AR - Do sex offender restrictions work?

Original Article

Short answer... NOPE!

04/30/2014

By Craig Rickert

JONESBORO (KAIT) - When we talk about sex offenders emotion tends to take over. Call it a protective instinct. We don't want them living near our children or where our children go to school or play.

The thoughts are terrifying to any parent. But as we found out, those fears, don't match the facts.

"There is no data, according to my knowledge, that sex offender registry restrictions prevent sexual assault," Sheri Flynn told Region 8 News.

Only 5-7% of all sex offenders re-offend.

It's the empirical argument that flies in the face of raw emotion when it comes to where sex offenders are allowed to live in the state of Arkansas.

The law state says level 3 and 4 sex offenders cannot reside within 2000 feet of a school, daycare or public park. Level 1 and 2 offenders do not have any such restrictions.

"We're pushing sex offenders outside that net and occasionally creating pockets of sex offenders because there's only one area in a county that they may be able to live."

Sheri Flynn is with the Arkansas Department of Correction's Sex Offender Screening and Risk Assessment Program. In laymen's terms, her office determines a sex offender's threat level.

"To me, it makes more sense to base where sex offenders can be based on what they do, the crime they commit with whom they commit it with. Those are the people we don't want around our minor children."
- Even if you did that, it still wouldn't prevent a sexual crime if the person is intent on committing a crime!

By forcing sex offenders farther away, because of the residency restrictions, they are less likely to be part of what Flynn and others in her field call "the containment approach". A belief that circling the offender with professionals from the courts, law enforcement, treatment providers and others keeps better tabs on the most dangerous sex offenders, level fours.

"There is a small sub-group. If they have a deviant sexual arousal to forced sexual contact or children, they are more than 50% likely to re-offend and they respond very poorly to treatment."

That's where Flynn sees a weakness in the residency restrictions. Simply put, if they are forced too far out, it becomes that much harder to stay on top of a dangerous predator.

"I want to know where he is, not where he isn't."
- But you can never know 100% of the time where they are or aren't, and again, males are not the only ones who commit sexual crimes!

"We don't know what he's going to do and that net disappears and those things that have been put into place by my office, by my brothers and sisters in law enforcement, we work very closely to keep an eye on these guys. When they drop off the radar we don't know what they're doing or where they are they could be up to anything."
- Yeah just like any other ex-felon, they could be anywhere doing anything!

It's a loaded question. Where should they live? But Sherri Flynn offers this: maybe when we ask legislators, or even law enforcement what to do, we're asking the wrong people.
- They should be able to live anywhere they want just like any other ex-felon!

"Sometimes I think we need to ask survivors "how does this affect you?" If your dad or grandfather got treatment, if he could get a good job would that be better? I don't know the answers to those questions, but I think we need to be asking them and try to figure it out."
- No you do not need to ask them, it's obvious what their reactions will be.  You need to stop trampling on peoples rights by God and the Constitution.

WI - Residents seek fix for sex offender clusters in older neighborhoods

Original Article

If you want a fix for this then remove the residency restrictions, then offenders can live where they want and will not be clustering in your neighborhood due to the buffer zones.

03/15/2014

By Jennifer K. Woldt

Areas of Oshkosh once filled with modest single family homes and owner-occupied duplexes have slowly transformed into a neighborhood where those residences have been converted into multi-family homes or boarding houses that have cheap rent.

Those rental properties in the central city and on the city’s east side have, over time, become magnets for sex offenders who return to the city following release from prison. The Wisconsin Department of Corrections, which authorizes sex offender placements, says it’s a matter of pure economics — affordable rent, access to public transportation and other advantages make it a natural fit for offenders moving back into the community.
- It's a matter of residency restrictions that cause the clustering and does nothing to prevent crime or protect anybody.  You remove this and most of this goes away!

But residents of those neighborhoods are increasingly bristling at shouldering what they feel is an unfair burden, where clusters of offenders are driving down home values and contributing to the deterioration of their neighborhoods.

Those residents understand offenders need a place to live and are not trying to ban sex offenders from living within Oshkosh, they do not understand why the placement of offenders cannot be spread throughout the city.

“(Department of Corrections) need to realize they can’t use one city, one neighborhood, as a dumping ground,” said Oshkosh Councilor Steve Cummings, who has made neighborhood revitalization a central focus of his two terms on the common council.

Of the 201 registered sex offenders that live in Oshkosh, 126 offenders, or 63 percent, live in the area that encompasses the 54901 zip code, with high concentrations of offenders on some blocks and, in some instances up to five offenders living in a single boarding house.

In Oshkosh, there are eight addresses that are home to multiple offenders, according to the state’s sex offender registry.

Some cities have adopted ordinances to attempt to disperse offenders or to bar them from living within a certain distance of parks, schools and other locations. Oshkosh does not have such an ordinance, but residents of impacted neighborhoods have begun arguing that it’s time of the city to take a hard look at correcting the imbalance in offender locations.

“Our neighborhood is not suggesting extreme residency restrictions,” said Lori Palmeri, who lives in a central city neighborhood west of Main Street. “We’re looking at a solution that would be a guided placement based more on dispersion and density to prevent clustering.”

DOC silent on placements

The Department of Corrections declined multiple Northwestern phone and email requests over the past month for an interview to explain the role the department plays in determining where an offender will live.

In declining the request, a DOC spokesperson responded with an email that said in most cases, offenders are required to live in the county where they were convicted after they are released from prison, unless they have no ties to the county other than the offense. In those cases, the offender is able to live in their county of residence at the time of the offense, said Joy Staab, director of public affairs for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections.

DOC tries to assure the residential population density of serious sex offenders is proportionate to the number of cases that originate in the county, however, DOC did not indicate whether they try to assure proportional population density within cities or among cities in a county.

Stan Stojkovic, dean of the Helen Bader School of Social Welfare at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee said its important for residents of impacted neighborhoods to look beyond the just simple number of offenders in their neighborhoods.

Stojkovic, who has an extensive background in researching sex offender placement within communities, said “sex offender” is a broad term that can take on many different meanings depending on the context of the crime he committed and not every sex offender poses a danger to the community.

Many of the individuals who are required to be listed on the state sex offender registry committed offenses against a family member or friend. The sexually violent offenders only make up 3 to 5 percent of the sex offender population, Stojkovic said.

“There are guys in the bushes, but they’re far and few between,” Stojkovic said. “You’re more likely to be assaulted by someone you know.”

Managing sex offenders in a community requires a balance of protecting the community by establishing rules and supervision for the offenders, while not violating the constitutional rights of the offenders, Stojkovic said. However, he said, many community leaders prefer to highlight the fear that most offenders are violent, rather than make informed decisions and try to address the problem of managing the offenders that are in the community.

“We have to have them in the community,” Stojkovic said. “It will never get addressed if there’s lack of political leadership.”
- Politicians like to pass laws further punishing ex-offenders to help their reputations and careers, if they speak out against these laws, then they could lose their jobs, and they don't want that, so "political leadership" will never happen!

Offender restrictions

Since the mid-2000s, municipalities around Wisconsin have been enacting ordinances that have placed restrictions on where sex offenders can live in communities. At least 110 municipalities in Wisconsin have adopted some kind of ordinance, including the town of Algoma.
- And that is what is causing this clustering!

Stojkovic argues those ordinances do nothing to protect communities from offenders. Rather, Stjkovic said the ordinances are often written too broadly and include every sex offender that’s on the registry instead of focusing on the violent or dangerous offenders that the community needs protection from.

“All of those do nothing,” Stojkovic said. “It’s more political fodder for politicians who want to make hay.”

The town of Algoma enacted a residency restriction ordinance in November 2006. The ordinance prohibits sex offenders who victimized a child under 16 years old from living within 2,000 feet of parks, playgrounds, churches, schools and bike trails.

The ordinance, which covers about 99 percent of the town, does have a mechanism which allows offenders to live within the town if they already have an established residence with a family member who previously lived in the town, said town chairman Tim Blake.

Only one offender resides in the town of Algoma, Blake said.

While the restriction essentially eliminates sex offenders from living within the town, Blake said the intent was not to push offenders off on other communities.

“We weren’t looking to shove anybody anywhere,” Blake said. “We were looking to protect the kids. And we still are.”
- But the residency restrictions do just that!

Oshkosh efforts

Neighborhood advocates and the city have begun exploring options that may help prevent the clustering of offenders in a small area.

Last year, Cummings and Palmeri met with officials from the departments of corrections and probation and parole along with Oshkosh Police Chief Scott Greuel to learn more about placement of sex offenders within the community.

Greuel recently said that he does not support Oshkosh instituting a sex offender residency restriction due to concerns it may force offenders underground, resulting in law enforcement and members of the community not knowing where they are living.

Palmeri sent a follow-up memo to city leaders earlier this month that discussed alternative ways to handle sex offender placement in the city, including an option that sought to address offender density to ease the burden on neighborhoods like hers.
- A free person can live anywhere they wish.  You don't have the government telling you where you can or cannot live, so stop stomping on others rights for your false security!

Among her suggestions was creating a residency review committee that would need to be consulted before an offender moved into the community. Anouther option could involve placing offenders throughout the seven Oshkosh Police districts in the community on a rotational basis.
- Yeah like that will work!  Then you will have this committee just denying everybody the ability to move into their neighborhood, so the problem will still exist.

“I know that’s not a perfect solution since some districts don’t have rentals,” Palmeri said. “It may be the case that we not start with that approach, but maybe instead a distance requirement of how close they can be to each other.”

Palmeri said she has not received a response to her memo from the city.

While more than 100 cities, villages and towns in Wisconsin have created ordinances that restrict where offenders can live, Palmeri said the idea she has proposed — which avoids outright restrictions and instead addresses the population density of offenders within an area — is not utlitized as much. She has identified two communities, the village of Allouez and the town of Wheatland in Kenosha County, that have adopted a hybrid-type ordinance that not only restricts, but also addresses density.

“It hasn’t really been looked at in the state of Wisconsin,” Palmeri said. “I think most of the municipalities have been more clear that they don’t want them here.”

At minimum, she would like the city to create a task force to investigate the issue and work with residents and rental-property owners to address residents’ concerns.

Cummings said the city is exploring ways to limit the number of offenders who live in the city’s older neighborhoods through a zoning rule that would limit the number of non-related people who live in a unit or other moves, such as design standards or creating an apartment registry, that could be made to help reduce the number of low-rent properties in the neighborhoods by either increasing the rental price or turning rental units into single-family homes.

“The major issue why Oshkosh is a good dumping ground is the older sections of the city have very low rents,” Cummings said.

FL - Miami Sex Offenders Live on Train Tracks Thanks to Draconian Restrictions

Original Article

If you really wanted to fix this, which we know you do not, you'd remove the residency laws that do not prevent crime or protect anybody, they only force people into homelessness and the problem you have had for many years now. Florida just continues to put out the burning fires and shuffles ex-offenders around and not solving anything.

03/13/2014

By Terrence McCoy

Darkness has swallowed the train tracks. It won't be long until the men arrive. At 9:50 p.m., the first pair of headlights punches through the black, and a white Ford pickup rolls into the parking lot of a large warehouse sitting among the nameless structures dominating the Miami-Hialeah border.

Within minutes, more men approach on foot, on bicycle, and by car. With a downtrodden but urgent gait, they stride into the parking lot. They hate it here. They wish they could be anywhere else, in another country, or back in prison, perhaps even dead. But they have no choice. It's almost 10 p.m. This is Miami-Dade County. And these 57 men are sex offenders.

"I'm a businessman myself," says _____, a wiry 38-year-old erecting a cheap black tent atop a cement stairwell. In 2010, he was convicted of sexual activity with a minor; for the past three years, he has spent every night here, in torrential downpours, in frigid temperatures, with neither a bathroom nor running water. "And I need to sleep up here so I can get my rest. It's too loud everywhere else here."

In 2007, New Times documented (Video) how a Miami-Dade County law severely restricting where sex offenders could live led to dozens of them forced to sleep under the Julia Tuttle Causeway (Video). That story led to national outrage and local promises to fix a law meant to protect children from predators — but which many said created only more danger by placing offenders in the kind of desperate situations that led to new crimes.

Seven years later, it's clear the problem is as bad as ever. For the past five months, a growing community of sex offenders has swarmed these train tracks with tents, blankets, and lawn chairs. Because their probation imposes a curfew, the men must return here every night at 10 p.m. and stay until 6 a.m. or risk jail time.

"Not even dogs live like this," says one sharp-featured man who declined to offer his name. "We sleep on the ground, and you need this" — he hefts a flashlight — "when you go to s*** in the bushes so you don't step in someone else's."

Worse, Miami-Dade County Police Department emails obtained by New Times show the camp has become a worrying security concern. The number of transient sex offenders has soared from 20 the year after the law was passed to 324 last July, according to police. With more sex offenders forced by law into homelessness every day, tracking the men has become almost impossible. Many have disappeared.

"Efforts to conduct mandated address verification on these sexual predators... is now impossible," says one memo sent to the unit that deals with sexual predators. "Those under supervision have assigned curfew hours, and the probation officers can check in [on them]. Individuals [off parole] have no such restrictions. This is a huge problem for law enforcement."

The fetid conditions in this parking lot underscore the deeper problems with Miami-Dade's flawed law. In 2005, following the rape and murder of 9-year-old Jessica Luns­ford in Homosassa, Florida, by a repeat sexual predator, Miami Beach effectively banned offenders from its mile-wide island with a new law restricting them from living within 2,500 feet of parks and schools — more than twice the distance mandated by the state. Fearing an influx of sex offenders from the Beach to the mainland, Miami-Dade passed an identical countywide law later that year.

Probation officers soon faced a nightmarish question no one could answer: Where were all the sex offenders supposed to go? Men who generally would have gone to live with family members after getting out of jail were now barred from doing so.

Probation officers began taking offenders to a giant overpass in Coral Gables — just one block from Kristi House, a treatment center for victims of sexual assault. They were also within 1,000 feet of two day-care centers and within 2,500 feet of eight schools.

New Times' revelations about that situation sparked an angry outcry, but another encampment sprouted months later, much larger than the first. This time, it was under the Julia Tuttle Causeway. For at least eight months, a new sex offender arrived every week. Some offenders were arrested for minor violations of their parole and thrown back in jail. Others vanished.

The growth of the community incited widespread condemnation of the law. Critics pointed out that the vast majority of sex crimes are committed by friends and family members and that 87 percent of sex offenders have no prior record. Studies also show that living under extreme duress — like sleeping on train tracks or under a bridge — only exacerbates criminal tendencies.

Yet the county law has never faced any serious attempts at reform. Its facilitator, superlobbyist Ron Book, whose daughter is a victim of sexual abuse, still cheers the ordinance. "Have I changed my mind on whether this law is good and important? No," he says. "It's cheap, demagogic rhetoric that people throw at this issue to make excuses for why the sexual deviant can't find places to live. Well, people aren't entitled to live wherever they want."

But critics say the law is illogical and counterproductive. "There's got to be a more humane way of handling this," says Miami-Dade Commissioner Xavier Suarez, who concedes there's no movement to change the rule. "That we restrict where they can live and not provide any facilities for them isn't humane or logical and is a totally incorrect way of handling this."

The backstory behind how the men have now ended up living on Hialeah train tracks only illustrates the absurdity of the restrictions.

By April 2010, the county had closed the Julia Tuttle encampment, while Book's organization, the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust, used $1 million in public money to find six months of housing for the offenders. Those funds were intended to bridge the men into normalized society: employment, sustainable housing, a new life. Soon, however, the money ran out, and many offenders, still unable to find housing or jobs, were back on the streets.

Others discovered a mobile home community near the Miami River called River Park that seemed to be legal housing. Dozens settled in. But then, last summer, Book's Homeless Trust dispatched a note to Miami-Dade Police, telling them there was a school nearby. "The trailer park houses sex offenders," Elizabeth Regalado, an assistant director at the trust, wrote in an email. "It is infested with crime and criminal activity due to prostitution and drugs."

At first, according to emails, both police and probation officers thought the offenders at the park were grandfathered in. Plus, many believed evicting the sex offenders wouldn't make kids any safer. "The prostitution and drugs will continue at the park even if the sex offenders leave," one cop wrote. "And there has not been one incident with a sex offender targeting" the kids nearby.

More troubling, there didn't appear to be any place where the offenders could go. "Having to tell irate individuals that they must move once again because a particular site was now labeled a school will make the situation difficult," Lt. Dillian Robin lamented in another internal email.

But such concerns weren't enough to stop the eviction. On September 17, police notified dozens of sex offenders living there that they had to move. The men who were still under parole say they were taken to the train tracks at the intersection of NW 71st Street and NW 36th Court — one of few locations left that satisfies the draconian restrictions. Others simply disappeared. "Sexual predators understand how to work around the law," a police memo noted.

_____ witnessed the influx of predators to the train tracks. In 2007, he was picked up for cocaine possession and given a DNA swab. According to court documents, his DNA years later matched the saliva found on boxers owned by a 17-year-old who'd told police a man had performed fellatio on him at a Liberty City laundromat in 2006. Four years later, _____ was convicted of sexual activity with a minor and spent 16 months in jail.

When he got out, he says, his probation officer gave him "a few weeks" to find housing that was beyond 2,500 feet from a school, but he couldn't.

"That's when they told me about these train tracks and I had to live on the street," he says. That realization crushed his family. "I don't understand what happened," his mother, _____, wrote the court in October 2011. "Is this what the system is all about? Not helping anyone, by banning him from his family?"

Once at the train tracks, _____ met _____. The tall 27-year-old with gold-plated teeth had also just arrived after serving time for lascivious battery on a child. In 2005, _____, who was then 21, "implied he had a gun and would shoot" a 15-year-old girl if she didn't have sex with him, according to Miami-Dade Police. (_____ claims the teen was his girlfriend and the sex was consensual.)

_____ soon found himself wishing he was still incarcerated. "When I was in prison, I had somewhere to sleep, a roof, food. Out here, I don't have any of that. I have to pee in a cup at night. I don't have anywhere to sleep. People crap in the bushes. Most nights I wish I was still locked up."

In those early days, _____ and _____ say, there were only a dozen offenders living at the train tracks. But last September, droves suddenly arrived with nowhere else to go. They'd all come from River Park after the eviction.

Today the offenders have melted into a new, unhappy life. "They threw us out," explains one fast-talking man who declined to give his name. "Where in the hell was I going to find someplace to stay in one week knowing our status? We ended up running to any place we could find, and it was here."

"Don't we have the right to make ourselves better?" another asks. "How can we do that if every time we try, they close the door on us?"

Around midnight on a recent ­Tuesday, the men settle on the concrete of the parking lot to sleep and don't rustle again until 5:45 the next morning. In the darkness before dawn, a dozen offenders wearily yet hurriedly take down their tents. They say the manager of the nearby warehouse threatened to kick them off his property if they made a mess, and no one wants to endure another move.

A frazzle-haired man gargles some water, takes a swig of cafecito, and schleps his tent back into the bushes before climbing into the bed of a white pickup.

At the strike of 6, offenders take off on bike and foot while watching the white Ford pull away, taillights dissolving into the pale morning light.

IN - Indiana Law Gives Sex Offenders Freedom To Live Anywhere Three Days Each Month

Original Article

The very laws are what is creating this problem. Remove the residency laws and you won't have any more of this clustering and people can live where they want and find a job.

03/06/2014

By Rachelle Spence

FORT WAYNE (21Alive) - Wednesday's near condemnation of the Hallmark Inn left many wondering where those on the Allen County Sex Offender Registry would relocate to.

The extended-stay motel is a common place for offenders to live, since it is a thousand feet from any school, daycare, or park.

According to the Allen County Sheriff's Department, there were eleven registered sex offenders living at the Hallmark Inn.

Although the owner of the property received an injunction in the case and some residents are still there for the time being, detectives say several of the registered offenders had already packed up and left.

The above maps (see video) show places where predators and offenders against children cannot live. When all of the images are laid on top of one another, it's easy to see offenders don't have much of a choice.

While many consider the 2006 "thousand-feet" law a safe measure, one Allen County Detective says it's a big negative for those neighborhoods outside of the colored areas.

"We've got a trailer court with a ton of offenders in it. Whereas, before it may have only had one or two. Before, the kids going back and forth to school, only had to worry about one sexual offender. Now, they have twenty. It becomes a virtual minefield the kids have to walk through," said Detective, Jeff Shimkus.
- Once again a police officer making it appear as if all sex offender are out preying on children when many didn't actually harm a child.

Shimkus also explains that offenders have a three night window every month that they can stay with friends or family, regardless of whether or not that home is near any of the prohibited areas.

IN - Where to house sex offenders? Meetings planned statewide

Original Article

03/06/2014

RICHMOND - State officials’ proposal to temporarily house registered sex offenders at a mobile home park in Richmond has sparked a series of meetings around Indiana with local police agencies about the sensitive issue.

Wayne County Sheriff Jeff Cappa said Tuesday that the Indiana Department of Correction’s plan to place a mobile home at the Beechwood Mobile Home Park in Richmond to house registered sex offenders has been put on hold while those meetings play out in the coming months.

He said the Indiana Sheriff’s Association will be hosting a series of meetings around the state with DOC Commissioner Bruce Lemmon about the agency’s larger plan to house registered sex offenders in communities.

In Allen County, Detective Jeff Shimkus, part of the Sex Offender and Registration Notification team for the Allen County Sheriff’s Department, said Wednesday he hadn't heard about the plan.

The Wayne County sheriff plans to attend a meeting April 22 in Portland to share his thoughts about the DOC plan. He said the hope is that the DOC staff and local law enforcement officials can discuss alternatives to the DOC program.

“This will give us a chance to work together and come up with some answers, instead of just having it dropped on us like it was,” Cappa told the Palladium-Item. “I think in the end, we will form a better professional partnership and work together to handle this situation.”

DOC spokesman Doug Garrison said the proposal to place a mobile home for registered sex offenders on Richmond’s northwest side sparked those meetings. He said the sheriff’s association is inviting sheriffs and other local law enforcement agencies to the meetings with Lemmon in six regions around the state.

“We’ll work together to try to find housing solutions, that’s what this is about,” Garrison said Wednesday. “We’re trying to reach the broadest segment of law enforcement that we can.”

Last month, 17 state, area and local officials met in Richmond to discuss the DOC’s proposal for Richmond. The plan was for sex offenders who completed their jail terms to be placed at a mobile home in the park rent-free for two weeks while they prepare to resettle in the community.

Delaware County Chief Deputy Sheriff Jason Walker also attended that meeting to talk about a similar trial program started in Delaware County, which was suspended before plans were announced to bring the program to Richmond.

In Allen County, certain areas have attracted high numbers of sex offenders such as Dupont Triangle, formerly Northway Mobile Home Park, along Tonkel Road in northeast Allen County.

Currently, 16 registered sex offenders live in the park. In December 2011, when 9-year-old Aliahna Lemmon disappeared and was found murdered and dismembered inside a mobile home at the park, there were 14 registered sex offenders.

While the state’s proposal is only to temporarily house sex offenders while they make the transition back into communities, the problem that has created high concentrations of sex offenders in places such as Dupont Triangle remains.

Shimkus has long advocated that the state lift a rule that bans sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of a school, park or child care center.

“If they could live wherever they wanted, we might have one or two (sex offenders per mobile home park) instead of parks entirely of sex offenders,” Shimkus said. “That would be fine if it were just sex offenders, but families move,” and parents have to worry about the people around their children.

It was unknown Wednesday whether the state plans to bring the program to Allen County or northeast Indiana or whether there is a meeting slated for this area.

Sex offenders face hurdles rejoining society

Original Article

02/14/2014

Just mentioning the housing needs of convicted sex offenders is sure to raise the ire of many, with the prevailing attitude being “not in my neighborhood.”

It’s an understandable reaction, because those who commit sex crimes often prey on the most helpless and vulnerable victims, our children. To say it’s an especially harmful crime falls short of describing the emotional havoc left in its wake.

That’s why many states and locales have enacted laws requiring convicted offenders to register where they live and work; where and how they use the Internet, and prohibiting them from visiting places where other children may frequent.

In Indiana, offenders are prohibited from living within 1,000 feet of schools, parks or youth program centers. As a result, offenders are forced to live in the most “unhealthy” of neighborhoods to satisfy that requirement, if they can find housing at all.

As a society, we owe it to our children to keep them safe. We also have an obligation to provide a safety net for those who have served their time, which means clean and affordable housing for sex offenders.

The case where up to eight homeless offenders were about to be evicted from a church-run shelter in Muncie for violating the distance requirement illustrates perfectly how laws with good intentions can clash with people trying to do the right thing. Fortunately, common sense prevailed and the offenders were not forced to leave their shelter. But a long-term solution is lacking.

When drawing the 1,000-feet restrictions on a map, it’s difficult to find areas that satisfy that requirement. The result is a concentration of offenders.

In downtown Muncie, a half-mile radius from the newspaper offices shows 12 addresses where offenders live, according to data from the Delaware County Sheriff’s office. Four addresses list multiple offenders living there, including at least one shelter.

In Fort Wayne, a trailer park housed 14 sex offenders — nearly half the park’s addresses — where a 9-year-old girl disappeared and was later found dead just before Christmas in 2011. They were living there in order or to satisfy residency restrictions. It should be noted the girl and her family knew the man who killed her.

Some more statistics: There were about 190 registered sex offenders living in Muncie last Friday, or about one offender for every 357 Muncie residents.

But statistics are harder to come by when determining whether sex offenders are likely to repeat their crimes. According to the Bureau of Justice, a U.S. study of more than 9,000 male sex offenders released in 15 states in 1994 found that sex criminals were less likely to be reconvicted over the following three years than all released prisoners — 24 percent compared with 47 percent. Child molesters had a lower rate of 20.4 percent. Other studies point to varying rates of recidivism, with a main factor dependent on how long offenders are tracked after their convictions.

Existing evidence seems to counter the popular notion that sex offenders are far more likely to be repeat offenders than other criminal populations.

It’s unacceptable to ignore the problem, just as it is unacceptable to pass it along to other communities, or to force offenders to live in narrowly defined areas, especially when other studies show that 90 percent of sex crimes against children are committed by someone known by the child such as a family member, friend or other adult.

We are not seeking repeal of existing laws, but for the application of common sense. If offenders are living in a shelter or halfway house under close supervision, that should be sufficient in light that they must register with police agencies any change of address or job status.

If we as a society believe in fair play and that offenders must pay for their crime, it makes no sense to stack the deck against those who have paid that debt to society, making it nearly impossible for them to become productive citizens. We’re better than that.