By MICHAEL HOBBES . . . The first time Damian Winters got evicted was in 2015. He was living with his wife and two sons in suburban Nashville when his probation officer called his landlord and informed him that Winters was a registered sex offender.

The specific program he entered, how he performed and whether he was seen as a high risk for re-offending, though, are all confidential under Ohio law.

Whatever treatment Golsby received, police say it didn’t stop him from the Feb. 8 abduction, rape and slaying of Reagan Tokes, a 21-year-old Ohio State University student. Golsby has been linked to the crime through DNA that was on file from his previous conviction.

Tokes’ death occurred three months after Golsby, 29, was released from prison for that 2011 attack, in which he was accused of forcing a woman to perform oral sex at knifepoint in a Grove City parking lot.

The Golsby case represents the public’s worst fears about convicted sex offenders — that they don’t respond to treatment and will strike again if released.

But those are myths, reinforced whenever such cases get extensive media coverage, said Melissa Hamilton, a law professor who has written extensively about sex offenders.

“These incredibly horrible stories occur, the media picks them up and the public reacts,” she said. “It stokes fears of sex offenders as people who are likely to re-offend. But the statistics don’t support it.”

Hamilton, a visiting criminal-law scholar at the University of Houston Law Center, said one of the most comprehensive studies on sex offenders was issued by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2003. It tracked more than 9,000 sex offenders released from prisons in 15 states, including Ohio, in 1994. Three years after their release, 5.3 percent of the offenders had been arrested for another sex crime.

“I wouldn’t characterize that as high-risk,” Hamilton said.

The sex offenders who were most likely to offend again were men whose victims were boys, not adults, the study found.

Two years ago, Ohio prison statistics showed that 11 percent of released sex offenders returned to prison on sex charges, compared with a recidivism rate of 28.7 percent for all inmates.

The Justice Department study made a similar finding: “Sex offenders in the study had a lower overall re-arrest rate than non-sex offenders.”

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Cases like this might seem to argue for even tougher controls on ex-offenders convicted of sex crimes. But new research indicates that the existing sex-offense regime in the US actually may be making repeat sex crimes more likely.

Since the mid-1990s, legislators have devised increasingly byzantine rules for those who have been punished. Those include sending out postcards when an offender moves to a neighborhood, placing warning signs outside offenders’ homes, setting restrictions on what offenders can do on Halloween, and devising “presence” restrictions banning them from places like parks, malls, and museums where children might be present. That ever-tightening leash has produced unintended outcomes with an almost mechanical predictability. Many cities have devised new no-go zones that keep them from living near places like school, parks, and daycares and have seen their homelessness rates spike as a result.

California passed a law in Nov. 2006 forbidding parolees who’d committed a sex crime from living within 2,000 feet of schools or parks. Less than five years later, the number of them who were homeless had risen from 88 to almost 2,000. In Oct. 2014, Milwaukee passed an ordinance banning many registrants from living within 2,000 ft of schools, parks, day cares, recreational trails, and playgrounds. The number of homeless registrants promptly soared from 15 to 230 in less than two years, according to an analysis in Oct. 2016 by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Now, new research suggests making it harder for offenders to find a place to live might increase reoffending. In a study released in July 2016, researchers from the California and Canadian justice departments looked at more than 1,600 California sex offenders on probation or parole. Overall, the group’s sex-crime recidivism rates were low–less than 5% during the five-year follow-up period. But those who were homeless were over four times more likely to commit a repeat sex crime than those who weren’t. “Collectively, transient status seems to be associated with higher sexual recidivism rates,” the researchers concluded. That’s likely because those who lack stable homes, jobs, and social connections are more prone to reoffend.

Please read the rest of Steven’s article courtesy of Quartz.

Seven-year-old Megan Kanka left her New Jersey home on July 29, 1994, for a summer afternoon bike ride around her neighborhood, but she never returned.

Instead, neighbor Jesse Timmendequas lured her into his home by promising her a puppy. He then raped and murdered her, dumping her body in a nearby park.

The murder sparked national outrage, not least because Kanka’s parents had never been told their neighbor had two previous convictions for sexual offences against small children. It also sparked a New Jersey law and then a 1996 federal law – Megan’s Law – requiring states to notify the public about sex offenders living in their neighborhoods.

Twenty years later, the names, pictures and addresses of registered sex offenders – including 218 who live, work or attend school in Lebanon County – can be found at the Pennsylvania State Police Megan’s Law Website. Such databases remain popular: a 2013 YouGov poll found that 71 percent of women and 52 percent of men believe it is “very important” to log all sex offender’s homes in the U.S.

However, advocates for offenders say registries continue to punish them even after they have served their sentence and even advocates for victims are lukewarm in their support.

“The intent of the Megan’s Law registry is commendable,” said Jenny Murphy-Shifflet, executive director of the Sexual Assault Recourse and Counseling Center of Lebanon County (SARCC). “I understand that its goal was to reduce sexual violence. The reality is that we haven’t seen any outcomes indicating that these goals have been reached.”

False sense of security

One out of every 728 Lebanon County residents is a registered Megan’s Law offender, and most have committed violent sexual crimes like rape, indecent assault or sexual abuse of children. Those offenders are required to have their address and place of work listed on the registry for 15 years to life depending on the crime and amount of offenses.

If that seems like a scarily high number, Murphy-Shifflet said it’s probably far lower than the actual number of sexual offenders, many of whom have never been caught. In fact, that’s one of the shortcomings of Megan’s Law, she said – it can create a false sense of security to residents who don’t live near offenders.

“Megan’s Law is almost like the Scarlet letter. They think it’s going to be easy to identify (sexual offenders),” agreed Kristen Houser, chief public affairs officer for the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape. “The reality is, most offenders hide in plain sight.” (Read the rest of the article in the Lebanon Daily News)

Turner was only sentenced to six months in jail; the leniency of the sentence has led to an effort to recall the judge. Being placed on a list seems like a small punishment in comparison to a prison term. But sex offender registries were never meant to be a punishment—and since they were introduced in the mid-1990s, they have proven to be both ineffective and often unjust.

The original goal of registries was not to provide restitution, but to protect communities. Reading the victim’s statement, it’s easy to see why sex offender registries seem like a reasonable and necessary response to crimes like Turner’s. Following a party, Turner dragged the victim behind a dumpster and penetrated her with his fingers. He was only stopped when two Swedish students physically chased him away, and then captured him. In response to his conviction, he has blamed a culture of drinking and partying on campus, rather than taking responsibility for his own violence.

Given the horrific nature of his actions, and his effort to shift blame, some might argue there’s a risk he could victimize others. Placing him on the sex offender registry, in theory, should warn communities of a potential threat. As one recent pro-registry editorial argued, “the rights of the victims, and the protection thereof, outweigh any perceived infringement of the rights of the criminals.”

The truth, though, is that there’s very little evidence that sex offender registries increase safety in any material way. A 2014 study conducted by Purdue University economics professor Jillian B. Carr of people on the North Carolina sex offender registry found that being on the registry had no effect on recidivism. That’s consistent with a 2007 report by Human Rights Watch, which looked at various studies and concluded that sex offender registries did little to prevent sexual violence. (Read the rest of the article online at Quartz)

That’s the question of David Feige’s startling new documentary “Untouchable,” a Tribeca Film Festival award winner.

I must note here that I am not completely objective about this film. I have known Feige for many years and was briefly a collaborator with him on a TV pilot project. At the same time I watched the movie with certain prejudices and experiences which made me instinctively hostile and resistant to its message.

Feige’s subject is America’s present set of policies with respect to convicted sex offenders. But, while the film is broadly arguing for a wholesale reassessment of these mechanisms of control, the director has great sympathy for the families of those victimized by sex offenders and for their desire for retribution.

In fact, that’s where his story starts: with powerful Florida lobbyist Ron Book and his daughter Lauren and their account of how she was molested and tortured by an immigrant housekeeper. Then Feige travels around Tampa with Judy Cornett, a working class mother whose son was kidnapped and raped by a local pedophile. Cornett has organized a patrol that seeks to protect neighborhood kids. Feige is an avuncular personality, and he wins his subjects’ trust and his remarkable interviews offer us a deeply affecting view of their heartbreak. (See full article in Forbes Online)