Sexual Predators Are Scary... So Do We Want Them Hiding In Plain Sight?

Sex Offenders in Exile

I have ben disturbed by the notion that someone convicted of a sexual crime--which is defined differently in different states--can be punished not only by a sentence for the crime, but the inclusion of such offenders on a continuous registry, prevention of such offenders from living in certain places, as well as the attachment of lifelong stigma.

Now, I have read the studies on sexual predators. Pedophiles in particular do not show a proper response to incarceration, and most do not respond to treatment. However, I question whether or not we have inquired as to whether or not the treatment approaches might be at fault. We seem to use a short-term treatment approach for almost every social or mental health disorder we experience. Mental illnesses are only covered for approximately 15 days of hospitalization per year and about 50 hours of outpatient treatment. Substance abuse treatment has been relegated to 3-10 days detoxification, and 15-60 days of rehab. The recividism rate for substance abuse is over 70% because we know that an effective treatment approach for substance abuse requires at least 1 to 2 years, complete with social, educational, vocational, clinical and spiritual support. Depression, which is the mental disease du jour and provides the big pharma corporations with megabuck profits, is still limited to a certain number of days. Anything not covered by an active insurance plan pushed those afflicted with mental disorders to poorly run warehouse-like state facilities or privately run group homes, most of which are not taken seriously.

So, when we recognize that sexual predators are afflicted with a disorder that is not treated properly in prison environments, then we subject these predators to a continuous and unfair sentence of registry and restricted living arrangements (whether intended or not), and we do not offer any real solutions except to trap these folks in a continuous cycle of offending and working through the system, what should we expect?

I am not saying that sexual predators should not be punished and held accountable. I am not saying that we should not take precautions to prevent future vitimization. I am saying that we need to be clear about how to handle such perpetrators.

A good case in point is the case of a man arrested in Lynn, Massachusetts for urinating against a wall along side of the railroad tracks. The man was arrested for trespassing on MBTA property. He was also arrested for drunk and disorderly behavior because he was intoxicated and resisted the efforts of the cops to detain him. But he was almost charged with a sexual offense because three young girls peeked over the wall and saw him peeing against the wall. If it were not for the advocacy of several of us working with homeless populations, this man would have been charged with indecent exposure, given a felony sentence and been labelled as a sexual offender for the rest of his life. What this man needed was treatment of his alcoholism, immediate shelter so that he would have a decent place to sleep and a clean bathroom in which he could pee without having children peer at him while doing so, and the social work and medical care necessary to assure he could get healthy and pursue a normative life. In fact, after this man got help for his alcholism, he became a very powerful advocate for the most needy in our society, a member of an award-winning choir, and beloved adjunct professor at a local college.

But we would rather write off people than deal with the social, medical, mental health and interpersonal problems that confront our society. We want to lock people up and throw away the key. We want to label people and make them wear the label everywhere.

But we are inconsistent. We want to do all of these things to sexual perpetrators, but we allow murderers to live freely in our society after they have served their time. The recividism rate for murderers is almost as high as that for rapists and pedophiles.

The author of the NYT editorial below asks a question that I do not think most of us have bothered to ponder: What happens when we drive those stigmatized by our lack of treatment and working with these perpetrators underground and can no longer track them? Think carefully about the issues that this question brings to the forefront.

Of all the places that sexual predators could end up after prison, the worst is out of sight, away from the scrutiny and treatment that could prevent them from committing new crimes. But communities around the country are taking that risk, with zoning laws that banish pedophiles to the literal edges of society.

There is a powerful and wholly understandable impulse behind laws that forbid sex offenders to live within certain distances of schools, day care centers and other places that children gather. Scores of states and municipalities have created such buffer zones, then continued adding layer upon layer to the enforcement blanket.

This has placed a heavy burden on law enforcement agencies, which already must struggle to meet exacting federal and state requirements for registering and monitoring the ever-growing population of released sex offenders, many of whom must be tracked for life. Lawmakers have shown no hesitation in piling on the administrative load, but frequently are less quick to pay for additional people to do the work.

As the areas off limits to sex offenders expand to encompass entire towns and cities, if not states, the places where they can live and work are shrinking fast. The unintended consequence is that offenders have been dispersed to rural nowhere zones, where they are much harder to track. In confined regions like Long Island, they have become concentrated in a handful of low-rent, few-questions-asked areas — an unintended and unfair imposition on their wary neighbors.

Many offenders respond by going underground. In Iowa, the number of registered sex offenders who went missing soared after the state passed a law forbidding offenders to live within 2,000 feet of a school or day care center. The county prosecutors’ association has urged that the law be repealed, for the simple reasons that it drives offenders out of sight, requires “the huge draining of scant law enforcement resources” and doesn’t provide the protection intended.

The prosecutors are right that any sense of security that such laws provide is vague at best and probably false. Just as it would feel foolish to forbid muggers to live near A.T.M.’s, it is hard to imagine how a 1,000-foot buffer zone around a bus stop, say, would keep a determined pedophile at bay. If children feel secure enough to drop their wariness of strangers, that would be a dangerous outcome. And of course, no buffer against a faceless predator will be any help to the overwhelming majority of child victims — those secretly abused by stepfathers, uncles and other people they know.

The problem with residency restrictions is that they fulfill an emotional need but not a rational one. It’s in everyone’s interest for registered sex offenders to lead stable lives, near the watchful eyes of family and law enforcement and regular psychiatric treatment. Exile by zoning threatens to create just the opposite phenomenon — a subpopulation of unhinged nomads off their meds with no fixed address and no one keeping tabs on them. This may satisfy many a town’s thirst for retributive justice, but as a sensible law enforcement policy designed to make children safer, it smacks of thoughtlessness and failure.