 2006, the authors investigated whether sex offenders who lived closer to schools or daycares were more likely to reoffend sexually against children than those who lived far away. No significant differences were found between the distances that recidivists and nonrecidivists lived from schools and daycares. There was no significant relationship between reoffending and proximity to schools or daycares. The results indicate that proximity to schools or daycares, with other risk factors being comparable, does not appear to contribute to sexual recidivism. These data do not support the widespread enactment of residential restrictions for sexual offenders."

[501] "The time that police and probation officers spend addressing sex offender housing issues is likely to divert law enforcement resources away from behaviors that truly threaten our communities."

C6 "Several studies show no correlations between child sex offenses and where perpetrators live."

W2 [88] "The Minnesota Department of Corrections (2003) reported that residence restrictions create a shortage of available housing alternatives for sex offenders, which they said may force them into isolated areas that lack services, employment opportunities, and/or adequate social support."

[281] "[S]ex offenders with pro-social support systems have fewer violations and new offenses than those who have negative or no support. (Colorado Department of Pubic Safety, 2004) Thus, housing laws resulting in instability and subsequent disengagement from family and community have the potential to increase rather than to deter criminal recidivism."

[420] [from Table 13.2: Major Findings and Recommendations from the Colorado Department of Public Safety (2004):]

[421] [Finding:] "Those [sex offenders] who had support in their lives had significantly lower numbers of violations than those who had negative or no support."

C6 "Offenders are forced into rural America, far from jobs, treatment, and family, which provide stability and rehabilitation."

W2 [279] "When residence restrictions are enacted, the results quickly become evident. Six months after the implementation of Iowa's 2,000-foot housing zone, thousands of sex offenders became homeless or transient, making them more difficult to track and monitor. The number of registered sex offenders in Iowa who could not be located more than doubled, damaging the reliability and validity of the sex offender registry. (Rood, 2006)"

C6 "States report that bans have forced thousands of ex-offenders into homelessness and caused them to no longer register.

"More than half the states have such laws, and many amount to banishment."

E3 "A typical law, approved this week by Monroe, New Jersey, prevents some sex offenders from living within 2,500 feet (762 metres) of any school, child-care centre, playground, library or place of worship -- in other words, just about anywhere."

W2 [277] "Tewksbury et al. (2008) found that a higher concentration of registered sex offenders in a neighborhood had no significant correlation with the number of sex offenses that occurred. In Colorado, sex offense recidivists were randomly scattered throughout the geographical area and were not more likely to live near schools than nonrecidivists. (Colorado Department of Public Safety, 2004)"

[278] "[R]esearchers in Minnesota analyzed 224 revidivistic sex offenses and concluded, 'Not one of the 224 sex offenses would likely have been deterred by a residency restriction law.' (Duwe et al., 2008; Minnesota Department of Corrections, 2007, p. 2)"

A10 [420] [from Table 13.2: Major Findings and Recommendations from the Colorado Department of Public Safety (2004):]

[Finding:] "There does not seem to be a greater number of these offenders living within proximity to schools and child care centers than other types of offenders."

[Recommendation:] "Placing restrictions on the location of correctionally supervised sex offender residences may not deter the sex offender from reoffending and should not be considered as a method to control sexual offending recidivism."

J11 [158] "[A] sex offender policy that truly cared about victims and prevention would focus on -- rather than flout -- the precious [159] empirical knowledge that we have garnered about sexual violence. The rush, in multiple localities, to adopt residential restrictions on sex offenders is a prime example. The overwhelming weight of empirical evidence concludes that residential restrictions are counterproductive. To take one example, a 2003 study by the Minnesota Department of Corrections concluded that there was no correlation between level three sex offenders' proximity to schools and parks and the recidivism rates of these offenders. Researchers note that sexual offenders 'rarely established direct contact with victims near their own homes.'" *

W2 [14] "Through interviews with advocates, victims, and victim service agencies, Bandy documents that many of those directly affected by sex offender laws do not find the laws particularly helpful. Bandy provides evidence that victims and victim advocates find sex offender laws a distraction from the dominant issues of intimate-partner and familial sexual assault."

[88] "In a petition to the Supreme Court, the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers (ATSA) (2005) argued that residence restrictions may deprive sex offenders of housing options, may force offenders to move from supportive environments and employment opportunities, and, subsequently, could increase rather than decrease recidivism risk."

[269] "Perhaps the most notorious of these laws are found in Iowa, Georgia, and California. In 2002, Iowa passed one of the strictest state laws in the nation, banning sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of schools and day care centers...Iowa prosecutors, victim advocates, and law enforcement personnel lobbied for reforms, asserting that housing laws create more problems than they solve and undermine the purpose of sex offender registries because homeless sex offenders are more difficult to track and monitor. (CALCASA, 2006)

"In California in 2006, voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 83 (which was named Jessica's Law for Jessica Lunsford) despite being pubicly opposed by the state's victim advocacy group. (CALCASA, 2006)"

[284] "Iowa prosecutors and victim advocates recognized the pitfalls of residential zoning laws and publicly denounced such restrictions, asserting that they generate more problems than they solve. (Iowa County Attorneys Association, 2006; NAESV, 2006) Prosecutors observed a reduction in plea bargaining, for instance, causing some cases to go unadjudicated, leaving victims at risk and perpetrators without treatment or punishment. (Iowa County Attorneys Association, 2006)"

[492] "All five CASAs [regional Coalitions Against Sexual Assault] interviewed have independently and publicly denounced the residency restriction laws, describing them as 'irresponsible,' and 'counterproductive,' on the grounds that they provide the public with a false sense of security and serve to reinforce stereotypes about the typical offender and the typical victim...Consequently, hypervigilance is [493] used against those who are least likely to offend (strangers) and are dropped around those most likely to offend (nonstrangers)."

C6 "Law enforcers now argue that bans make things worse.

"About 80 to 90 percent of child sexual abuse occurs with a family member or someone a child knows."

E3 "Most children are harmed by family members or acquaintances."

W27 [102] [Patty Wetterling's son, Jacob, was kidnapped back in the 1980s. It would not be until Labor Day weekend of 2016 that his fate would finally become known. Sadly, his remains were discovered in a field not far from his home, after law enforcement officials were led to the site by the person who murdered him, a man who had been interviewed as a potential suspect shortly after Jacob's disappearance. The following is part of an interview:]

Wetterling: "[M]ost people victimize somebody who is very close to them, somebody in their family or a neighbor, someone who has their trust..[103] Residency restrictions are also wrong and ludicrous and make no sense at all. We're putting all of our energy on the stranger, the bad guy, and the reality is [that] most sex offenses are committed by somebody that gains your trust, or is a friend or relative, and so none of these laws address the real, sacred thing that nobody wants to talk about."

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* [from FN95:] Grant Duwe, Minn. Dep't of Corrections, Residency Restrictions and Sex Offender Recidivism: Implications for Public Safety, 2 Geography & Pub. Safety 6, 8 (2009)