WA- Everett landlord won't rent to more sex offenders

8-28-2008 Washington:

A man who houses sex offenders in Everett says he is "getting out of the business" after receiving threats, including one sent to the Herald in Everett on Friday. A man who houses sex offenders in rental properties in Everett says he is "getting out of the business" after receiving threats.

Mike Westford, who owns 11 houses in the Bayside neighborhood and whose business partner recently purchased a neglected mansion in the Riverside neighborhood, said in a letter this week to Everett officials and the state Department of Corrections (DOC) that he and his family had received repeated threats.

He said he would take no new referrals of convicted sex offenders from the DOC and blamed officials with the city and the DOC for not educating the community about the need for sex-offender housing and not coming to his defense.

Westford declined to comment Wednesday but said he would issue a statement Friday.

Westford's business partner, Alex Thole, said he and Westford would continue to rent to their current tenants but would not accept any new placements from the DOC.

"We've been vilified, threatened and had our characters attacked. We're not going to take it anymore," Thole said.

Counties burdened with sex offenders

3-26-2007 Alabama:

MONTGOMERY | Officials in counties with state prisons say they are being burdened by an unexpected side effect of the Community Notification Act, which requires sex offenders to give authorities a valid address 45 days before their sentence ends.

Under the act, failing to give a residential address that isn’t at least 2,000 feet away from a school or childcare facility is a Class C felony. And offenders whose addresses don’t comply must remain jailed in the county where the violation occurred until they have a valid address.

That usually means offenders -- and their costs -- are transferred to county jails, said Sonny Brasfield, assistant executive director for the Association of County Commissions of Alabama.

“They’re released from the state prison and as they walk into the parking lot, a sheriff’s car is already there to pick them up and take them straight to the jail," he said. “The law makes no provision for them to come back and say 'Sorry, I didn’t know my address was bad.’"

“They’re not going back to inmates to say this address doesn’t work -- there’s not a way for the inmate to correct his problem," Brasfield said.

County officials say there needs to be some recourse for inmates who are homeless or unknowingly give an address that has become invalid while they were incarcerated. Inmates who are homeless are considered violators and charged with felonies because they don’t have a valid address to give.

Ron Smith, chairman of the Bullock County Commission, said so far seven inmates have been taken to the county’s jail under the act and the same has happened in St. Clair and Barbour counties, which are home to other state prisons.

Smith said something needs to be done soon to change the act.

“I think that’s unconstitutional because what are we holding them on? Suppose they never find a good address?" Smith said. “Suppose he was staying with his mother and God forbid his mother died? Now he doesn’t have a place to go. We get no money for housing the state inmates and for a poor county like us, we’re going to suffer."

Inmates taken to the county jails are kept there until they have a date to go before a grand jury on the felony charge.

Bullock County Sheriff Raymond Rogers said jail officials worked with family members and community assistance programs to get valid housing arrangements for four of the seven sex offenders who have been affected by the act at his jail. The remaining three are homeless and are still in the Bullock County Jail, he said.

“The longest one I ever kept in my jail was for four months," Rogers said. “Their loved ones don’t want them. I have to keep calling the county they live in trying to help them find a place. It’s kind of like the jail is turning into a halfway house and we don’t have the people or the money for that."

Prisons Commissioner Richard Allen said the corrections department is aware of the problem and he’s offered to keep the sex offenders in the state prisons while they wait for their grand jury appearance.

But Attorney General Troy King, who pushed hard for passage of the act last year, said a better idea is to force all sex offenders to serve their full sentences instead of giving them less time for good behavior and parole.

King acknowledged the problem would still exist once the offenders served their full sentence, but said it would give them more time to find a valid address. He said the cost of keeping them in county jails is worth it to keep sex offenders off the streets longer.

Serving the full sentence merely stalls the problem until a later date, when even then they will be jailed because no one will tell them the address is bad. This speaks of a conspiracy of lawmakers and law enforcement to drain the public coffers. It also smacks of one constitutional violation on another. eAdvocate

“We put people in prisons to punish them. I think most people would say if I can keep a predator away from my children, away from hurting my grandchildren by paying to keep them in prison, I’ll pay to keep them in prison," he said. “Yes, we’re spending (taxpayer) money, but I don’t think anybody would say that’s not a good investment."

Allen said plans are already in place to expand programs that help inmates transition from prison to life outside the corrections system. Part of the program will be assisting inmates with housing and that will help them avoid giving addresses that aren’t in compliance, he said.

Bullock County attorney Johnny Waters said he’s eager to see what will be done to resolve the problem.

“You may have a man who’s been in prison for 15, 16 years on a rape charge. Now his family’s disowned him, momma and daddy says he can’t live with us, and he’s got no other family. He doesn’t even hardly have bus fare to get home," Waters said. “What does somebody in that scenario do? Nobody can answer that question for me. He’s basically thrown to the wind.

“There’s pros and cons to the law. Mainly it’s to keep people protected and I can understand that side of it. But on the other side you’ve got a person trying to do right. Somewhere there’s got to be a better answer." ..more.. by Desiree Hunter

More walls await freed predators

1-7-2007 Oregon:
It's hard to pity a man who once molested three mentally disabled adults in his care, just because years after leaving prison he's still searching for a permanent place to call home.

The man, who was released in 2004, has applied to dozens of apartments and been rejected. The only places that will rent to him are run-down apartments in areas of town where prostitutes make a living and drug addicts get their fix. A former alcoholic and drug user himself, he knows he shouldn't live there.

The 54-year-old man's problem poses a troubling question: What does society do with a class of people whose crimes are so repugnant, few are willing to give them a chance?

A public outraged by cases of sexual predators repeating their crimes has insisted on a blizzard of laws restricting where they can live and what they can do when they leave prison. Yet some of those laws have had an unintended consequence.

Officials charged with supervising the rehabilitation of thousands of sex offenders statewide say they are finding it increasingly difficult to get jobs, inpatient drug treatment and, most of all, housing. Parole and probation officers say if a sex offender can't find a place to live, it's tough to make sure he's getting treatment and staying away from temptation.

"We're not taking their side, saying 'Oh, poor them,' " said Scott Taylor, community corrections chief for the Oregon Department of Corrections. "We don't want them to abandon all hope of being able to succeed."

A debate is growing over which measures help -- and which hinder -- the rehabilitation of sex offenders.

In Oregon, laws in recent years have either allowed or required public agencies to post the home addresses, photos, birth dates and license plates of every predatory sex offender. There are 205 predatory sex offenders on Multnomah County's Web site. About 755 of the 13,425 registered sex offenders in Oregon are on the Oregon State Police predatory sex offender Web site.

State laws prohibit sex offenders from sharing homes, from living within three miles of their victims or near schools, although the law doesn't define "near." The Portland City Council may vote soon on banning convicted child predators from public swimming pools and playgrounds.

Recent high-profile crimes such as the 2005 rape and slaying of a 9-year-old Florida girl -- allegedly by a convicted sex offender living nearby -- have prompted tougher legislation nationwide.

California and Georgia created zones around schools, bus stops and parks where sex offenders aren't allowed to reside. Ohio and Missouri lawmakers approved lifetime tracking of some sex offenders with GPS devices. And some towns in the Northeast essentially banned sex offenders from living there at all. Many of these measures are being challenged in the courts.

Offenders tell of troubles

A dozen sex offenders interviewed by The Oregonian described the challenges they faced finding a place to live. Because they fear harassment or injury, The Oregonian agreed not to use their names. Their accounts were corroborated by their parole and probation officers.
One 68-year-old man spent a few thousand dollars fixing up a rental house and installing new carpet before neighbors told authorities the house was close to a school for pregnant teens and he was forced to move. When he finally found a new place, a neighbor posted signs in front of the house announcing his presence even though Multnomah County officials already notified his neighbors.

Another man in his 20s, who is mentally disabled, lived in a motor home parked off Southeast Powell Boulevard for weeks. No motor home park in the area would have him because of his sex offender status; he had been caught printing child pornography at a public library.

A 37-year-old man, convicted of sodomizing and sexually abusing two young boys when he was a teenager, says managers of ramshackle apartments are the only ones who'll rent to him -- even two decades after his crimes.

Public disgust, he says, has increased each year.

Since Multnomah County's Web site started posting his name, photo, license plate and address last year, he's received a death threat and had his tires slashed.

"I called the police, and the cop who came out said, 'What do you want me to do?' " said the offender. "And he was right, there was nothing he could do."

In July, residents of Sheridan in Yamhill County drove out a halfway house for five sex offenders looking for permanent homes and jobs. The house closed in less than a month after community protests.

"When I hear something like that, I say, 'OK, then where do they go?' " said Bobby James, a Multnomah County corrections counselor.

Staying employed difficult

Studies show that sex offenders who hold down a job and maintain a stable home have the greatest chance of complying with the terms of their court-ordered supervision.

In a Florida survey of 183 sex offenders, 27 percent said they lost a job after the community was notified about their criminal past. About 20 percent said they had to move when their landlords found out about their sex crimes, and 15 percent said they were forced to pack up when neighbors found out. One out of three reported being harassed or threatened by neighbors.

Taylor, the head of Oregon community corrections, said that sex offenders have a markedly lower re-offense rate than the general criminal population. State figures show that three years after sex offenders are released from prison, about 5 percent to 6 percent are re-convicted of felony sex crimes, although 11 percent to 12 percent are convicted of other criminal felonies.

That's compared with about 30 percent of car thieves, drug dealers and other criminals who are re-convicted after three years.

The exception, Taylor notes, is high-risk sex offenders, such as pedophiles who victimized boys and offenders who raped women. Although it may take some years, some studies show, upward of 40 percent to 50 percent reoffend, and officials monitor and treat this group more intensely.

Of the 205 predatory sex offenders under supervision in Multnomah County, 14 are listed as homeless. Approximately 28 sex offenders are listed as homeless countywide. Transient sex offenders must register their addresses, as required by law, but the addresses often are no more specific than "the corner of Fifth and Main" or "underneath the west side of the Burnside Bridge."

"It's much safer to have parole officers know where these people are -- rather than have them randomly roaming out there in the community," said Ed Blackburn, a director at Central City Concern. The nonprofit started renting about 30 of its 1,500 available housing units to sex offenders roughly a decade ago.

Officials worry that homeless offenders are more likely to ignore treatment, polygraph tests and regular check-ins with authorities. Parole officer Ian Clanton said one of the offenders he monitors stopped showing up for his weekly appointments as he accumulated more bedding and possessions.

"They don't want to leave their stuff," Clanton said. "They don't want to lose it." Officials say some sex offenders are homeless by choice. For others, they just couldn't get a break.

"Part of the problem is the public doesn't make a distinction between people who are trying and people who are not -- it's just so easy to say no," said Sarah Frost, a Multnomah County parole officer who supervises the 54-year-old offender who molested the three mentally disabled adults in his care.

Frost says that despite his past, he's one of the ones trying to rebuild their lives. ..more.. by AIMEE GREEN