LAKE MONROE, FLORIDA – July 30, 2013.
Last month the Florida Action Committee issued a press release entitled “Coming Soon to Your Neighborhood: More Homeless Sex Offenders”. The article highlighted the problem created from rapidly growing numbers of “registered sex offenders” with rapidly decreased housing options, leading to more homeless sex offenders coming to our neighborhoods.
As if prophetic, the county of Miami-Dade is about to increase the number of homeless sex offenders in their communities by about one hundred.
This week, the County’s police department will be distributing notices that the residents of the River Park Trailer Park and surrounding area need to move out of their homes. The reason: An emergency shelter for children, which had been undetected as a school for years, is within 2500 feet of the residents.
Almost 100 registered sex offenders had been clustered in the area because it was one of the few pockets of the County in which they could live. Just like the Julia Tuttle Bridge, which fenced in the overpass to prevent the former offenders from living there, or the Shorecrest neighborhood, which installed a pocket part to break up its cluster, the County is once again displacing sex offenders.
The move creates a public safety concern. Housing instability is one of the triggers for recidivism, making individuals more likely to reoffend. Homeless sex offenders are more likely to abscond from registration. The County’s action, which is supposed to make communities safer, is effectively making the community much more dangerous.
Earlier this month, Jill S. Levenson, Associate Professor, Human Services at Lynn University and other experts released a study entitled, “Transient Sex Offenders and Residence Restrictions in Florida”. The study found that, “because housing instability is a risk factor for recidivism and undermines effective monitoring of sex offenders, lawmakers should recognize that transience is an unintended negative consequence of these laws and reconsider residence restrictions as a sex offender management policy.”
So, again, unless we do care about public safety and do something to reverse these counterproductive residency restrictions, more homeless sex offenders will be coming to our neighborhoods.
Florida Action Committee (FAC), founded in 2006, is a state-wide consortium of concerned citizens and professionals whose purpose is to promote the prevention of sexual abuse while preserving the safety and dignity of all citizens through carefully structured laws targeting the truly violent, forced, and/or dangerous predatory acts of sex. FAC believes that many aspects of the current approach to sex offenders seriously undermine justice and actually increase the threat of sexual assault against others, particularly children. FAC opposes a publicized registry of sex offenders and seeks to bring an end to the humiliation of people who have already paid for their crimes. FAC asserts that only by supporting justice for all people—offenders and victims alike can a truly safe society be built and secured for all Americans.
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