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You Were Lucky To Have A Lake! There Were A Hundred And Fifty Of Us, Living In A Shoebox In The Middle Of The Road.

Apr 22, 2009
By .
Law

It's difficult to make me feel sympathy for convicted sex offenders, but Broward County Florida is doing its best.

Following the lead of other cities and counties, Broward County commissioners last week enacted tougher restrictions for unincorporated areas. Sex offenders won't be able to live within 2,500 feet of schools, parks, playgrounds or school bus stops.

It's difficult to find a location in Broward County that isn't within 2,500 feet (almost half a mile) of some school, park, playground, or bus stop.  So difficult that newly released offenders are now forced to live "beneath a roadway overpass, overlooking a canal, surrounded by broken glass and forced to sleep with a stick to beat back rats."

It seems Broward is attempting to duplicate the feat of Miami-Dade County, which has so restrictively "zoned" its population of offenders that all are forced to live beneath the Julia Tuttle Causeway Bridge: current population fifty-two men and one woman.

Of course the unstated purpose of these laws is to force newly released sex offenders to move to other parts of the state, where they will become Someone Else's Problem.  Since the Supreme Court has held in cases like Smith v. Doe that even the most draconian living restrictions on sex offenders can be classified as non-punitive, public safety measures, we have the odd situation where a de facto sentence of exile (the only alternative being to live underneath a bridge) is held to be entirely legal, even though a de jure sentence of exile, if imposed by a court, would be reversed as unconstitutional.

Last 5 posts by Patrick Non-White

11 Comments
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11 Comments

  1. Mhoram  •  Apr 22, 2009 @11:43 am

    In Georgia, a portion of the registration law that made living within 1000 feet of a school bus stop verboten was struck down in Federal Court (N.D. Ga.). I did not read the opinion, so I don't know what reasoning the judge used. I think the 11th circuit has the case but has not yet issued a decision.

    If the 11th Circuit, which includes Florida, upholds the N.D. Ga. decision, then it would seem that Broward County would have to revise their law as well.

  2. Jag  •  Apr 22, 2009 @2:20 pm

    As a Broward resident with small kids, I have no problem with this. The reality is that there is so much housing that plenty of places meet those restrictions including my own neighborhood.

  3. Ken  •  Apr 22, 2009 @3:01 pm

    Jag, are you there there is no bus stop, playground, park, or school within 2500 feet of your neigborhood?

  4. Jag  •  Apr 22, 2009 @3:30 pm

    Google maps to the rescue. Wow, 2500 feet is more than I thought it was! Yes, pretty much every single restricted area is within that range.

    I'm not a Mayo fan (the author), but he has a point here. My civil libertarian leanings and ultra conservative parenting are in conflict on this issue.

  5. Patrick  •  Apr 22, 2009 @3:51 pm

    That's the troublesome thing about these laws Jag. None of us wants a sex offender living in the neighborhood, but they have to live somewhere. Forbidding them from living within a half mile of anything relating to kids means banning them from all urban and suburban areas. The rural folks, to whom the rest are exiled, will retaliate with one or two mile restrictions.

    Mind you, it bothers me too. I wouldn't want a sex offender next door. I don't have kids but I have a wife and plenty of nieces, etc, and I like the neighbors' kids.

    But forcing people, even sex offenders, to live under bridges, or IN A VAN, BY THE RIVER!, bothers me just as much. We can't exile them to the Phantom Zone. Should we have mandatory life sentences? Consider the case of the woman above, who was given the label for non-contact lewdness with a minor, which sounds like flashing. Or people (as in Georgia, mentioned above), who've been convicted as teens for consensual sex with other teenagers. Should they be made to live under a bridge for the rest of their lives?

    Or should we just pass mandatory life sentences for anything labeled a sex offense, or amend the Constitution to require the death penalty for sex offenses, Supreme Court be damned?

    I'm reluctantly ok with registration and internet warnings. I'm not cool with exile or making people live under bridges.

  6. St  •  Apr 22, 2009 @8:15 pm

    I feel about this the way I feel about the death penalty. If they were only talking about actual child predators and I was sure they really were guilty I would vote for LITERAL exile without thinking twice.
    It just doesn't work that way.

  7. Scott Jacobs  •  Apr 23, 2009 @1:14 am

    @Mhoram:

    I believe the reason it was struck down was because bus stops often get moved around or added, and a house that is in complete compliance could suddenly find itself right across the street from one. The law gave no remedy for people who had done their best to comply with the law, and yet through no fault of their own could be found to be in violation.

  8. Mhoram  •  Apr 23, 2009 @5:20 am

    Scott:

    I believe you are correct in that.

    For what it's worth, I have defended dozens of child molestation cases (I'm a PD) and not a single one has involved a kid snatched from a bus stop. It is always mom's boyfriend, or the weird uncle or something like that.

    I have only defended one person on a repeat molestation charge. OTOH, I have defended hundreds of people on repeat theft charges. Thieves don't stop stealing.

    J. Tom Morgan, the long time DA (now retired) for DeKalb County, GA has always been a crusader for protecting children and prosecuting molestors and abusers. In the thousands of molestation cases his office prosecuted, there was never a single instance of a kid being molested at a school bus stop or snatched from a school bus stop.

    In the overwhelming majority of molestation cases, the perpetrator is family, or mom's boyfriend, or the stepfather, or a close family friend.

    I just don't worry that much about "sex offenders" that may be living near me (and there are two that I know of within 1/2 mile). Especially since a great many "sex offenders" are on the list for consensual sex as a teenager, sexual battery (pinching the Hooter's waitress' butt), public indecency (a homeless guy urinating in the park), or commiting ANY violent felony when kids are present (robbing a convenience store when the manager's kids are in the back).

    What I really want to know is how many burglars and car thieves are living in my area.

  9. Grandy  •  Apr 23, 2009 @5:45 am

    Patrick is right (and St)t; down in these parts (Jawja) we charge people as sex offenders for more or less any old thing. As such, you get people who very obviously shouldn't need to be registered as sex offenders being registered as sex offenders.

    Exile isn't solving anything in these cases.

  10. Charles  •  Apr 23, 2009 @9:11 am

    re: life sentences – SCOTUS is OK with indefinite 'civil' commitment for certain kinds of sexual predators (Kansas v. Crane, 2002) – but given the way public urination now gets defined as a sex crime in some states, these extreme zoning restrictions on all people convicted of 'sex crimes' can't be allowed to stand.

  11. jb  •  Jul 13, 2009 @12:35 pm

    Jag,
    2 things: First, kicking sex offenders when they're down will only raise recidivism rates. If there's zero chance of ever being accepted into society ever again, why resist the urge to rape? How could prison be any worse than living under a bridge? Second, making sex offenders live somewhere that's not an address makes it harder for parole officers, etc to check up on them. That makes it -less safe- than if they were in a house 2499 feet from a school.