home

Florida Housing Sex Offenders Under a Bridge

By Jeralyn, Section Crime Policy
Posted on Thu Apr 05, 2007 at 06:14:34 PM EST
Tags: sex offenders (all tags)
Share This: Digg! StumbleUpon del.icio.us reddit reddit

Unbelievable. When will this insanity stop?

The Florida Department of Corrections says there are fewer and fewer places in Miami-Dade County where sex offenders can live because the county has some of the strongest restrictions against this kind of criminal in the country.

Florida's solution: house the convicted felons under a bridge that forms one part of the causeway. The Julia Tuttle Causeway, which links Miami to Miami Beach, offers no running water, no electricity and little protection from nasty weather. It's not an ideal solution, Department of Corrections Officials told CNN, but at least the state knows where the sex offenders are.

Then there's the rats and rodents that swarm over them.

With the roar of cars passing overhead, convicted sex offender Kevin Morales sleeps in a chair to keep the rats off him.

"The rodents come up next to you, you could be sleeping the whole night and they could be nibbling on you," he said.

Morales has been homeless and living under the causeway for about three weeks. He works, has a car and had a rented apartment but was forced to move after the Department of Corrections said a swimming pool in his building put him too close to children.

Florida, you may remember, is the state that enacted a law banning sex offenders from hurricane shelters. In the event of a hurricane, they are to report to prison. As an ACLU official put it:

The more steps you take to isolate and ostracize them ... there are very few options for them to live their lives and not reoffend."

< Presidential Sweepstakes: Let's Not Shoot Ourselves in the Face; Stop the Iraq Debacle | Giuliani Backtracks on Publicly Funded Abortions >

  • The Online Magazine with Liberal coverage of crime-related political and injustice news

  • Contribute To TalkLeft


    • Display: Sort:
    Florida Housing Sex Offenders Under a Bridge | 4 comments (4 topical)

    Readers Must Login or Create an Account to Comment