“Homelessness was one of the main reasons I ran for office,” said then-vice mayor Ben Sorensen, who led the proceedings. “If we all pitch in and support each other and support some of the least of these, we can do amazing, amazing things.” The city recognized 18 organizations for their work with the unhoused and tweeted out a happy photo of the group.

But Sorensen didn’t mention that the city’s own rules are, in part, driving up homelessness. An ordinance forbidding most people on the state’s sexual offense registry from living within 1,400 feet of schools, daycares, parks, or playgrounds puts all but 1 percent of residences off limits to those on the offense registry and forces hundreds to live on the streets. Today, a sample of the city’s unhoused people on the state registry shows that a majority camp on a commercial strip on a major highway in north Fort Lauderdale.

Sorenson also did not acknowledge that the Florida Action Committee (FAC), a nonprofit that advocates for the rights of people placed on sexual offense registries, had, for months, been asking city and county leaders for a plan to house registrants. In the days after the Nov. 1 meeting, FAC escalated its actions. On Nov. 14, the group petitioned the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, alleging that the U.S. public sex offender registry contravenes provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The declaration bans “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” The group asked the UN to investigate and attached a change.org petition that’s been signed by almost 4,500 people.

“The act of placing human beings on a public shaming list for life and subjecting them to the crippling and dehumanizing consequences, when that list has been proven through empirical research to be ineffective at preventing recidivism or reducing sexual offending, is cruel and degrading,” the group wrote to the UN.

If the UN determines the complaint is admissible, it will be sent to the U.S. government for a response and could eventually be referred to the UN’s Human Rights Council for further action. As yet, FAC has heard nothing back from the UN, Gail Colletta, the group’s president, told The Appeal.

Continue reading in The Appeal

The most massive Ponzi scheme that America has been selling for decades is the sex offender registry. It too has a pyramid scheme that allows investment in public policy and administrative oversight. Individuals such as John Walsh have raked in over $42M for his charities and amassed a net worth of $20M. States receive over $200M annually from the Edward R. Byrne grant program that helps fund offender registries nationwide. All while Walsh increases his rhetoric and scare tactics to increase funding and additional non-compliance penalties, states are struggling to keep up the pace where jails are beginning to fill up because of Ponzi styled policies backed by law enforcement agencies seeking to cash in on the opportunity.

All while sex offenses appeared to decrease overall, the recent #metoo and #timesup movement helped contribute the Ponzi effects by rescinding statute of limitation policies to dig some thirty plus years in the past adding to what appeared to be a stabilized registry. High profile additions have created the registry as a method to keep registry legislation, and pyramid schemes are breathing another sigh of relief that funding will indeed increase. While others are warning of the critical effects and possible backlash, the registry grows wildly into a mishmash of anyone easily or conveniently targeted.

But will the sex offender Ponzi scheme find itself on the brink of collapse? Many states are seeking registered offender to pay an annual fee to keep the registry requirements relevant all while continuing to acquire millions in government grants intended to pay for those that cannot contribute. It is usually Ponzi schemes that begin asking for investors to invest more or seeking undisclosed payments similar to what states are introducing to registrants. Citizens are starting to ask questions about the overall effectiveness of the registry and if it has gotten out of hand. The same similarities were asked by those wary of Bernie Madoff but went ignored for over a decade. Eventually, the world came crashing down around those that invested or supported Ponzi or pyramid schemes. It was ordinary folk and families that were ultimately destroyed by the cause and effects.

In general, the sex offender registry is nothing more than an elaborate and complicated Ponzi scheme. It promises an immediate return on investment by providing a secure community and added protections to educating those that choose to access it. In the past decades, it has produced no such reliability nor has an outlook that provides security at all. States continually add to the already convoluted and confusing laws or policies introduced, struck down, or amended on a quarterly basis leaving those affected by the registry entirely in the dark and vulnerable. This not a sign of an adequate return on investment. It is a sign that Americans have been duped out of billions of dollars at a failed experiment. It sounds more like a FEMA recovery plan for Puerto Rico with similarities of homelessness, hunger, no work, and a bleak outlook for the future.

In October 2014, the City of Milwaukee began prohibiting violent and repeat sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of any school, day care center or park. That left just 55 addresses where offenders can legally move within the 100-square-mile city. And their living options soon will become more limited across Wisconsin. Republican Gov. Scott Walker signed a bill in February that prohibits violent sex offenders from living within 1,500 feet of any school, day care, youth center, church or public park in the state.

Cities and states continue to enact laws that restrict where convicted sex offenders can live, applying the rules to violent offenders such as pedophiles and rapists, and, in some cases, those convicted of nonviolent sex crimes, such as indecent exposure. They are doing so despite studies that show the laws can make more offenders homeless, or make it more likely they will falsely report or not disclose where they are living. And though the laws are meant to protect children from being victimized by repeat offenders, they do not reduce the likelihood that sex offenders will be convicted again for sexual offenses, according to multiple studies, including one from the U.S. Department of Justice.

In all, 27 states have blanket rules restricting how close sex offenders can live to schools and other places where groups of children may gather, according to research by the Council of State Governments. Hundreds of cities also have restrictions, according to the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers (ATSA). And many laws are becoming more restrictive — along with Wisconsin, they expanded last year in Arkansas, Montana, Oklahoma and Rhode Island.

The restrictions can make offenders’ lives less stable by severely limiting their housing options, and can push them away from family, jobs and social support — all of which make it more likely they will abuse again, according to researchers who have studied the laws, such as Kelly Socia, assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell.

“If [the laws] don’t work, and they make life more difficult for sex offenders, you’re only shooting yourself in the foot,” Socia said.  (Please read full article in Stateline, Pew Charitable Trusts)