Sex offenders can be difficult for police and state parole agents to track, LAPD detective says [Updated]

Los Angeles police and state parole agents continue to face major challenges with keeping tabs on the thousands of sex offenders living in the city, an LAPD detective said Tuesday.

In a briefing to the L.A. Police Commission, Det. Diane Webb, who heads a unit responsible for tracking the whereabouts of sex offenders, said there are currently about 5,100 registered sex offenders living in the city. Of those, about 20% or around 1,020 people, are on parole for felony crimes and are prohibited by state law from living nearby to a school or park where children gather, Webb said. Some other offenders who avoided prison terms but are on probation for sex offenses also must adhere to the residency restrictions.

[Updated at 5:30 p.m.: An earlier version of this post reported incorrectly that the 20% figure represented both parolees and probationers. Parole is the release of a prisoner before the sentence has expired, on condition of good behavior; it is granted by a parole board. Probation is the suspension of sentence for a convicted person on condition of good behavior; it is imposed and revoked only by a judge.]

These residency restrictions have made finding housing for offenders -– a major task for parole agents -– a serious problem, because there are relatively few places that meet the law's requirements, Webb said.  As a result, she told the commission, the number of sex offenders who are homeless and transient has grown from about 30 in 2007, before the law went into effect, to about 260 today.

The strain of being homeless might lead to sex offenders to relapse, Webb suggested. "If you’re living under a bridge somewhere, you're not near your family support network, you’re not near the services you need. You're more unstable," she said in an interview.

Some of the city's sex-offender population has come to Los Angeles from surrounding cities that have passed additional sex-offender laws that make it next to impossible for offenders to find a place to live and push them to look elsewhere. Los Angeles does not have any additional laws on its books, making it a feasible destination.

Sex offenders who committed misdemeanor crimes are not subject to Megan’s Law, which implemented the residency restrictions in 2007, and they can live where they want. They still must register their home addresses with Webb’s team of officers.

Webb challenged a commonly held assumption that where an offender lives affects the chances the person will commit another sex crime. Research, Webb said, has shown there is no correlation between recidivism rates and where offenders live.

-- Joel Rubin

Comments

[Andy K]

I have recommendation, contact Sheriff Joe in Phoenix. Model a desert prison with his help,we have more desert, and rather than release them warehouse them in the desert. Much cheaper, and you will know where they are.

[dogrob1]

YOU HAVE MORE SEX OFFENDERS THAN DRUG OFFENDERS BECAUSE OF THE LIFE STYLE BEING LIVED...THE STATE IS A SEX OFFENCE IF YOU MUST KNOW...VIEW THE WHOLE PICTURE...THE WRITING ON THE WALLS...

[Letsgetreal]

What I like about this study is, it proves what experts and studies have proven all along. That is, The VAST majority of a repeat (first time)sex offender is very low and the vast majority is within the First 3 years. After that it drops off in a HUGE way. In other words, "The longer an individual remains free of another sex offense, the less chance that he/she has of re-offending.

States and the Federal government need to re-evaluate their draconian attitude!

RECIDIVISM OF PAROLED SEX OFFENDERS – A TEN (10) YEAR STUDY
Here are the highlights of Recidivism.

California Sex Offender Management Board (www.CASOMB.org June 2008

The following figures on a ten-year California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) follow-up study of the recidivism of 3,577
individuals convicted of a sex offense who were released from CDCR prisons in 1997 and followed until the end of 2007

The bottom line with this study is:

CUMULATIVE TOTAL OF ALL WHO HAD BEEN RETURNED TO
CUSTODY UNTIL 2007- A 10 YEAR PERIOD
3.21% were returned to custody with a new sex crime by the end of third year.

3.21 re-offended and the remaining seven years produced the remaining 0.17%

AFTER
PERCENT
INCREASE
YEAR 1 79 2.21% 2.21%
YEAR 2 26 0.73% 2.94%
YEAR 3 10 0.27% 3.21%
YEAR 5 3 0.09% 3.30%
YEAR 10 3 0.08% 3.38%
TOTAL 121 3.38% 3.38%

[shelomith_stow]

Simple solution: De-register the 94-95% of offenders on the registry that pose little to no risk to communities (Only 5.3% of sex offenders are considered the high risk and dangerous predators according to the Justice Policy Institute.) and law enforcement should then have no difficulty at all keeping up with the remainder who are the only ones that need to be kept up with to begin with.