Fair employment news and resources

11-3-16 National:

The National Employment Law Project (NELP) recently published its November 2016 On the Record: Fair Employment newsletter which provides links and information on a number of interesting developments related to collateral consequences and criminal record mitigation. The full newsletter is available at link below: ..Continued.. by National Employment Law Project

Myths and research on sex offender registries

5-16-15 National:

Studies show that while public sex offender registries sound like a good way to keep a community safe, the numbers tell a different story. And widely held beliefs turn out to be myths — among the more prevalent is that most sex offenders are pedophiles who might snatch a child from a park or bus stop.

Here are the myths, and the research that debunks them.

■ Sex offenders are among criminals most likely to re-offend.

The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics examined 9,691 sex offenders from 15 states and found that 5.3% were arrested within three years of being released from prison, compared with 73.8% of those who committed property crimes and 66.7% of those convicted of drug offenses. The number drops even lower with the passage of time, with the majority of the new crimes committed within five years of release.

■ Most sexual assaults are committed by a stranger.

"Stranger danger" is rare. Studies show about 93% of child sexual abuse victims knew their assailant, about 34.3% are family members, and 58.7% friends or acquaintances, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.

Think All Pedophiles Need to Register as Sex Offenders? You're Wrong

7-8-15 National:

How can someone who had consensual sex with a person who misrepresented her age end up on the sex offender registry for life? The case of Zachery Anderson has many asking if sex offender registries are fair. In the New York Times William Buhl said, "The whole registry is a horrible mistake. I think it is utterly ridiculous to take teenage sex and make it a felony. This guy is obviously not a pedophile."

There is a scenario even more troubling than Anderson's. Can someone who committed a sexual crime against a child not have to register as a sex offender? Yes, and it happens every day in Maryland where people who committed sex crimes before 1996 do not need to register regardless of when they were sentenced or released from prison.

I became aware of this troubling reality in September 2014 at the sentencing of my perpetrator, Christopher Huott, who sexually abused me for years starting when I was seven. Since the crimes took place in the 1980s my perpetrator was sentenced under those guidelines, which were more lenient than today's statutes. There was also no sex offender registry in place when he was sexually abusing me. So, when Mr. Huott is released from prison -- in as little as two years -- he will not have to register as an offender.

One Survivor's Crusade Reveals a Plague of Errors in Nation's Sex Offender Registries

4-21-15 National:

Estimates of the number of entries with crucial mistakes run into the tens of thousands. One man—and pretty much only one man—is trying to fix them.

Tim Fisher steps slowly up the driveway, glancing back with mournful eyes a few times toward his sister-in-law across the street, silently pleading for her encouragement. With neat, shoulder-length, salt-and-pepper hair and a mustache, dressed in a plaid button-down shirt and shapeless jeans, Fisher is 49, but in his mind he’s the cherub-cheeked boy with the sun-bleached bangs who walked this asphalt hundreds of times, every Saturday for seven years. Today he trembles with the same trepidation that his boyhood self felt.

By the time he reaches the doorstep, he feels a strange, unsettling vulnerability in being shadowed and hidden from street view by a red-tile overhang. This is his decision, his right, he reminds himself. He just drove five hours from his Las Vegas home to this quiet block in Anaheim, California, fruitlessly trying to release his gathering anxiety with cigarette after cigarette as his sister-in-law soothed him with assurances that she was there for him, come what may.

Interesting that this article points out tens of thousands of errors in registries nationally. These errors caused by the wording and manner in which the Adam Walsh Act was implemented. The Act that was supposed to do the exact opposite; make all states the same, but ultimately caused a mess so bad that it will be impossible to fix. So much for the work of Congress!

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Nightmarish Catch-22: Restricting Where Sex Offenders Live Forces Them to Be Homeless and Makes Us Less Safe

10-25-2014 Florida, National:

On the outskirts of Florida's Miami-Dade County, dozens of individuals formerly convicted of sexual offenses live as exiles on an abandoned strip of land near a railroad track. The area has no shelter from the elements, no running water, and no bathrooms. The most fortunate inhabitants of this makeshift encampment sleep in cars or in tents. Others make do with a tarp or anything else that passes as cover. Each night brings new threats of violence, malnutrition, and disease.

The images are disturbingly reminiscent of scenes from nearly a decade ago, when a collection of over 100 former sexual offenders formed a similar camp under a bridge spanning the Julia Tuttle Causeway. Local officials scattered that Skid Row sometime in 2010, following a barrage of condemnation by the public.

Like the people under the bridge, the people by the tracks did not simply fall into these tragic circumstances. They were shoved.

Miami-Dade County has forced them and hundreds more into homelessness with an ordinance that prohibits those convicted of certain sexual offenses from living within 2,500 feet – nearly half a mile – of a school. The ordinance has kept many of the inhabitants from living with family or loved ones who could offer shelter, and it has made it extraordinarily difficult to find affordable housing in the mostly urban county. More importantly, the ordinance creates the very conditions that undermine its stated rationale of public safety.

There’s Literally No Evidence That Restricting Where Sex Offenders Can Live Accomplishes Anything

8-25-2014 National:

On Thursday, Joseph Goldstein of the New York Times reported that "Dozens of sex offenders who have satisfied their sentences in New York State are being held in prison beyond their release dates because of a new interpretation of a state law that governs where they can live." In short, since 2005, sex offenders in the state can't live within 1,000 feet of a school, and a February ruling from the state's Department of Corrections and Community Supervision extended that restriction to homeless shelters.

Because the onus is on sex offenders to find approved housing before they’re released, Goldstein reported, they’ve been left with very few options, especially in densely-populated New York City, where there are schools everywhere. This has led to an uncomfortable legal limbo and sparked at least one lawsuit (so far) on behalf of an offender who is still in custody even though he was supposed to be out by now.

FBI: Child sex offenders turn violent, suicidal

This news item will be tied to our "Deaths in the United States under sex offense laws" report later this month.

6-18-2012 National:

Gray Alan Combs Jr. was shot to death after he threatened Fairfax County police with a sword last month.

Willis E. Coley, 27, of Alexandria, hanged himself in August.

George N. Kiriacon, 50, committed suicide in a truck in New Carrollton.

The common thread among these three men is that all had been charged with child sex crimes shortly before their violent and/or self-destructive actions.

The FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service have documented a disturbing trend in which those confronted with charges of child abuse react by attacking others or harming themselves.

Law enforcement authorities say they are seeing more incidents as police have increased efforts to apprehend those who produce, distribute and view child porn. Over the past 20 years, federal child sex pornography cases have increased 330 percent -- from 481 in 1999 to 2,069 in 2009.

Ronald Hosko, special agent in charge of the FBI Washington Field Office's Criminal Division, said he noticed the phenomenon in 2008, as an inspector for the FBI's Inspection Division, where he reviewed deadly shooting incidents around the country. Subjects pulled a weapon as FBI agents knocked on their doors to ask questions or execute a search warrant, putting the lives of themselves, family members and the agents in danger.

"It's a life-changing event," Hosko said. "At that moment, their world is collapsed around them. And they think the only way out is at the point of a gun."

A new FBI study found that in 106 cases where an individual committed suicide after he became aware that he was being investigated, 54 killed themselves within 30 days of being contacted by law enforcement. About half of the sample did not have a prior criminal history.

Combs was wanted for producing child pornography. Coley was two weeks away from being indicted on federal child pornography charges. Kiriacon was found dead a day after the public disclosure that a 15-year-old boy had accused him of abuse.

"This is a different type of suicide. This is a suicide motivated not so much by depression but by desperation," said Dr. Michael Bourke, chief psychologist with the U.S. Marshals Service's Behavioral Analysis Unit. Bourke had been studying this issue after the passage of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act in 2006, which authorized the Marshals Service to track down sex offenders who are unregistered or have violated the terms of their registration.

Many of the suspects seemed to have led normal, responsible lives, experts said. Suddenly, they're facing the shame of being exposed, being ostracized by their family and friends, they're looking at spending a long time behind bars, where it's commonly held that the most reviled inmates are those serving time for child sex abuse.

A 2005 study in the United Kingdom found child sex offenders who had no other criminal records were 183 times more likely to commit suicide than the general population.

This is the actual source: "Suicide and murder in child murderers and child sexual abusers." Pritchard C.; Bagley C.. Source: Journal of Forensic Psychiatry, Volume 12, Number 2, 1 September 2001 , pp. 269-286(18)Found after many hours of searching.

The FBI and the U.S. marshals are refining their tactics for approaching subjects, such as determining if the target has a gun and using a force team to make arrests or serve warrants. ..Source.. by Scott McCabe

Press Release: NEW STUDY DISPUTES CLAIMS OF 100,000 MISSING SEX OFFENDERS

7-17-2011 National:

100,000 Sex Offenders Missing . . . or Are They? Deconstruction of an Urban Legend

A new study has been released this week which raises questions about claims that 100,000 registered sex offenders in the U.S. are "missing". The study, published in the scientific journal Criminal Justice Policy Review, analyzed data downloaded directly from online sex offender registries in 2010. The authors also surveyed the state's registry managers.

The study utilized a sample of more than 445,000 registered sex offenders which included only those listed on public registries. About two-thirds of the sex offenders in the United States are publicly identified; the rest are assessed by states to be low risk and are not subject to public disclosure. The authors were able to identify sex offenders designated by states to be transient, homeless, absconded, non-compliant, or whose address or whereabouts were otherwise unknown. Nationwide, about 2.4% were officially listed as absconded, unable to be located, or having failed to comply with registration requirements. When including those designated as homeless or transient, the rate grew to slightly over 4%.

The authors also reported on data obtained in 2010 via email and telephone surveys of state registry managers. Rates of registration noncompliance among registrants living in the community varied greatly, ranging from about 1% in some states (e.g. Florida, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota, Vermont, and West Virginia) to about 13% (California, Hawaii, and Oklahoma). Nationally, the median rate of noncompliance is about 2.7%. "The variation in how state systems defined and categorized offenders made it difficult to estimate exactly how many sex offenders have truly gone missing," said researcher Jill Levenson, a psychology professor at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida, who conducted the study with Criminologist Andrew Harris from University of Massachusetts Lowell.

In December 2010, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported that there are a total of 728,435 registered sex offenders in the U.S. Using the 4% figure to estimate how many offenders living in the community might have whereabouts that are not verified, Levenson calculated the number to be somewhere between 25,000 and 30,000. She emphasized that those numbers include technical noncompliance as well as true absconding. "We found no evidence to support the frequently repeated statistic that 100,000 (or about 14%) of the nation's sex offenders are missing or unaccounted for." Source: Press Release of Jill S. Levenson, Ph.D

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For more information, contact Jill S. Levenson, Ph.D., Lynn University, Department of Psychology and Human Services, 3601 N. Military Trail, Boca Raton, FL 33431, 561-237-7925, jlevenson@lynn.edu, OR Andrew J. Harris, Ph.D., University of Massachusetts, Lowell, Department of Criminal Justice & Criminology, 870 Broadway Street, #225, Lowell, MA 01854, (978) 934-3978, Andrew_Harris@uml.edu.

Sex Offender Law Violates Rights, Puts Kids at Risk

3-16-2009 National:

Last Tuesday, a U.S. House subcommittee held a hearing to evaluate states' compliance with the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA). That law requires that states scrap their sex offender monitoring programs and create online public registries of sex offenders according to strict new federal standards. Instead of basing the length of monitoring on an assessment of the chances that the person will reoffend, states must apply a three-tier system based solely on the person's offense. The law covers all people convicted of crimes that involve a sexual act, including some minors and even covers people who had paid their debt to society decades ago. States that aren't in compliance with this law by July 29, 2009, could lose a substantial piece of federal aid for state law enforcement.

Hearing on: Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA): Barriers to Timely Compliance by States

Tuesday, 03/10/2009 - 2:00 P.M.
2141 Rayburn House Office Building
Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security
By Direction of the Chairman

SORNA will not prevent sexual victimization. In 2007, Human Rights Watch released a comprehensive report, No Easy Answers, which found that if anything, these laws are counterproductive. They make it harder for law enforcement to focus its resources on the truly dangerous individuals. And unrestricted public access to the registries results in ostracism and diminishes the likelihood of reintegration into society. Our increasingly scarce resources would be better spent on counseling for victims, education for the community, and treatment for the offenders.

We've gotten used to having few friends on this issue. We're okay with this. We didn't get into this business in order to make friends. With the exception of the criminal defense bar, there just aren't a whole lot of people who want to stand up for the rights of sex offenders. So we were pleasantly surprised to hear the testimony of Emma J. Devillier, Assistant Attorney General of Louisiana, and Detective Bob Shilling, who works in the Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Unit of the Seattle Police Department.

Bob Shilling was molested as a child, and has dedicated his life to ending sexual abuse. He testified that SORNA's three-tier system is making his job more difficult. He argued that it's more effective to base sex offender monitoring decisions on the actuarial risk-based system that attempting to calculate the chances that the person will reoffend and is currently used in over 20 states. Simply looking at the crime a person was convicted of tells you very little about the chance that he or she will reoffend. By adopting SORNA's rigid categories, states governments and police departments will divert valuable resources away from policing high- and moderate-risk sex offenders to people whose risk of reoffending is very low.

Emma Devillier is a front-line prosecutor of sexual offenders in Louisiana, and was in charge of implementing SORNA's requirements in the state. She also argued that SORNA will make it harder for her to do her job. Sex offenses can be very hard to try. Often there is no physical evidence and no witness besides the victim. If Devillier does not have the discretion to waive the sex offender registration requirements, her ability to get defendants to plead guilty will be compromised. She will have to bring more of these cases to trial, forcing the victims to publicly relive their personal trauma.

Knowing that laws like SORNA have done nothing to make us safer makes me suspect that many of the politicians who support them are thinking more about their next re-election campaign than actually protecting kids. I have a low tolerance for politicians who use kids to score cheap political points. It's not like there isn't anything else going on that Congress could be spending its time on instead of forcing counterproductive legislation down states' throats. ..Source.. by ACLU