8-29-15 National:
Take kids off the sex-offender registries.
At age 10, Maya R. did something that would disturb just about anyone: “Me and my step-brothers, who were ages 8 and 5, ‘flashed’ each other and play-acted sex while fully clothed,” she told Human Rights Watch researcher Nicole Pittman. After copping to the incident in juvenile court, Maya’s punishment was an 18-month sentence in a detention center, mandatory counseling, and a quarter-century of registration as a sex offender.
Maya’s mistake had significant consequences for her life. With her name on a sex-offender registry, she faced harassment in college and ultimately dropped out. Facing huge barriers to finding housing, she spent 90 days in a homeless shelter. She fell into a deep depression. Despite a clean adult record and a life that eventually got on the right track—she did missionary work, married, and now has a child of her own—Maya can’t escape the “sex offender” label. She and thousands of others like her continue to be punished for mistakes they made as children.
In April, prosecutors in Archbold, Ohio, brought charges that could have meant mandatory registration for high-school students caught exchanging nude “selfies.” An Indiana judge, likewise, has sentenced two teenage boys to lifetime sex-offender registration for having sex with teenage girls they met online. In some states, even trivial offenses like public urination and streaking can land children on registries.
Currently, 40 states have sex-offender registration for those convicted in juvenile court. This ought to trouble us, not least because it undermines the usefulness of the registries. It’s a policy that needs to change at both the federal and the state levels.
The juvenile justice system is predicated on a trade-off. Juvenile defendants have fewer rights, but the system is supposed to expend greater effort at rehabilitation. There are no jury trials in juvenile courts. Records are typically confidential, and rules of evidence are looser. As counterbalance, juveniles serve shorter sentences and are sent less frequently to secure facilities. Sanctions are, at least in theory, levied in the “best interests” of those convicted, rather than meted out as punishment.
Unlike adult criminal records, which normally follow offenders for life, juvenile records can be sealed at age 18 (the procedure is automatic in some states). Even unsealed juvenile court convictions (which generally aren’t on the public Internet) typically don’t affect offenders’ ability to vote, live where they choose, receive most government benefits, get professional licenses, and hold public office. When juveniles commit particularly atrocious crimes, like murder or violent rape, every state offers a procedure that would permit them to be tried and sentenced as adults.
Sex-offender registries impose some of the most severe restrictions that face anyone convicted of a criminal offense. In addition to public humiliation, made more intense in the Internet age, those required to register as sex offenders often are forbidden from living close to schools and day-care centers, pushing many far out into the country or even into homelessness (and homeless shelters turn many away). Sex offenders can be denied professional licenses and may be subject to near-constant police surveillance. Since most juveniles on sex-offender registries have victimized other juveniles, some also face restrictions intended for adult pedophiles, and can be excluded from living with their own siblings and even, as they get older, with their own children. Even those who do manage to find jobs and places to live will generally see much lower wages and find healthy adult relationships much harder to establish.
Registry laws were created to deal with the problems of recidivist pedophiles and serial rapists. They are a harsh response, but public sentiment holds they are just. And they are certainly popular, as evidenced by near-unanimous votes to create them in state after state. It’s less obvious how society benefits from imposing such long-lasting sanctions in response to mistakes made by children. There’s little evidence that youthful sex offenders remain a public danger. The largest meta-analysis shows that only about 7 percent of youthful sex offenders are ever convicted of another offense. Some studies have found reoffense rates as low as 1 percent. By comparison, 40 percent of adults convicted of serious crimes reoffend.
Juveniles convicted of sex offenses clutter the registries. They account for as much as 25 percent of the rolls. Monitoring these individuals for decades wastes resources that law enforcement and social workers otherwise could use more effectively to target those who pose real dangers to society. (And where young offenders do appear to pose such truly significant risks, prosecutors can avail themselves of the opportunity to file adult charges.)
States are encouraged to include juveniles in their registries by the federal Adam Walsh Act, which ties federal funding to state and local enforcement to the degree to which state registries comply with the law’s classification system for sex offenders. Not only should these incentives be eliminated, but Congress should consider withholding some grant funds from states that continue to list those adjudicated in juvenile court on the registries.
At the least, many states should rejigger their registry laws. Teenagers who have sexual relationships or exchange nude “selfies” with other teenagers may need counseling, punishments from their parents, and admonitions from other adults. But they shouldn’t routinely face criminal sanctions for “statutory rape” or “child pornography.”
Pre-teens like Maya R. who act out sexually may well have serious problems that require more extensive intervention. But absent strong evidence that they’re likely to reoffend, they shouldn’t face lifetime sanctions more severe than those levied on juveniles who commit crimes like armed robbery and auto theft. Like other juvenile offenders’, their records should be eligible to be sealed, and they certainly shouldn’t spend long periods on sex-offender registries.
Including children on sex-offender registries is a grave injustice that does little good and much harm. Congress and state legislatures need to undo the damage they have done. ..Source.. by ELI LEHRER
August 29, 2015
A Senseless Policy
August 10, 2015
The Crimes of Children
The juvenile justice system was designed to “hide youthful errors from the full gaze of the public.” But the extra penalties attached to these sentences have ruined many lives.
Round Rock High School, just north of Austin in the Texas Hill Country, sprawls over 88 acres. It feels like a small liberal-arts college: There is a junior R.O.T.C. Training center. There are basketball courts, a gymnastics facility, a swimming pool, a football field, soccer fields, and a baseball diamond that, along its outfield fence, bears a faded sign commemorating the school’s 1997 state championship victory.
In January 2007, the principal called 17-year-old Jean Karlo Ponzanelli out of first-period history class and down to the office to join a waiting detective who took him to the local station for questioning. A girl he knew had run away from home and the police were curious about her whereabouts. They also suspected domestic abuse. (The girl declined a request for an interview, so her name has been withheld to protect her privacy.)
Ponzanelli had known this girl since the last day of 2005, when he attended a New Year’s Party at her home. “We go to the same high school,” he remembers her telling him in the kitchen.
“You’re in high school?” Ponzanelli asked.
Another partygoer asked her how old she was. “I’m 15,” she said.
After that, Ponzanelli and the girl drifted in the same suburban mix. He never ran into her in the hallways, but he’d often see her hanging out with his friends in the high-school parking lot at the end of the day. On occasion, she would call him and give a location and he would drive over. “Sometimes she had bruises on her face,” Ponzanelli said.
Ponzanelli said he couldn’t help the detective with her whereabouts that day. He hadn’t heard from the girl for some time. In the course of their meandering conversation, though, the Round Rock Police Department gathered another piece of information: Ponzanelli and the girl had had sex three times. On the first two occasions, the officer calculated, Ponzanelli had been 16 and she’d been 13. In Texas, sex with a minor younger than 14 is a first-degree felony.
A week later, when Ponzanelli walked out of the same first-period history class, he says waiting police officers cuffed him, bent him over the hood of their car, searched his backpack, loaded him into the back seat, and drove off to the county jail in Georgetown 10 miles north. The felony complaint, signed on January 19, 2007, states that the defendant “confessed to knowing the victim was 13 years old and still having sex with her anyway.”
Although the girl’s mother called for leniency, Ponzanelli was charged with aggravated sexual assault. When the state offered him the lesser charge of attempted sexual assault, he accepted the plea deal. But the crime was still a third-degree felony, and as a result, it came with mandatory jail time. He received six months in Williamson County Jail and 10 years of probation.
Ponzanelli started serving his time in an open room known as “the tank,” which contained four bunk beds, seven roommates, and a small patch of floor space. He was later removed to a single cell where he was confined all day save one hour in which he could exercise, shower, and make a phone call. He had no interaction with other inmates. He spent his 18th birthday, his high-school prom night, and his graduation day in that cell. He never received a diploma.
This was Ponzanelli’s first arrest. His second happened less than a year after his release on July 20, 2007, after he had rejoined the Round Rock community as a publicly registered sex offender. The label would apply for 10 years, though the clock would only start ticking after he finished probation. Registration restricted him from any form of contact with children younger than 17, including by phone or email. He could not live in a house with an Internet connection, nor, according to orders of community supervision, could he go within 1,000 feet of parks, schools, daycare centers, pools, playgrounds, “or other places where minor children younger than 17 congregate without specific approval of the Court.”
The apartment where Ponzanelli lived with his mother was near a public pool. The Court did not give specific approval for Ponzanelli to remain there. But he had nowhere else to go and no money of his own, so he stayed. He said the police would show up on his doorstep and question his mother while he hid in his room. “My mom was all scared,” Ponzanelli said. He knew that, in time, he would be caught and re-incarcerated for violating his probation. He made it through the closing of summer and all of autumn. He made it partway through winter, into the early months of 2008.
One evening in late February of 2008, Ponzanelli was skateboarding with a friend in the parking lot of an apartment complex. Before his incarceration, Ponzanelli had skated competitively and earned a sponsorship from a skate store in the neighboring town of Leander. He had received free gear from Vans and commuted to work by skateboard through the dystopian interchanges of suburban Texas.
“Don’t look now,” Ponzanelli’s friend told him as they warmed up. “There’s an undercover cop car across the street.”
Ponzanelli didn’t look, but a few minutes later a voice commanded him to get off his skateboard and turn around. Ponzanelli turned to see two policemen advancing with guns drawn. “I picked up my board and just kind of stood there,” he said. They arrested him for failing to comply with the sex-offender registration requirements.
Ponzanelli was sent to a state prison in Huntsville, Texas, where he spent his 19th, 20th, and 21st birthdays. During that time, his file surfaced before U.S. Immigrations Customs and Enforcement. To their surprise—and, Ponzanelli says, to his own—he had never been a citizen of the United States: His mother, a Mexican citizen, had brought him across the border illegally when he was an infant. Deportation proceedings began.
Registration as a sex offender and deportation are both collateral consequences—statutory penalties that attach to charges after a sentence is served. There’s an identifiable logic to some of these consequences: Convicted of laundering money? Then you’re barred from the financial industry, at least temporarily. Caught molesting children? Then you can’t work in a daycare. Others, like deportation or felony disenfranchisement, are more purely punitive. (In Florida, Kentucky, and Virginia, more than one out every five African Americans lacks the right to vote because of this penalty.) Some of these sanctions don’t seem to match the crime at all: Busted on drug possession? Your barbershop license can be revoked.
Judges have no discretion over collateral consequences, and lawyers rarely grasp their extent. A recent project by the American Bar Association, the first of its kind, compiled every consequence in every state and found more than 40,000 on the books.
The U.S. juvenile courts split off from adult courts to protect against precisely this kind of scarlet lettering. A band of social reformers at the turn of the 20th century believed the stigma of incarceration affects children differently than adults. These reformers argued for courts that shielded children’s identities from the public and walled their cases off from corrosive media coverage; they argued that kids occupy an unusual behavioral chrysalis and urged sentencing that allowed them to learn from their mistakes. The juvenile justice system, opined the Supreme Court of Arizona in 1942, ought to “hide youthful errors from the full gaze of the public and bury them in the graveyard of the forgotten past.”
Decades of research on the peculiarities of adolescence reinforce this approach. Teenagers are rebellious, reckless, shortsighted, and tragically susceptible to peer pressure. They are impetuous and poor judges of many things that adults consider worthy of measured judgment. Eighty to 90 percent of teenage boys acknowledge, in anonymous surveys, having committed a delinquent act serious enough to result in incarceration. In short, kids, like the mentally ill, strain the norms of legal culpability.
Slowly and unevenly, the Supreme Court is shaping this science into precedent. In 2005, the Court forbade capital punishment for those under 18. It prohibited life without parole for juvenile non-homicides in 2010, and, in 2012, deemed it unconstitutional for anyone under 18 to serve a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole.
But while the judicial treatment of youth has gained nuance, a few particularly severe collateral consequences persist, undermining the historical ideal that what happens in juvenile court stays in juvenile court. The Adam Walsh Act of 2006, for instance, demands that state sex-offender registries include juveniles who are at least 14-years-old when they commit certain crimes. (Juvenile sex offenses, which account for about a quarter of all sex offenses in the United States, can range from teen sexting to the violent molestation of a young child.)
The inclusion of juveniles on registries was largely instigated by the congressional testimony of Amie Zyla, who was molested at the age of 8 by a 14-year-old family friend. The friend was sent to juvenile detention, released, and a decade later rearrested for the sexual assault of multiple children. “The simple truth is that juvenile sex offenders turn into adult predators,” Zyla testified.
Twenty-seven states currently publicize their juvenile registries. Texas, which has almost 70,000 registered sex offenders, is one of these, and stands out as particularly severe in its treatment of youth. Children as young as 10 can be placed on its registry. The state also imposes what’s known as “Condition X” on many offenders. This makes supervision requirements tighter, disallowing volunteer work without the permission of a parole officer, for instance, or requiring submitting to a search—of a person, motor vehicle, or house—at any time without a warrant.
Other severe collateral consequences include eviction from public housing and deportation. When juvenile defendants live in government-subsidized apartments, their arrests or misbehavior can swallow entire families in eviction proceedings. This can happen even before a court declares innocence or guilt. And for a child raised, but not born, in the United States, a crime as light as shoplifting can result in deportation to a country in which he has no immediate family and no way to communicate.
Such punishments are “the gift that keeps on giving,” said Lisa Thurau, the executive director of the Boston-based policy and training organization Strategies for Youth. “If you really wanted to marginalize people, you couldn’t do a much better job than our system of juvenile collateral consequences.”
When Ponzanelli got out of jail the first time, he had to attend a therapy program in Georgetown. It was hosted by the Center for Cognitive Education, a limited-liability corporation that runs court-ordered programs in five Texas cities. “Sex offenders hurt people,” Ponzanelli’s treatment manual began. “Victims deserve to know that the offender accepts responsibility for his actions and is aware of the pain and suffering he caused.” The course revolved around questions that forced introspection, questions meant to help sex offenders grapple with their illness. “How often do you masturbate?” the manual asked. “How old were you when your sexual problems began?” “List at least three thinking errors that encouraged your sexually deviant behavior.”
Such programs are based on the work of Robert Longo, who began treating adolescent sex offenders during the 1980s. Longo has since declared that much of what he thought about juvenile offenders was wrong: According to The New York Times, he now says that forcing offenders to dwell on their sexual fantasies and behaviors may “reinforce their self-image as ‘sex offenders’ with bad, deviant traits rather than as kids needing lessons in setting boundaries and creating better relationships.”
Still, the approach Longo helped develop three decades ago remains standard. Ponzanelli says he attended his therapy sessions sporadically. “They treated me like I had a child problem,” he complained. His probation officer made clear that she was aware of his violations—the irregular attendance at therapy, his continued residence at home near the public pool.
In all, Ponzanelli’s registration placed him under 37 “conditions of community supervision.” “The probation requirements are virtually impossible to abide,” said Jason Szanyi, a staff attorney at the Center for Children’s Law and Policy. These restrictions can appear negligible in isolation—community service requirements, notification about change of address or employment—but following all of them together is complicated and time-intensive, Szanyi explains. It’s also expensive, as offenders must pay for all of their court-mandated therapy sessions and drug tests. Ponzanelli recalls laying out $200 or $300 every week while working part-time at Schlotzky’s fixing deli sandwiches. “These laws are setting kids up for failure,” said Szanyi.
The effectiveness of the public registry is also hotly debated. Justice Department statistics show that 93 percent of sexually abused children are victimized by family members or acquaintances. Public registration, which was designed to signal when predatory strangers have finished serving their sentences and are living nearby, doesn’t protect against these kinds of assaults. And as a class of crimes, sex offenses carry some of the lowest levels of recidivism. Many studies find rates between 4 and 10 percent. (The average recidivism rate across all crimes is 68 percent within three years.) Research by criminologist and Berkeley law professor Franklin Zimring found that juveniles with five or more non-sex-related arrests on their record are twice as likely to be arrested for sex crimes in adulthood as juveniles who did commit sex offenses but had fewer than five total arrests for any crime. The takeaway: If the juvenile registry is designed to identify and quarantine future sex offenders, then the quantity of crimes committed may be a better predictor than the substance of those crimes.
“The current setup is derived from the notion that past is prologue,” said Thurau of Strategies for Youth. “But there has been no developmental analysis going into this assumption. In the case of juveniles, we are dealing with a particular stage.”
Responding to this lack of analysis, the National Research Council released a comprehensive 2013 report entitled Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach. The 400-page synthesis foregrounds an adolescent “imbalance among developing brain systems.” The pleasure-seeking chunks of gray matter develop first; the systems that support self-control come second.
“Of course we need to protect public safety,” said Edward Mulvey, the director of the law and psychiatry program at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and a committee member on the NRC report. But, he notes, crimes committed by juveniles are weak signals of anything to come. Their brains are “highly plastic,” and harsh punishment stifles the rehabilitative ambitions upon which the juvenile justice system is built.
“What kids are paying with in terms of time—from the years 16 to 23—is not the same currency as between 27 and 34,” continued Mulvey. “We have to be very careful about spending kids’ developmental currency. We all have one shot at development and don’t want to impede that. We don’t want to put weights around children’s ankles and tell them to run 100 yards. We don’t want to stop them from being able to achieve what they’re only going to achieve at this one time in their lives.”
Three hours north of Round Rock is Weatherford, Texas, a town of wood-sided cafes and saloons. A Second Empire-style courthouse rises over the traffic circle in the middle of town, anchoring the community like an ornate monument to justice. In a nearby working-class neighborhood, in a small blue house with an empty lawn, a middle-aged man told me about what happened to his children.
The father has spent so many years trying to help his children withdraw from the public eye that he asked me not to use their names for this article. The trouble began in 1997, back when the father was a long-haul trucker. He spent weeks away from home delivering steel to Windsor, Canada, and returning to Texas with granite from the Appalachian quarries of Pennsylvania. Upon arriving home one winter day, his then-wife (they’ve since divorced) explained that something was wrong. She was worried that their older son had engaged in some type of sexual activity with their daughter.
Together, the couple took their older son, then 12, to a therapist, where those fears were confirmed. They also learned that their younger son, then 10, had been present, though most likely not directly involved. (Their father is convinced that a porn video shown to the brothers by a friend led to their experimentation.) Their boys were 10 and 12 at the time; their sister was 7. Under legal mandate, the therapist reported the case.
A few days after the therapist’s report, Child Protective Services interviewed the young girl without notifying either of her parents. (In keeping with C.P.S. procedure, the parents were notified within 48 hours that an interview had taken place.) C.P.S. declined to comment on the specifics of this case, but according to her father, the agents asked his daughter questions that were never disclosed to her parents. Based on her answers, her father says, several police cars were sent to the house to arrest his 10- and 12-year-old sons, who were placed in pretrial detention in the nearby town of Cleburne. They remained there for about one month awaiting a court date. C.P.S. wanted to take the girl into state custody, too, but she and her mother fled secretly to a friend’s house in the nearby town of Hudson Oaks. On the day of their hearing, the two preteen brothers were marched into court wearing prison-issue clothing, handcuffs, and ankle chains. “A 10-year-old,” said his father, “in an oversized orange jumpsuit, the sleeves bunched up, and fucking shackles.”
Texas C.P.S. is charged with protecting some of the state’s most vulnerable populations, and the agency gets involved in cases like the the father’s for good reason. In May, the news broke that Josh Duggar, the oldest son in the reality show 19 and Counting, had sexually abused five underage girls—four of them his sisters—and faced no legal consequences. The public backlash against this story highlighted the need for intervention that goes beyond a parental reprimand or a stint of rehabilitative manual labor. But well-intentioned efforts to avoid an overly lax response can lead to the opposite: a string of collateral consequences that amounts to an overly severe punishment.
The state charged the 12-year-old son with aggravated sexual assault. He was sentenced to two years, most of which he spent in the Nelson’s Children Center of Denton, 60 miles northeast of Weatherford. Soon after his arrival there, his father says that he and his wife began receiving bills from a Denton-area pharmacy. In first grade, the boy had been diagnosed with ADD and a social-anxiety disorder, for which he was prescribed Ritalin. But the drugs listed on the receipts from Denton, according to his father, were antipsychotics unfamiliar to him and his wife. Though his father refused to pay the bills, he says the regimen continued. When he and his wife showed up on visits—once a week, if possible—their oldest son was often slumped in his chair, verging on unresponsive. “He might as well have been unconscious,” said his father. (The father told me he no longer had the receipts. The juvenile facility and the pharmacy have since shut down, and the boy’s records were closed to me, so I was unable to verify these details.)
The younger son, meanwhile, received a charge of indecency with a minor accompanied by two years of probation. C.P.S. allowed his sister to return home, but only on the condition that her brother not live there with her. He spent both years with nearby family friends, attending a state-accredited sex-offender therapy program from the ages of 10 to 12. “The drive out there was nice,” said his father. “We got to spend a bit of time with our son.” The therapy sessions were closed to both parents.
In 2000, the boys were finally allowed to return home. Their sister, then 9, said recently that she doesn't recall feeling any apprehension. “I remember being excited,” she said, adding that it’s hard for her to recall much about the crime itself. “I remember wanting them to come home.”
But the family soon learned that the boys, now 12 and 14, would be listed on the Texas Sex Offender Registry for the next 10 years. No restrictions applied, so they could spend time at schools, in parks, with other children. But their names were posted publicly, as were the street on which they lived and basic descriptions of each child. The younger son’s registration listed a Weiland Road residence, brown hair, brown eyes, a height of four feet, and a weight of 80 pounds. Shoe size: six.
The registry was relatively new at that time, so local newspapers savored the subject’s tawdry potential, publishing the names and addresses of every sex offender in the county. Friendship Baptist, where the boys had been baptized and attended church with their mother every Sunday, ostracized the family. The younger son’s elementary school and the older son’s middle school both expressed abiding fear for the safety of the other students, who taunted the boys as the nature of the crime, if not the details, became public knowledge. The older son dropped out of school within a few years; his younger brother followed soon after.
Effects from the registry rippled out. The family’s seven-month-old Border collie was shot and left to die in a dumpster, where the father discovered it under a pile of trash bags; he believes the act was intended as a threat to his boys. A neighbor pamphleted the community to let everybody know that sex offenders lived nearby. In October 2008, a local paper ran the headline “Where are the monsters on Halloween?” The article encouraged parents “concerned about where the real ghouls and goblins are” to review their local sex-offender registry. Cars sped past the the father’ home with windows down, drivers and passengers yelling obscenities. The siding of the house is cratered from B.B. gun pellets. Once, somebody lobbed a Molotov cocktail into the father’s driveway where it shattered behind his truck and spilled a rivulet of blue flame down the sloping, tree-lined street. No one was ever caught.
When the younger son turned 18, both brothers, neither with a high-school diploma, asked the father to take them to the military recruiter. He says it “was perhaps the most hurtful thing” he ever did as a father: The recruiter explained that options exist for many criminal records, that felonies can often be overlooked. But registered sex offenders are barred from the military. The recruiter apologized and led them back outside.
About five years ago, the younger son overdosed on heroin in his bedroom. His brother, who was with him at the time, rushed out to tell his father, who pulled the younger son into the living room. The 9-1-1 operator asked if he was breathing. He wasn’t. “I was sure I’d lost him,” said his father. The paramedics arrived and dosed him with naloxone. His father followed the ambulance and stood behind the emergency-room curtains looking at his son, the monitors sounding dully, the IV tubes dripping fluids. When his son regained enough lucidity to register what had happened, he didn’t have much to say: “I really don’t give a shit anymore.”
Today, the young man has a girlfriend. She has a 7-year-old daughter and, together, they have two young children, but the state of Texas has told the younger son that he cannot reside with anyone under the age of 17. He does live with them, though, on the weeks he’s not working on an oil rig. His parole officer, like Ponzanelli’s, could seek him out, arrest him, and lock him up for living at home.
His older brother, meanwhile, has spent most of his adulthood living with his father. He has struggled to hold down a job. He rides out the minutes and hours of free time on his mountain bike. “It makes me think of that old movie, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner,” said the father. “This is the loneliness of the long distance biker. He’s 29 years old. He hasn’t got many friends. He just can’t adapt.”
Until recently, father and son lived in a 1,000-square-foot house with old carpet and two recliners in a tiny living room. Fake wood paneling covered the walls. They moved not long ago, down the street to a slightly roomier place. The father pointed to the back bedroom of the house, where the older son had holed up, refusing to talk about his past. “I’m his only support. I want to make sure my kids have what they need—that’s all I really want. They had no educational opportunity, they were not able to serve their society or serve their country. And they were denied these opportunities because of mistakes they made at 10 and 12 years old?”
In many ways, juvenile collateral consequences are a holdover from the 1990s, when a rise in poverty, broken homes, and drug-related violence was generating chilling national headlines. Professor John DiIulio of Princeton University, along with a few like-minded colleagues, predicted the rise of a new class of criminal, the juvenile super-predator. Noting the large numbers of children growing up with poverty and abuse, these academics inferred that hundreds of thousands of them would develop criminal tendencies. “They are just four, five, and six years old right now,” proclaimed a 1996 Time magazine article, “but already they are making criminologists nervous.” Politicians campaigned as though these young super-predators were already on the streets. Draconian legislation swept through Congress and statehouses, often based on the highest-profile and most egregious criminal cases.
President Bill Clinton responded to these fears in his 1996 State of the Union address. “I'm directing the FBI and other investigative agencies to target gangs that involve juveniles in violent crime, and to seek authority to prosecute as adults teenagers who maim and kill like adults,” he declared. He went on to introduce his “One Strike” policy for public housing: “Criminal gang members and drug dealers are destroying the lives of decent tenants. From now on, the rule for residents who commit crime and peddle drugs should be one strike and you're out.”
Two months later, he signed into law the Housing Opportunity Program Extension Act. The HOPE Act gave public-housing authorities not just discretion, but monetary incentives, to evict tenants who break the terms of their lease.
The result has been widespread eviction in public housing, often due to the actions of juveniles. A 2002 report on Chicago estimated that 25 percent of One Strike evictions originated with claims against juveniles. No finding of guilt is required; a police report suffices. “Chicago doesn’t do everything efficiently,” said Anne Geraghty-Helms, pro bono counsel at the multinational law firm DLA Piper. “But boy are they efficient when evicting kids from low-income housing.”
As with the public sex-offender registry, eviction forms no part of a formal, criminal punishment; judges do not impose it as a criminal sanction. Rather, it serves as a collateral consequence of interaction with the law. Parents in public housing whose children brush against the police rarely understand the implications. The appearance of a notice to vacate hanging on the front door generally comes as a surprise.
Unless property management is present when youth get in trouble, “it’s not entirely clear how they get the records,” said Dennericka Brooks, a senior attorney at Chicago’s Legal Assistance Foundation. “But they do.” Under the Juvenile Court Act, juvenile records are supposed to be confidential. Select institutions, like schools and the military, are given access to the records, but public-housing authorities are not among this group.
The catalyst for an eviction may be small—Brooks cited cases based on trespass by teenagers or an argument between mother and daughter—but the effects can create lifelong reverberations. Families lose their vouchers for publicly assisted housing and often disperse across the city or county; parents and children become separated, dependent on the largesse of friends with an open couch or a guest bed. And parents who try to settle with housing authorities outside of trial are generally told that the rest of the family can remain in the apartment only if the accused juvenile is kicked out. ..Continued.. by Dylan Walsh
July 7, 2015
Will the sex offender registry ever reach 20-30-40 millions names? Yes if lawmakers continue to criminalize juveniles!
Lawmakers spend more time trying to criminalize teenage sexual behaviors than they do trying to resolve issues related to known juvenile sexual behaviors. Why do lawmakers fail to cite the following statistics?
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) developed the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) to monitor six types of health-risk behaviors that contribute to the leading causes of death and disability among youth and adults, including—
- Behaviors that contribute to unintentional injuries and violence
- Sexual behaviors that contribute to unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV infection
- Alcohol and other drug use
- Tobacco use
- Unhealthy dietary behaviors
- Inadequate physical activity
Click on this pic which was generated using CDC YRBSS data and you can do the
same by CLICKING HERE and selecting
the "High School Youth Online Results" and setting for questions about "sex."
To see all the questions related to "sex" CLICK HERE and see Questions: 21,23 and 59-65. Easy to find by doing a page search for "sex" after you open the file.
So how many participated in the CDC report? A review of the CDC map show three states didn't, but honestly how much could they change the percentages, likely a fraction if at all. Today high school folks are the same nationwide. So we looked to National Center for Educational Statistics which shows "14.7 million will be in grades 9 through 12."
If 46.8% of High schoolers have had sexual intercourse, illegal by todays laws, that means todays registry is likely understated by 6,879,600 juvenile sex offenders, at a minimum.
How long has this been going on? CLICK Shocking? Now about 1/4 of those high schoolers graduate every year. Consider this, that means 1,719,900 could be added to todays' registries every year and there would still be over 6,000,000 in high school. Now after 10-15-20-25-30 years the numbers are mind blowing; over time millions reaching billions? Do the math. Would law enforcement be able to keep up home address checks or even in person check-in and updating? Where would these folks live given residency laws?
Shame on lawmakers who believe these juveniles belong on a Sex Offenders Registry for Life!
July 6, 2015
Turning Teens who Have Sex into “Sex Offenders” — The Story Continues
7-6-15 National:
The front page of today’s New York Times features the case against Zach Anderson, a case you read about here three weeks ago. Zach is the 19 year old who met a young woman, 17, on “Hot or Not,” had sex with her once and now sits in jail. When he gets out next week he will spend the rest of his life on the Sex Offender Registry, and the next five years forbidden to go online.
Because, it turns out, the girl lied and was actually 14. But really because our Sex Offender laws fail to distinguish between the child rapists it was created to slam, and anybody else who has sex before a certain age.
I wrote up Zach’s case because it is a great way to highlight how overboard the sex laws and registry are. As Julie Bosman of the Times reports:
As an Indiana resident, Mr. Anderson will most likely be listed on a sex offender registry for life, a sanction that requires him to be in regular contact with the authorities, to allow searches of his home every 90 days and to live far from schools, parks and other public places. His probation will also require him to stay off the Internet, though he needs it to study computer science.The Times goes on to interview Brenda V. Jones, executive director of Reform Sex Offender Laws, who points out that even in cases when judges wish to grant leniency (the vindictive Dennis Wiley did not), the mandates of the registry are draconian. Worst of all could be the fact that the registry is public, ostensibly to alert us to the “fiends” in our midst.
Some advocates and legal authorities are holding up Mr. Anderson’s case as the latest example of the overreach of sex offender registries, which gained favor in the 1990s as a tool for monitoring pedophiles and other people who committed sexual crimes. In the decades since, the registries have grown in number and scope; the nearly 800,000 people on registries in the United States go beyond adults who have sexually assaulted other adults or minors. Also listed are people found guilty of lesser offenses that run the gamut from urinating publicly to swapping lewd texts.
But Zach is not a fiend. And one fourth of the people on the registry got on as minors…because minors have sex with other minors. That doesn’t make them predators. It makes them like most of us, people who have sex with people in our age bracket. And yet, we’re talking 200,000 young lives decimated — 200,000 dots on sex offender maps, scaring parents from ever sending their kids outside again. (That’s how I originally got interested in this issue. It’s hard to go Free-Range when we’re told our kids are in constant danger from the dots in the neighborhood.) ..Continued.. by Lenore Skenazy
April 10, 2012
Controversial Changes Made to Juvenile Sex Offender Law
It will forever amaze me how little the general public knows about policies built into law, or if they do know, they simply do not care about the reasons for them...4-10-2012 Ohio:
WILLOUGHBY, Ohio — Ohio’s sex offender law that required all Tier 3 juvenile sex offenders to register for life has been ruled unconstitutional by the Ohio Supreme Court.
In a 5-2 decision, justices said the law violated the offender’s rights against “cruel and unusual punishment under the 8th amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”
The law, which was part of the Adam Walsh Act, required all Tier 3 offenders, which is the most serious offender, to register every 90 days for life.
In addition to that, neighbors and any local school districts had to be notified that the offender lived in the area.
But the changes to the law do not apply to all Tier 3 sex offenders, only those classified as “Serious Youthful Offenders” who are sentenced as adults.
The reason is that they would not ever have a chance to rehabilitate or remove the classification.
Lake County Juvenile Court Judge Karen Lawson said, “It means children labeled as Tier 3 sex offenders but also had a classification as a serious youthful offender are no longer required to register.”
Judge Lawson said the purpose of Juvenile Court is not just to punish perpetrators but to rehabilitate young people.
“Juvenile Court is about rehabilitating children,” explained Judge Lawson. “The idea is if you are completely rehabilitated and restored completely to be a member of our society that you should not have to do those types of things.”
However, other Tier 3 juvenile sex offenders must still register.
Last year Judge Lawson sentenced a Willoughby boy who was the first teen in Ohio to have to register.
The 15-year-old served time in juvenile detention and must complete sexual aggression treatment.
He must also check in with the sheriff’s department every 90 days, but he can petition the court every 3 years to remove the label.
Judge Lawson said, ”Those offenders can come back and ask for reclassification or no classification.”
The change in the law is upsetting to parents of victims who have been sexually abused by a juvenile.
A parent who wanted to be called “Alan” spoke on behalf of all of the victims.
He told Fox 8 News the supreme court seems more concerned with the offenders than the victims.
“Their lives can never be the same. At what point when their innocence is taken can their lives ever be the same?” said Alan.
Alan and other parents plan to file their own lawsuits and said they will take their case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of all sexually abused victims.
“Why is it cruel and unusual to the person who did the offense?” asked Alan. “At what point is it unfair to the victim?” ...Source... by Suzanne Stratford
January 19, 2012
The Adam Walsh Act: The Cost of Compliance and the Danger to Juveniles in the Justice System
Related Report: "Report: Juvenile Sex Offender Laws Inconsistent," Nov. 8, 2011.1-19-2012 National:
Six years after Congress passed the Adam Walsh Act, only 15 states have substantially complied with its requirements. Some states, including Texas and New York, have officially declined to comply with the Act, even though failure to comply means the loss of 10 percent of their federal Byrne grants. Some states that had been moving toward compliance, like Nebraska, are now having second thoughts, according to a Jan. 5 story in Stateline.
States are refusing to comply in part because of the juvenile registration requirement. Other states are satisfied with their current risk-based tiered classification (as opposed to offense-based) and registration of sex offenders, while others are legitimately concerned that if they fully comply with the Act, they will end up spending more on lawsuits than they would receive in federal funds, as has happened in Ohio, the first state to come in to compliance, in 2007.
The impact on youth who have committed sex offenses is of particular concern, as a Jan. 7 story in USA Today made clear. Under the Walsh Act, youth as young as 14 who have been adjudicated in juvenile court with a serious sex offense must register on law-enforcement registries for 25 years. This goes against a growing body of research that clearly shows that fewer than one out of ten youth who have committed sex offenses will recidivate.
"We're bringing down a very heavy hammer on the head of kids, with significant life-altering consequences," said Marsha Levick, deputy director and chief counsel of the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia, an NJJN partner. "It's a knee-jerk reaction that's foolhardy beyond imagination." ..For the remainder of this story: by The National Juvenile Justice Network
November 16, 2011
Ohio Supreme Court to review juvenile sex offender registration in local case
11-15-2011 Ohio:
COLUMBUS — The Ohio Supreme Court will review whether requiring a boy to register as a sex offender for touching girls’ breasts violated the constitutional protection against avoid cruel and unusual punishment.
The Licking County case joins a number disputing how sex offender registration is applied to juveniles. Justices have heard oral arguments on an Athens County case and will apply their opinion to those that apply.
In July 2010, the 17-year-old boy was found delinquent of sexual imposition and disorderly conduct, both the equivalent of misdemeanor offenses, for grabbing girls’ breasts during the 2009-10 school year, according to a memorandum filed by attorney Todd Barstow.
The boy was expelled from Licking Heights High School for his conduct.
The boy also was required to register as a Tier I sex offender once a year for 15 years, according to the memorandum.
Barstow argued the boy should not be required to register as a sex offender because the practice is cruel and unusual punishment barred by the Eighth Amendment.
Juvenile court proceedings focus on rehabilitation rather than punishment, he wrote.
“(P)erhaps one of the most disturbing concerns about the new law is that it is being applied to juveniles in the same way it is to adults — solely based on the offense — thereby conferring adult penalties on juvenile offenders, who are less culpable than their adult counterparts,” Barstow wrote in the memorandum.
If given proper treatment, 90 to 96 percent of juveniles who commit sex offenses won’t do it again, according to the Ohio Association of County Behavioral Health Authorities.
Licking County Assistant Prosecutor Rachel Huston argued sex offender registration is a civil remedy not a criminal punishment, according to her memorandum.
“A law cannot constitute cruel and unusual punishment if it is not, in fact, punishment,” Huston wrote.
She also wrote the boy should have raised the argument earlier.
The Ohio Supreme Court’s decision in the Athens County case will apply to the Licking County situation without having to rehash the same arguments, Barstow said.
“We’ll see what happens,” he said. ..Source.. by Jessie Balmert, Advocate Reporter
May 23, 2011
Montana Supreme Court: Teenager must register as sex offender for Ravalli County assault
5-23-2011 Montana:
A teenager who sexually assaulted a 4-year-old girl in Ravalli County when he was 13 must register as a sexual offender under a Montana Supreme Court ruling issued this month.
The court's ruling came in a 2009 case involving a Wyoming youth who admitted abusing the girl while visiting Montana. Last March, Ravalli County District Court placed him on probation until he's 25 and required him to register as a sex offender.
But the state Office of Public Defender appealed that designation in November, pointing out that the boy himself had been abused, starting at the age of 6, by an uncle and a half-brother.
"Registration is a scarlet letter," the public defender's office contended in its appeal on behalf of the boy, identified in court papers only by his initials. Rather than the "scorn" of registration, rehabilitating the youth would best serve the public, it said.
The state argued that the public's right to safety overrode all other concerns.
"This was not a case in which a child ‘merely play(ed) doctor with other young children,' " it said.
Children rarely are required to register as sexual offenders, said Fritz Gillespie, chairman of the state Public Defender Commission that oversees the appellate division of the Office of Public Defender.
A few years ago, three registered sex offenders attended Belgrade High School in the same year, and the school developed policies to deal with the situation. The youths were 19, 16 and 12 when their offenses were committed, according to Bozeman Daily Chronicle reports.
Unlike some other states - Florida, for instance, does not register sex offenders under age 14 - Montana has no minimum age for registry.
Montana law also says registration can be waived if the youth in question has no previous offenses. The Ravalli County case was the first for the 13-year-old boy whose registration was appealed to the Supreme Court.
Both prosecutors and public defenders agree that the boy was barely older than his victim when his own abuse began.
The boy, who grew up in Wyoming, was only 6 when an uncle charged with sex crimes as a juvenile in that state began to abuse him, according to court filings. That uncle later reportedly abused the boy's older half-brother and younger sister. When the boy was 7, the older half-brother began abusing him, too, according to a probation officer's report.
"I didn't want to do it when he first started, but he sexually abused me quite a bit and I went along with it. When he's your big brother, he shoves you around and threatens you. You do what he wants," the boy said of his half-brother, who abused him, his older half-brother and younger sister, according to the court papers.
Although the boy originally was charged in Ravalli County as an adult with sexual intercourse without consent, an evaluation found there was no reason to try him as an adult, or require him to register as either a sexual or violent offender.
His actions "were a reaction to his upbringing," the public defender's office wrote.
However, the state pointed out that an evaluation also indicated that the boy was sexually interested in young children and that it scored him with a moderate to high risk to re-offend, although it said therapy could reduce that risk.
"Given this information, (he) was hardly the ‘perfect candidate' for exemption from sex-offender registration requirements," the state said.
An agreement mandates that the boy receive sex offender treatment, and said that if he does well, he could petition to end the offender registration at the age of 21.
The Supreme Court's memorandum opinion, written by Justice Patricia Cotter, took note of that.
And state law "is unambiguous in vesting a youth court with the discretion" to require such registration, the opinion said.
The opinion cannot be cited or used a precedent.
That means that if similar situations arise, "they must be determined on a case-by-case basis," Gillespie said. "So, actually," he said of the ruling, "it's kind of beneficial." ..Source.. by Gwen Florio
May 11, 2011
Juvenile Sex Offenders
5-11-2011 Washington:
KENNEWICK, Wash.-- All month, KNDU/KNDO is featuring a series called "Did you know?" This week we ask, Did you know sex offenders aren't always adults?
Take Benton County, for example, the Registered Sex Offender Clerk says there are 19 registered sex offenders who are younger than 18 years old. So far this year, the Sexual Assault Response Center in Kennewick has taken more than 80 reports involving possible offenders under the age of 18, according to JoDee Garretson, the Executive Director of SARC. She says, "It's really disheartening and I think a lot of people don't realize that happens so often... 75% of our victims are kids under the age of 18 and half of them are under the age of 12 on the victim side. Unfortunately, many of those times, it's other either teenagers or even younger that have offended against them."
Psychotherapists say there's a difference between natural curiosity or exploration at young ages and sexual misconduct. Social Services and the court treat different ages accordingly. Michael Henry, a Psychotherapist and State Certified Sex Offender Treatment Provider, says, "I haven't seen any kid who's 8 or 9 years old who was charged with a sexual crime. Usually it's done through social services."
Psychotherapist Matt Cummings says, "From 12 on, most inappropriate sexual behavior would be taken a look at by the court or Child Protective Services or possibly sentenced and charged." If that happens, options range from time behind bars to counseling. Cummings says juveniles are "very treatable and very amenable to treatment."
"Research shows that less than 2% of juveniles who have had treatment and who have intervention will go on to offend as adults," explains Henry.
Henry and Cummings both say there are a variety of reasons someone under the age of 18 would offend. Common threads include if the child might also be or have been a victim themselves. Cummings also says, "Juvenile sex offenders are typically individuals who have been neglected or rejected and have difficulty in healthy relationships."
Henry says, "75% to 80% of boys or young females that we see did not have a father figure." However, he says, that doesn't mean a child will be a sex offender. He says it's important to talk to your children at a young age, have an open relationship with them, discuss sexuality, set boundaries, and most importantly, supervise your child.
Garretson explains, "Teaching children proper boundaries: what's appropriate, what's not appropriate; that it is ok to tell someone no, that on the other hand, one must listen when one says no to you."
Psychotherapists say they often see abuse by a juvenile occur during sleepovers or in babysitting situations, so be sure to do your homework about where your child is and who they're with. ..Source.. by KNDO/KNDU
March 15, 2011
Editorial: Reform Michigan's sex offender list
Instead of lawmakers playing parent to Michigan's youth, it would be much better if judges made the decision rather then they being tied to a 4-year age difference. Lawmakers can never know -beforehand- the circumstances of every single case!3-15-2011 Michigan:
Removing experimenting teens from sexual criminal registry is reasonable and just
The Michigan Senate has adopted necessary reforms making Michigan's sex offender registry less brutal and stigmatizing to teenagers. The reforms ought to be quickly adopted by the state House.
We have long argued that the state's sex offender registry is too all-inclusive and damaging to the life chances of teenagers engaged in consensual sexual experimentation.
Currently, all those are placed on the list must remain on it for 25 years. This includes youths who have been convicted of statutory rape after engaging in consensual sex with an underage partner. The age of consent is 16.
A 17-year-old who has intercourse with his 15-year-old girlfriend, if convicted of statutory rape, in which consent is not at issue, can now find himself on a list with rapists and child molesters.
The Legislation adopted by the Senate would prevent such teens from being listed, as long as there is no more than four years between the ages of those engaged in consensual sexual activity and neither of the partners is younger than 13 years of age.
The legislation does not legalize underage sex; the age of consent remains at 16. And those convicted of statutory rape would still have to be on a police list for a period of time. Underage sex, after all, remains a bad idea.
The point of a public sex offender list, we have argued, is to alert citizens to the fact that a convicted sexual predator is in their midst.
It is not to stigmatize for decades young people who have not engaged in a predatory act.
We and the American Civil Liberties Union have been arguing for such reforms for years. But despite efforts by some reasonable lawmakers, their colleagues have balked.
The sponsor of the bills is Sen. Rick Jones, R-Grand Ledge, who noted that federal legislation has spurred this move to change state law.
The federal Adam Walsh Act requires with public sex offender lists to have a tiered process, in which people convicted of lesser, non-assaultive offenses would not be on the public list and could petition to have their names removed from the police list after 10 years.
More serious offenders would be on the public list for 25 years and have to report their whereabouts to the police twice a year.
The most serious offenders would be on the public list for life and have to report every three months.
Penalties for failure to report would be increased. Currently, failure to report in a timely way only becomes a prison offense after the third or fourth such failure.
This legislation makes it a possible jail offense to fail to report a first time.
The catalyst for states revising their lists to conform to federal legislation is the disbursement of federal law enforcement grants.
In Michigan, about $1.2 million is at stake.
This would have been sensible legislation without federal prodding, but if it takes an incentive for it to pass, so be it. ..Source.. by Detroit News
December 18, 2010
Sex offender residency limits not for juveniles
12-18-2010 California:
California's lifetime residency restrictions for sex offenders, which prohibit them from living within 2,000 feet of a park or school, can't be imposed on juvenile defendants without a jury trial, a state appeals court has ruled.
Juvenile court trials are conducted by a judge. But the Fourth District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana said the voter-approved residency limits - "banishment under a different name" - amount to lifelong criminal punishment that must be left up to a jury to consider.
The court noted that most residential neighborhoods in regions like the Bay Area are near parks or schools, so convicted sex offenders must often choose between relocating to a distant area or going homeless.
That choice is especially vexing for the parents of juvenile sex offenders who live at home, the court said. Such parents must decide between moving to a new residence and expelling their child.
Unlike similar laws in other states, the California law gives offenders "no means to demonstrate rehabilitation," which is supposed to be the focus of juvenile courts, the justices said in Thursday's 3-0 ruling. "The restrictions apply for life regardless of reform."
It was the first time a California court has ordered a jury trial in a juvenile proceeding, Deputy Attorney General Steve Oetting, the state's lawyer, said Friday.
He said the state has not decided whether to appeal. But he said his office has asked the state Supreme Court to review a decision by the same appellate court earlier this year that laid the groundwork for Thursday's ruling.
The state's high court has upheld the residency restrictions for adults who were in prison when voters approved the measure, Proposition 83, in 2006.
The case, from Orange County, involved a 17-year-old identified as J.L., convicted in 2007 of molesting three young cousins.
The judge confined him to the state's juvenile system and ordered him to comply with the rules for sex offenders after his release: reporting his residence to police each year for life, and living more than 2,000 feet from parks and schools.
J.L.'s appeal challenged both requirements, citing the constitutional right to a jury trial for criminal punishment.
The appeals court upheld his police reporting obligation, saying the state Supreme Court had found that it promoted public safety, not punishment.
But the justices said the residency restrictions, though ostensibly safety measures, were actually punitive. The court said the rules apply to all sex offenders, regardless of their victims' age, and force them to move to distant areas without restricting their access to parks or children.
Oetting disagreed Friday, noting that a juvenile judge can sentence a youth to a prison-like setting without a jury trial.
But Paul Ward, J.L.'s lawyer, said all juvenile court proceedings are based on "the assumption that juveniles will be rehabilitated." ..Source.. by Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
November 18, 2010
ACLU fights law sentencing kids to life in prison
11-18-2010 Michigan:
The ACLU sued the State of Michigan today on behalf of nine people who were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility for parole for crimes they committed as juveniles.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Detroit, says Michigan’s sentencing laws constitute cruel and unusual punishment and violate the constitutional rights of the inmates.
All nine were sentenced for first-degree murder or felony murder.
“These life without parole sentences ignore the very real differences between children and adults, abandoning the concepts of redemption and second chances,” Deborah Labelle, lawyer for the ACLU of Michigan’s Juvenile Life Without Parole Initiative, said in a statement accompanying the suit.
“As a society, we believe children do not have the capacity to handle adult responsibilities, so we don’t allow them to use alcohol, join the Army, serve on a jury or vote — yet we sentence them to the harshest punishment we have in this state — to die in adult prisons,” Labelle added.
Under state law, 14-year-olds charged with certain felonies must be tried as adults. If convicted, they must be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, eliminating any discretion on the part of the judge.
The ACLU said the United States is the only nation that sentences young people to life in prison without parole and that Michigan has the second highest number of such offenders in prison.
The suit asks U.S. District Judge John Corbett O’Meara to declare Michigan’s law unconstitutional.
Today’s lawsuit is part of a national campaign by the ACLU and other groups to overturn juvenile lifer laws. It said 43 states have such laws, but five states — Michigan, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Florida and California — account for two-thirds of people serving life sentences for crimes committed as juveniles. The ACLU said Michigan has 350 such inmates.
Most of the nine plaintiffs in the case are well into adulthood.
They include: Matthew Bentley, 28, who was sentenced to life in prison when he killed a homeowner in Huron County during a break-in when he was 14; Henry Hill Jr., 47, who was sentenced in 1982 for a fatal shooting during a confrontation with other boys in a park in Saginaw even though the ACLU said he didn’t fire the fatal shots; and Jennifer Pruitt, 33, who was sentenced in 1993 in the robbery-murder of a neighbor in Pontiac.
The ACLU said Hill fired shots in the air, not at the victims, and that Pruitt, a 16-year-old runaway, was not aware that the woman who took her was planning to rob the victim.
It said Bentley would not have been eligible for trial in adult court had he been sentenced under a law that existed two years earlier.
There was no immediate comment from state officials. ..Source.. byDAVID ASHENFELTER
September 5, 2010
Barely a Teenager and Marked for Life
Any law, civil or criminal, juvenile or adult, excepting -an already appealed life in prison without parole- that has, a lifetime component in it, must have judicial intervention and discretionary revocation, built into it. To not allow that is an unconstitutional law, simply because it fails to recognize the meaning of "life." All other laws recognize the meaning of "life" and allow the state to intervene. eAdvocate Opinion!9-5-2010 National:
Federal law requiring juvenile sex offenders to register as predators for life does more harm than good
In 1999, Anthony, a 13-year-old boy who weighed 350 pounds, told his four-year-old cousin to expose herself. Anthony, now 24, swears he did not touch her. Nonetheless, her father pressed charges and Anthony was found delinquent for assault with intent to commit sexual abuse, sentenced to sex offender treatment, and assigned a lifetime spot on Iowa’s public sex offender registry.
Ten years after beginning treatment at Woodward Academy in Woodward, Iowa, Anthony, who asked that his last name not be published, finds it impossible to lead a normal life. Permanently associated with dangerous pedophiles and pathological rapists, his childhood mistake has hindered his ability to find work, housing and societal acceptance. Although he left Woodward when he was 18, Iowa’s residency restriction at that time—which barred sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school—forced him to leave his family’s home in Des Moines for a trailer with no electricity on land owned by his father in rural Osceola, Iowa.
Anthony’s plight could soon become common among all of America’s juvenile sex offenders, who in 2009 were responsible for one-third of all sex offenses against minors in the United States. Following the 2006 passage of the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), the federal government instructed all U.S. states and Indian territories to adopt a new sex offender registry system that includes juvenile offenders. But at the July 2009 deadline, not one state had complied.
Iowa has long required juvenile sex offenders to register their crimes online. And it is moving closer to the federally mandated system—in 2009 Iowa updated its laws to look more like SORNA. As other states consider compliance—the Justice Department has set a new July 2011 deadline—the impact of Iowa’s already strict registry system offers a window into what adulthood might look like for juvenile offenders around the country.
Therapeutic punishment
The new federal legislation organizes sex offenders into three tiers, categorized by the severity of their crime. The tier to which a defendant is assigned determines the punishment and duration of registration. The highest, tier III, covers the most heinous offenses. Anyone 14 or older who has sexually offended against a child 13 or younger is put in tier III, and required to register for life.
Critics of the juvenile registry system believe that tier III requirements are unnecessarily harsh when applied to all juveniles. Only 10 percent of young offenders will re-offend, according to the Center for Sex Offender Management. Yet young offenders who commit crimes against even younger peers are stuck in the most serious category.
Juvenile justice experts argue that therapy, not registration, is the most effective way to deter future offenses and that lifetime registration harms juveniles’ chances of reintegrating into society. All juveniles judged delinquent (the equivalent of being convicted in juvenial court) for sex crimes in Iowa are required to undergo treatment. Woodward Academy, the largest of three sex offender treatment facilities in the state, receives kids from all over the country.
“These kids are young enough that we can teach them right from wrong,” says Tonna Lawrenson, the academy’s program director. Woodward’s long-term sex offender treatment program treats juveniles whose offenses range from what experts call “Romeo and Juliet”-style statutory rapes (where the sex is consensual, but because of the participants’ ages, illegal) to flashing, fondling and forcing younger children to expose themselves.
As is the case with many teen offenders, Anthony’s act against his cousin was not random, but stemmed from his own childhood abuse. When he was nine, a 16-year-old boy sodomized him and threatened to kill his mother if anyone found out.
Children act out sexually for a variety of other reasons. Anthony Rodriguez, therapist and founder of The Men’s Center in Davenport, Iowa, is one of four sex addiction experts in the state and has worked extensively with sexually abusive youth. He says a lack of attachment between parent and child can cause children a great amount of anxiety—an anxiety that is relieved when they do something like look at pornography or touch someone inappropriately.
Lawrenson also sees many young offenders exhibit behavior she says is not natural, but learned. “I’ve never believed that a child is born to be a sex offender,” she says.
Stephen Draminski agrees. “They become what we call ‘sexually reactive,’” says Draminski, who leads a sex offender treatment group at the Robert Young Center in Rock Island, Ill. “They act out sexually in different ways, replaying their abuse over and over again.” He says poor social skills combined with sexual curiosity can also prompt an offense.
Draminski’s group therapy focuses heavily on empathy, teaches kids to manage destructive emotions, and promotes healthy relationships and sexual behavior. At Woodward, intensive one-on-one therapy allows kids to discuss things that might embarrass them in front of peers. In one of these individual sessions, Anthony finally revealed his own abuse to Lawrenson, years after it happened.
‘Big enough to commit the crime’?
Those opposed to lifetime juvenile registration suggest that it does not prevent future offenses, since sexual abuse is most often committed not by strangers but by someone in, or close to, the family. “Registration gives people a false sense of security, a false sense of hope,” says Randy Smith, who reviewed adult and juvenile sex offenders for courts in Chicago and Ohio.
But despite the efforts of advocates, the futures of young offenders like Anthony are in the hands of elected officials unlikely to oppose a law that claims to protect children from sexual abuse. Smith says, “A lot of sex offender laws come from the six o’clock news, from the random person who buries the kids in the woods.”
Iowa State Senator Jerry Behn, who authored the state’s original residency restriction in 2002, admits the law overreached when it applied to all sex offenders, rather than only dangerous pedophiles. But, Behn says, “anyone who votes to fix this now is going to be viewed as light on sexual predators.”
Erin Lovejoy, a detective who tracks sex offenders for the Des Moines Police Department, admits registration is more effective at quelling public fears than preventing offenses. “It’s not going to prevent an act from occurring by any means. Nothing will do that unless they’re locked up,” she says.
Anthony spent one year in prison after moving into his mother’s Des Moines home in 2007 to care for her as she died. This was a violation of Iowa’s harsh residency restrictions since she lived within 2,000 feet of a school. The 2,000-foot restriction was amended in 2009, but Iowa still prohibits registered sex offenders from working at or visiting places frequented by children, such as schools, public pools, libraries and fairs.
Iowa Associate Juvenile Judge Constance Cohen believes employment and residency restrictions should factor in successful treatment and behavioral change. She says, “If you paint with such a broad brush, it will eliminate opportunities for these kids.”
The new 2009 Iowa law also limits the power juvenile court judges once had to waive registration, thus bringing the state closer to compliance with SORNA. Cohen says this will force more juveniles to register whether or not they are at risk to re-offend. Behn, however, opposes judicial discretion. “If a person is big enough to commit the crime,” he says, “they’re big enough to pay for it.”
Those who work closest with juvenile offenders maintain that the negative effects of lifetime registration are well-documented. But it is politicians like Behn who set the rules for juvenile sex offenders. This means Anthony, who at 13—like so many others—was “big enough to commit the crime,” will spend the rest of his life paying for it. ..Source.. by Caitlin Dickson
June 28, 2010
UD study says state wastes millions of dollars on treating low-risk juvenile sex offenders
6-26-2010 Delaware:
An examination of Delaware's approach to juvenile sex offenders finds the need for reform. Research released today shows the system costs taxpayers millions each year, treating many kids as high risk who simply do not fall into that category, while distracting the state from the truly risky offenders.
University of Delaware professor Chrysanthi S. Leon, J.D., Ph.D., will speak about the overuse of sex offender registration and residency laws in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, June 26 in the opening session of the conference of the national group, Reform Sex Offender Laws.
On Monday June 28, Leon and others will lobby Sen. Tom Carper and other members of Congress to amend the federal Adam Walsh Act, which can withhold funding from states that do not comply with its terms. At noon, Leon will participate in a press conference across from the Hart Senate Office Building, 245 2nd Street, NE. Leon and Smith College professor David L. Burton, Ph.D., authored, “Net Widening in Delaware: The Overuse of Registration and Residential Treatment for Youth Who Commit Sex Offenses,” which will be published in an upcoming issue of the Widener Law Review.
Last year, Delaware spent more than $5.1 million to send 62 youths out of state for treatment (FY09). In FY04, that expenditure was $2.9 million. These costs, Leon and Burton say, can only be justified if the youths are serious offenders who cannot be treated in the community and pose high risk of re-offense. But, the Delaware Youth Needs Evaluation, included in the article, shows they are low-to-moderate risk.
Leon and Burton argue Delaware's compliance with the federal Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act goes far beyond what is necessary. The unintended consequences of Delaware's registration laws are forcing the state to pay for unneeded treatment out of state. In total, Leon and Burton write, “the juvenile sex offender registry is the exact opposite of evidence-based corrections.”
They say the law needs revision, using methods proven effective in other states. Doing so would not entail new costs to the system. In fact, it would likely provide a cost-savings by properly focusing resources. ..Source.. Newark Post
