Minnesota Residency Restrictions For Sex Offenders
While sex offenders face no statewide residency restrictions after they are released, individual cities and towns may apply restrictions. How effective they are in promoting safety is questionable.
December 09, 2011 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Minnesota's sex offender law, more technically "predatory offenders," does not impose formal restrictions on where sex offenders may live after their release.
Instead, if the predatory offender is classified as a "risk level III" (commonly referred to as a level III offender), their "end-of-confinement review committee" determines what, if any, restrictions may accompany their release.
The statute notes the agency should consider the proximity of level III offenders to schools and other level III offenders, but only suggests the agency should "mitigate" the concentration of offenders and schools.
Minnesota permits local jurisdictions, cities and towns, to specifically regulate where released offenders can live. These laws can make it difficult for released offenders to find places to live, which in turn, affect where they can work and otherwise be reintegrated into the broader community.
Some proponents of the laws note that their primary goal is to protect children from sexually violent predators, and that they are not concerned by the difficulties sex offenders may have finding some place to live.
But Does It Work?
While promoters of strict residency restrictions argue their chief concern is child safety, there is little evidence that recidivism is caused by proximity to schools, parks, playground and day care centers.
A number of recent studies have examined effects of residency restrictions on housing availability for sex offenders. The studies tend to indicate that offenders are forced out of urban areas and the lack of housing may lead to an increase of "transience and homelessness."
Minnesota Study
A 2008 study looked at 224 sex offender cases in Minnesota to see if residency restrictions had a relationship to the offense. The study used the following criteria:
- "Offenders had to establish direct contact with the victims rather than gaining access to a victim through a relationship with another person (girlfriend, fiancee, wife, acquaintance);
- Contact with the victim had to occur within at least one mile of the offender's residence at the time of offense;
- The location of the initial contact with a victim had to have been near a school, park, daycare center, or other prohibited area; and
- The victim had to have been under 18 years of age when the occurred."
The results of the study indicated that not one of 224 cases they examined would have been prevented by restrictions on where the offender may have lived.
The vast majority (85 percent) of offenses occurred in a residence, either the victims or the perpetrators. 79 percent already knew the victim. 48 percent of the incidents took place a half-mile from the offender's residence and almost ten percent occurred more than 20 miles away.
Nowhere To Live
Some areas make it particularly difficult for released offenders. In New Jersey, some municipalities make it virtually impossible for a released offender to live anywhere. In one example, a township prohibits offenders from living within 2,500 feet of a school, park, day care center, playground, and approved bus stops.
When one overlies that restriction on the city map, it leaves practically no residence where an offender could live. And this is likely the result the municipality intends. But studies have shown that if offenders are forced into homelessness, they become more difficult for law enforcement to track.
Constitutional?
The punishment of sex offenders is rife with constitutional issues. Civil commitment can be a de facto life sentence. When an offender is released, they have met their legislatively defined punishment (or rehabilitation), and should be accepted back in to the community as having "done their time."
The problem develops when government entities attempt to continue the punishment under the guise of mere "regulation."
When the restrictions on where one live can make it virtually impossible to find housing in a city, at what point does that cross the line into illegal punishment.
Ohio Supreme Court Declares State Law Unconstitutional
The Ohio Supreme Court found that line when it recently declared parts of the Ohio sex offender law unconstitutional, as exceeding permissible limits by requiring the released offender (convicted under a prior version of the law) to constantly update law enforcement.
De Facto Life Sentences?
As large a problem as residency restrictions are, for many offenders, it may never become an issue, as they may never be released.
In fact, states like Minnesota have almost created a system like that using the "civil commitment." The Minnesota Legislative Auditor reported, "No sex offender has been discharged from Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP) since it was created in 1994." So, in other words, it is a life sentence.
In a time of ever more constrained state budgets, a permanent, ever growing, group of sex offenders (the same report notes each civil commitment costs $120,000, or three times the cost of other inmates.) poses an ever-rising challenge to the budgets of Department of Corrections and the State.
A Broken System That Doesn't Work
Nonetheless, if all sex offenses are not to become life sentences, we need a system to rehabilitate and reintegrate offenders back into society. The available studies all tend to point to the conclusion that the current system really doesn't keep children safe.
It consumes large quantities of resources dealing with limited aspects of the problem (recidivism) and does little to prevent initial occurrences of abuse.
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