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http://floridaactioncommittee.org/loopholes-cast-doubt-on-effectiveness-of-sex-offender-laws-in-volusia-cities/
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PORT ORANGE — Registered sex offender David Allen Hall lives 2,112 feet from Spruce Creek Elementary School.
He and other offenders who have served their sentences have been the targets in recent months of politicians including the Port Orange City Council who have enacted new regulations in the name of safety. Port Orange expanded its requirement for sex offenders to live further than 2,500 feet from schools, day-care centers and playgrounds, while in March Gov. Rick Scott signed a package of bills tightening penalties and prison sentences for sex offenders and South Daytona became the 10th city in Volusia County to increase living restrictions for sex offenders.
Yet Hall – who served 14 years for lewd or lascivious assault upon a child, a second-degree felony in 1996, after he was found guilty of molesting a 7-year-old child he was baby-sitting in New Smyrna Beach — remains in his home. Because of exemptions in local and state regulations, Hall can live anywhere he wants and believes that he should have that right. He said he has undergone rehabilitation and is trying to get his life back together, but the politicians’ efforts have only served to complicate those efforts.
“I just want to have a normal life like everyone else,” Hall said. “I’m not a risk to anyone.”
Some criminal justice advocates and researchers concur that recent law changes targeting sex offenders are costly to taxpayers and make it harder for ex-convicts to re-enter society and become productive citizens.
“This legislation is not based on research; it’s based on fear and political advantage,” said University of Miami Law Professor Tamara Rice Lave. “When legislators are passing laws, they are competing against each other to show who is toughest on crime and are choosing sex offenders because they are vilified.”
LIMITS TO THE LAW
After Port Orange residents discovered that Howard Thomas Porter, a sex offender convicted of distributing child pornography, was living across the street from Sugar Mill Elementary School earlier this year, the City Council adopted an emergency ordinance to require sex offenders to live at least 2,500 feet from child care facilities, schools, parks and playgrounds — 1,500 feet farther than state law requires.But Porter, like Hall and at least 21 other sex offenders in the city, can live wherever they want because state law exempts sex offenders convicted prior to 2003 in Florida and those convicted out of state before 2010. That means Porter, who was convicted by a New York court in 2004, could return to the duplex on McDonald Road. He moved to Jacksonville shortly after the ordinance passed, saying he was kicked out by his uncle who owned the duplex. Ordinances trying to close the exemption would likely face legal challenges, as would amending state law to apply statutes retroactively, officials said.
Port Orange Vice Mayor Don Burnette proposed requiring that red signs be placed on city-owned right of way outside the homes of sexual predators. Of the 64 sexual offenders living in Port Orange, four are sexual predators who have been convicted of first-degree felony sex crimes or two second-degree felony sex crimes.
