Sex offender law, Prop 83 could have an unintended side effects
creating an influx criminals out of city locales
Gilroy – Sylvia Hamilton treasures San Martin’s rustic calm, its tranquil hills and fields. But she worries that those same hills could shelter sex offenders from the law, if Proposition 83 passes next week. The measure’s residency restrictions could push predators from Gilroy into rural areas like San Martin – a scenario she doesn’t relish.
“My neighbors and I are upset,” said Hamilton, San Martin’s best-known neighborhood activist. “It’s easier to monitor them in the cities – out here, we’ve got a lower level of police protection. Why do you think a lot of the meth labs go to rural areas?”
California is poised to pass the nation’s toughest law on sex offenders, in the name of a murdered little girl: Jessica Lunsford, 9, killed in Florida by a convicted sex offender. Just days from the election, Jessica’s Law looks like a winning proposal, with an August Field Poll showing 76 percent support. Democrats back it. Republicans back it. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger backs it, and his opponent Phil Angelides does, too. Law enforcement agencies such as the California Organization of Police and Sheriffs (COPS), the California Sexual Assault Investigators, and the California State Sheriffs Association have endorsed it.
“It’s overdue that we start getting tough on sexual predators,” said Kelley Moran, COPS’ director of political affairs. “We’re giving law enforcement the tools to keep track of sexual predators. When are we going to start protecting the children that are out there, before they’re abused?”
COPS’ board of directors decided unanimously to support the law. Even a registered sex offender says he’d vote for Proposition 83 in a second – that is, if he wasn’t on the other side of the fence.
Advocacy groups registered with the Secretary of State’s office have spent more than $1 million in support of Proposition 83; no opposition groups have registered. Critics like California Attorneys for Criminal Justice and the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice haven’t formally campaigned against the law, and with less than a week to election day, Proposition 83 seems infallible.
“I don’t know of any politician who’s actively opposing it,” said Terry Christensen, a political science professor at San Jose State University. With a name like Jessica’s Law, “people have kneejerk reactions. They automatically know what side they’re on.”
Few would side with sex offenders. But some fret that the measure could brew new hazards, by herding sex offenders into rural areas and flooding police with broad monitoring responsibilities. Amid the bundle of new provisions packed into Proposition 83’s 12 small-print pages, two in particular – residency restrictions and GPS tracking – have sparked speculation and concern.
Predator-free zones
To keep kids out of harm’s way – or rather, harm out of kids’ way – the measure bars sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of schools and parks. Other kid-friendly sites, such as daycares and water parks, can be added as predator-free zones by local governments.
If passed, the measure could make Gilroy all but off limits to registered sex offenders, said Detective Mitch Madruga, one of two Gilroy detectives who investigate sex crimes. The few remaining areas are concentrated in the west and south. Sex offenders could still live in a patch around the intersection of First Street and Santa Teresa Boulevard, a crescent along W. Luchessa Avenue and Thomas Road, Murray Avenue and Forest Street north of Leavesley Road, and the western stretches of Eagle Ridge. Almost anywhere else is forbidden. The restrictions would lighten the load for cities like Gilroy, said Madruga, but could push the burden onto county sheriffs.
“You take all the sex offenders in San Jose, and all the sex offenders in Gilroy – they’d have to move into the unincorporated areas,” Madruga said. “Putting together the resources to monitor that many people could take years.”
One sex offender, a 55-year-old Gilroy man, says he’ll clear out of his home, 200 feet from the Uvas Creek park, if the law passes. He spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing harassment. Thirty years ago, he was convicted of oral copulation with a child younger than 14.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “They keep making ex-post-facto laws for sex offenders. For any other issue, it’d be thrown out by the courts in a heartbeat. Why are sex offenders different?”
Among the few groups opposing Proposition 83 is Community Solutions, South County’s largest organization serving sexual assault survivors. They say if the law prods sex offenders away from cities, rural residents may suffer.
“It’s not as easy for people in those areas to access [sexual assault] services,” said Perla Flores, director of the agency’s Solutions to Violence component. More than 30 percent of her rural clients are monolingual Spanish speakers, she added, who may not know about the services available to assault survivors. “If there’s a huge influx of sexual offenders into this area, that’s going to make the situation worse.”
Another Gilroy man, 38, is on parole for continuous sexual abuse of a child, an offense committed 11 years ago. The man is already prohibited from living near a school – and wouldn’t want to live there, he added, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“If anything happened to those kids,” said the man, “the first thing they’d do is knock on my door.”
But he said the lifetime restriction is excessive, and housing already tough to find in a pricey market. He currently lives on Monterey Highway, where his parole officer visits him twice a month.
“What are they going to do next?” asked the man. “Gather all sex offenders and put us in a community out in the desert?”
Supporters dismiss dire warnings of sexual predators swamping rural areas. Becky Warren, campaign manager for Proposition 83, criticized the San Jose Mercury News analysis that predicted an exodus of sex offenders from San Jose and San Francisco to the country.
“California has had residency restrictions for decades,” Warren said. “This is not a new thing. All we’re saying is, once they’re finished with their parole, they can’t move near a school.”
Numerous rural groups have endorsed the measure, including the California Farm Bureau, she added, as well as the League of California Cities, which includes smaller towns in rural areas.
Dave Kranz, spokesperson for the Farm Bureau, said the group’s position was consistent with its goal of maintaining safe communities. Though the board of directors discussed the possible rural shift of sex offenders, he said, they decided to support the law due to the increased supervision it affords.
Stricter residency restrictions might also push sex offenders underground, said Sgt. Blayn Persiani, supervisor of the Sexual Assault Felony Enforcement task force (SAFE.) SAFE, created in 1994, is a joint effort of law enforcement agencies, the district attorney’s office, and the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security to monitor sex offenders, those who register and those who don’t.
Working with local police and sheriffs, the task force arrests 10 to 20 people every month for parole violations, said Sharron Pearson, an investigator with the district attorney’s office, assigned to SAFE for the past five years. In 2005, the group made 25 arrests in Gilroy and Morgan Hill; in 2006, 15 arrests. Those arrests are in addition to those made by county sheriffs and city police such as Madruga and Detective Michael Beebe, who track registration compliance in Gilroy.
“It’s common for some sex offenders to be registered at addresses where they actually don’t live,” Persiani said. If Proposition 83 passes, “they might register in those rural areas and just never live there.”
Madruga agreed, but said that issue is nothing new. Currently, of 106 Megan’s Law registrants in Gilroy, 19 are out of compliance.
“We run into those problems now,” said Madruga. “They either quit registering, or they register as a transient. The problem with that is we don’t have an address for them.” Transients have to register more frequently – every 30 days, compared to once a year – but “they’d rather do that and not have their address out.”
Keeping sex offenders away from schools isn’t a new idea. In 1995, Florida passed a 1,000-foot restriction around schools, daycares, parks and other places where children congregate; in 2002, Iowa followed suit, banning most sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or daycare center. In the Midwest, Persiani’s fears of vanishing sex offenders have been confirmed. 400 of Iowa’s 6,000-plus registered sex offenders are listed as “whereabouts unconfirmed,” or living in tents and parking lots, according to The New York Times. That’s almost three times as many as last summer, before the law went into effect.
COPS’ Moran said comparisons to Iowa are misleading, because Iowa doesn’t have GPS tracking, “a key component of this legislation.”
GPS Monitoring
In California, 600 parolees are being monitored via GPS statewide, 40 of them in Santa Clara County. With the exception of a 20-person gang caseload in San Bernardino, all are high-risk sex offenders, said Tip Kindel, a Corrections and Rehabilitation department spokesperson. The statewide program costs $5,250 per day, or $8.75 per day, per person. Parole agents can set off-limits zones using the system, which issues an alert to the agent’s cell phone if the parolee is in a prohibited area. Agents can also track a parolee’s exact location and study their travel patterns.
Proposition 83 could extend such monitoring to every registered sex offender in California – an estimated 90,000 people, according to the California Legislative Analyst’s Office.
“Right now, we use the honor system,” Warren said. “We say, ‘OK, child molester, please check in with us once a year’ – and if they don’t, we don’t know where they are. That’s a huge issue, particularly for Gilroy.” If GPS tracking is put in place, she said, “We’ll know where they are, and law enforcement will be able to track them.”
Twenty-one states use GPS to keep an eye on sex offenders: in Florida, repeat sex offenders and those who track children; in Oklahoma, repeat offenders, and in Ohio, sexually violent predators. Warren cited the effectiveness of GPS tracking in Florida, where the state Department of Corrections found offenders less likely to reoffend while sporting a GPS anklet or bracelet.
It’s an appealing idea: a sex offender’s whereabouts, available at the push of a button. Santa Clara County Supervisor Don Gage said California should “give it a shot.”
“It’s not perfect, but it’s better than what we have,” Gage said. “It’ll at least identify where these folks are, so police can pay attention to them.”
Madruga lauds GPS as a highly effective tool, provided that offenders wear their tracking bracelets. But some worry that widespread GPS tracking of all sex offenders could distract investigators from the most dangerous offenders.
“The intent is great. … but how effective is that going to be?” asked Persiani. “Are we going to be responding to alarms of people, who, say, have been in complete compliance, haven’t committed a crime in 25 years, but happen to walk by a school? It may detract us from being able to fully focus on the higher-risk sex offenders, the people that need the attention most.”
GPS tracking could cost more than $100 million annually, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office, with costs increasing every year. Whether local governments will have to help pay remains unclear. Fees charged to parolees might help cover the cost, but will be limited depending on parolees’ ability to pay.
Warren said GPS tracking would save police money, by cutting the time spent door-knocking and chasing down offenders. If more offenders are tracked, she said, all the better.
“Where do you draw the line?” she asked. “We want to add reasonable protections for our children, and I think Prop. 83 does that.”
With infinite resources, few would oppose tracking sex offenders. But as Community Solutions suffers funding cuts, stretching limited staff to serve its clients, Flores said the money could be better spent tracking high-risk offenders, and in sexual assault prevention and education campaigns.
“We all believe that the person that’s going to rape someone is going to jump out of the bushes and take you away – and there are scenarios where that does happen,” she said. “But with children, there’s usually a whole grooming process where they befriend them, establish rapport and trust with that child.”
Seventy-three percent of sexual assaults are perpetrated by a non-stranger, according a 2005 Bureau of Justice Report. In light of those statistics, Flores said, teaching kids to report molestation, to raise their awareness and let them know it’s not their fault, should be higher priority.
But as Proposition 83 coasts toward likely approval, Christensen said, those larger issues may get lost amid sound bites and campaign blurbs.
“Where will these predators live, when they’re restricted?” he asked. “Somebody’s got to be impacted. They’ve got to live somewhere.”
