{"id":1655,"date":"2007-11-20T05:25:28","date_gmt":"2007-11-20T10:25:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1655"},"modified":"2007-11-20T07:53:23","modified_gmt":"2007-11-20T12:53:23","slug":"many-sex-offenders-are-often-homeless-usatodaycom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1655","title":{"rendered":"The Wary Eye"},"content":{"rendered":"

My daughter and I went to a “Level Three Sex Offender Community Notification Meeting” last week in the neighborhood. It was an educational experience.<\/p>\n

While the thought that there’s a registered predator <\/em>living in the neighborhood is disquieting, I was surprised – and put slightly more at ease – to learn that about 90% of Level Three offenders offend against either people they know (friends, co-workers) or their children. No, that’s not “good”, but offenses against complete strangers are rare.<\/p>\n

Which isn’t to say I left the meeting feeling all warm and fuzzy. The offender – one of about ten in Saint Paul proper<\/a>, and one of two in my neighborhood, although in a fairly far reach of the neighborhood – has been released from prison for the third time since doing his original bid for a sexual assault in 1997. He keeps getting tossed back…<\/p>\n

…for failing to register.<\/p>\n

The good news? The Saint Paul Police has a really good record at finding and re-arresting these people. The bad news? “Really Good” isn’t “Perfect”, and behind the “win\/loss” stats, the “losses” sometimes add up to some pretty horrific crimes.<\/p>\n

All by way of noting that USATODAY has noted the same phenomenon nationwide:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\u2022Two-thirds of the states allow convicted sex offenders, including violent predators, to register as homeless or list a shelter or inexact location as long as they stay in touch with police.<\/p>\n

\u2022At least a dozen states list hundreds of sex offenders without specific addresses. California registered 2,716 as “transient.” Washington state listed 564 as homeless, but the number is probably much higher, says Carolyn Sanchez of the Washington State Patrol.<\/p>\n

\u2022Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maine and other states say the number of homeless sex offenders is rising. Landlords often won’t rent to them, and laws in dozens of states and hundreds of cities bar them from living near areas where kids play.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In fact, at least two of Saint Paul’s level three offenders live within two blocks of city playgrounds.<\/p>\n

\n

An exact count of convicted sex offenders who are homeless could not be done because not all state records are online. Some states do not list homeless as an address but allow shelters, post office boxes, highway mile markers and streets without house numbers.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In the 18 years since Jacob Wetterling’s kidnapping (a watershed event in this field, say the cops who spoke at the meeting last week), things have come a long way.<\/p>\n

But I’m watching my street even more <\/em>carefully these days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My daughter and I went to a “Level Three Sex Offender Community Notification Meeting” last week in the neighborhood. It was an educational experience. While the thought that there’s a registered predator living in the neighborhood is disquieting, I was surprised – and put slightly more at ease – to learn that about 90% of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime-and-punishment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1655\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}