A Catch-22 For Former Sex Offenders

By TChris, Section Crime Policy
Posted on Fri Aug 03, 2007 at 10:57:53 AM EST
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Here's a Catch-22 for you: Laws regulating where former sex offenders may live are so restrictive that, in urban areas, former offenders can find no housing (forcing them, in this famous example, to live under a bridge). But former sex offenders have to register their addresses, and the homeless have no address to register. So if they find a home, they're breaking the law by living too close to (for instance) a park or school; if they remain homeless, they're breaking the law by not registering.

It should be obvious that due process is violated when the government makes it impossible to obey the law and then punishes an individual for violating it, but that hasn't stopped Georgia from prosecuting Larry Moore for failing to register, or from seeking a life sentence against him, all because Moore was homeless.

At least 15 sex offenders have been arrested because of homelessness since the law took effect in July 2006, according to documents gathered through pretrial proceedings in a lawsuit brought by the Southern Center for Human Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union.

The suit argues that the law leaves offenders virtually nowhere to live. Sarah Geraghty, a lawyer with the human rights center, said she had scoured the state for homeless shelters that would accept male sex offenders and could find only one, which was full. A document from the Sex Offender Administration of the Georgia Department of Corrections, provided to a reporter by Ms. Geraghty, lists what it calls “offenders arrested for being homeless.”

Georgia's intent is to force sex offenders to live elsewhere.

As a tough-on-crime measure, the Georgia law was enacted easily, with supporters saying it would force sex offenders to leave the state.

To the extent that former sex offenders are a societal problem, the solution isn't to make them some other state's problem. More importantly, the solution can't be to punish people for being homeless, particularly when state laws make most housing unavailable.

The combination of sex offender registration laws and laws that restrict housing yields counterproductive results. People who can't live in a home legally and who can't register a nonexistent address are driven underground, where they can't take advantage of counseling or other support systems that help them not to reoffend. The laws don't prevent crime, other than by forcing some former offenders back into prison; they make crime more likely.

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A Catch-22 For Former Sex Offenders | 10 comments (10 topical)

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Poor Sex Offender (1.00 / 2) (#1)
by SWERN on Fri Aug 03, 2007 at 11:45:07 AM EST

I like this site a lot, but the sex offender non-sense has got to stop.

I am sorry Mr. Moore can't find a place to live, but I don't want him next door and doubt the TL staff wants him next door either.

If you can't do the time, don't do the crime. I feel zero sympathy for anyone that preys on children for sexual gratification.

Why no mention of his crime ?? Maybe it's because once his crime is acknowledged, no one will care the guy is going back to prison ??

For the record, you can not change someone's sexual preference; trying to rehabilitate a child molester is like trying to rehab a gay person.

Not for nothing.... (5.00 / 1) (#5)
by kdog on Fri Aug 03, 2007 at 12:50:11 PM EST

I wouldn't want Dick Cheney "living next door" either, but this is America damn it....you don't get to hand pick your neighbors. If they can pay the rent or buy the property they can live next door....or at least thats how it should be, imo.

I shouldn't be feeling any sympathy for sex offenders, you're right, but the authoritarians leave me no choice...I feel sorry for somebody who, upon release from prison, can't "legally" live anywhere.

[ Parent ]

This sex offense nonsense has to stop ... (5.00 / 1) (#10)
by gratefulhoo on Sun Sep 09, 2007 at 05:45:55 PM EST

Well, that's the only sensible point in that post. The nonsense of laws that are ineffective DO have to stop. I want my children protected, and I want the government and judiciary to support me in that effort. That will NOT happen if we spend precious resources chasing down minor offenders and other offenders who have done their time, completed probation and required services, and showwn that they are unlikely to reoffend.

... but I don't want him next door and doubt the TL staff wants him next door either.

I'd MUCH rather have him next door where he can be monitored (if necessary) and where he can work a stable job and participate in necessary services.

Apparently the author is unaware of the variety of offenses that can land one on the sex offender registry .... Young men who had sex with an underage girlfriend, people who decided their back yard was a fun place to be naked, someone who just couldn't find a bathroom, two teenage girls taking naked photos of each other, and many more offenses not so related to "preying on children". Obviouslhy, there are offenders of all types - many with serious offenses. However, the public is kidding themselves if they think that everybody with a "sex offender" label is a danger to the community.

The worse his crime, the more I want to know where he is. Not all offenders who become homeless are returned to prison. Many just disappear.

Huh? Again, not all so-called sex offenders actually have any deviant sexual interest. Of those who do, the vast majority STILL do not reoffend and many benefit from therapy. Spend some time researching Bureau of Justice statistics or reading the volumes of recent research on this topic instead of citin your opinion as fact.

[ Parent ]

okay (none / 0) (#7)
by manys on Fri Aug 03, 2007 at 01:06:47 PM EST

trying to rehabilitate a child molester is like trying to rehab a gay person

I don't expect a poster of such vitriol to actually follow up their own thread, but do you have a citation for this statement? Anything to back it up?

[ Parent ]

: social pariah (none / 0) (#9)
by Sumner on Fri Aug 03, 2007 at 02:57:35 PM EST

I think that the poster's analogy has more to do with the fact that immediately prior to Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003), Pat Robertson and others were working feverishly towards getting the (Biblical) death penalty for gays enacted into law.
The "ick factor" that was expressed is more probably largely a product of the perpetual psyops campaign which accounts for the over-the-top antics of NBC's "To Catch a Predator" incessant propaganda series. (Don't forget that G.E., NBC's parent company, has a history of involvement in destroying innocent children in numbers far beyond what is actually contemplated here.)
oops - that's unless you subscribe to the mythical scare numbers propagated by CNN's Nancy Grace, that thousands of kids are kidnapped and killed in this country, every single day; (the actual number is closer to 100 a year).
Inculcating adherence to such a system of fear mongering seems to largely depend upon the work and findings of Stanley Milgram, in order to persist in a "free society".

[ Parent ]

In Iowa a homeless person can register to vote (none / 0) (#2)
by JSN on Fri Aug 03, 2007 at 12:00:26 PM EST

by giving the street intersection closest to where they sleep as their address.

Mr. Moore was convicted in 1994 but they did not give his age
at the time of his conviction so I have to guess on the basis of his photograph and my guess was he was under 21 at that time he was convicted. The article did not say if he had subsequent arrests or convictions and if there were none I cannot understand how this works out to be a life sentence.

: "my guess was he was under 21 " (none / 0) (#6)
by sarcastic unnamed one on Fri Aug 03, 2007 at 12:57:04 PM EST

Guess again.
From the link:
The offender, Larry W. Moore Jr. of Augusta, was convicted in North Carolina in 1994 of indecent liberty with a child, a felony.
[snip]
In the case of the 40-year-old Mr. Moore

He was 27 in 1994.

[North Carolina] Indecent Liberties with a Child (adult perpetrator) [GS 14-202.1, Class F felony]
Indecent and lewd acts with a child under age 16 by a defendant at least 5 years older.
She (perhaps he?) was no older than 15.

[ Parent ]

damn decadent deviants (none / 0) (#3)
by Sumner on Fri Aug 03, 2007 at 12:33:38 PM EST

from R.P. McMurphy, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975 film):

She was fifteen years old, going on thirty-five, Doc, and she told me she was eighteen. She was very willing if ya know what I mean, I practically had to take to sewing my pants shut. Between you and me, uh, she might have been fifteen, but when you get that little red beaver right up there in front of you, I don't think it's crazy at all and I don't think you do either. No man alive could resist that, and that's why I got into jail to begin with. And now they're telling me I'm crazy over here because I don't sit there like a goddamn vegetable. Don't make a bit of sense to me. If that's what's being crazy is, then I'm senseless, out of it, gone-down-the-road, wacko. But no more, no less, that's it.

And make way for the Ubiqitous Nanny, aka the V-Chip 2.0, coming soon to be universally embedded virtually everywhere! How long before it phones home?

There are many indicators that Alberto R. Gonzales' principal fetish is the war on sex and all things ancillary and that the way things are now, is but only a start.

Lets not forget that "child pornography" and "underage" consensual sex, are being carved out as "violent crimes" so as to qualify as terrorism. (Never mind just the mere "sex offender" diaspora)

Isn't "It got to be where she was tripping me (none / 0) (#4)
by sarcastic unnamed one on Fri Aug 03, 2007 at 12:42:28 PM EST

and beating me to the floor." part of that scene? Or am I thinking of another movie...

[ Parent ]

: OK, that line is in the (none / 0) (#8)
by sarcastic unnamed one on Fri Aug 03, 2007 at 01:12:35 PM EST

book, maybe not the movie...

[ Parent ]