A Bid to Toughen Stance on Sex Offenses

A proposal to severely restrict and monitor the movement of released sex offenders has led to a bitter deadlock in the Legislature and appears headed for the California ballot this fall.

The initiative would bar convicted offenders from living in many neighborhoods in California -- including most urban areas -- and require them to wear electronic tracking devices for life.

Supporters plan to submit more than 600,000 signatures to elections officials Tuesday for verification, well more than the 373,816 needed. All sides expect the initiative to qualify for the November ballot, giving California voters their first chance to weigh in on how to handle sex offenders.

If approved, the Sexual Predator Punishment and Control Act, also known as Jessica’s Law, would increase prison terms for many crimes, including possession of child pornography and Internet luring, and ensure that child rapists spend at least 25 years behind bars.

“It’s the broadest change of sexual predatory laws in the nation,” said Sen. George Runner (R-Lancaster), who sponsored the initiative with his wife Sharon, a Republican assemblywoman.

But the efficacy of several provisions is doubted by Democratic legislators, rape victim advocates, prosecutors in Iowa and therapists who treat offenders. That state banned sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of schools, a central element of the California initiative.

“It didn’t take us very long in attempting to enforce the law to learn that it has nothing to do with the safety of children,” said Corwin Ritchie, executive director of the Iowa County Attorneys Assn., which represents the state’s prosecutors.

California critics complain that the broad changes would fail to differentiate between the worst offenders and ones who, though their crimes were heinous, are unlikely to molest again. These critics say it would be a reckless diversion of police time and taxpayer money to treat all sex offenders as if they were roaming insatiable predators preying on strangers. According to the state attorney general’s office, most molesters know their victims, and in half the cases molester and victim are related.

“There’s public hysteria around sex offenders and children, but it doesn’t acknowledge the fact that many of the sex offenders have never perpetrated violence against children,” said Robert Coombs, a spokesman for the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault, which represents 66 rape crisis centers.

Coombs said the initiative “also fails to acknowledge that the majority of sexual violence against children occurs in the home, in which case electronic tracking] doesn’t help.”

But many law enforcement officials say dramatic new laws are needed to respond to atrocious crimes such as the rape and murder of 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford by a registered sex offender in Florida in 2005. Her death prompted tougher laws in that state and spurred California’s campaign.

“I know just in the city I work in, we have a big problem with kids walking back and forth to school and people trying to drive up alongside of them and poach them in some way and say, ‘Hey, get in the car,’ ” said Scott Currie, a Corona police detective and a past president of the California Sexual Assault Investigators’ Assn., which supports Jessica’s Law.

Republican efforts in the California Legislature to pass a law similar to Florida’s have failed, done in by partisanship, accusations and jockeying prompted by the possible political stakes in the fall elections, when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and 100 of 120 legislators are up for reelection. Republicans believe -- and Democrats fear -- that the initiative’s presence on the fall ballot could be a boon to the GOP.

“I think there’s certain issues that Republicans have interest in, like public safety,” Schwarzenegger said in August when he endorsed the legislative version of Jessica’s Law and said that if it did not pass, he would support the initiative. “Then there’s other issues that the Democrats have more interest in.”

With more than a dozen states considering variations of the law, the issue has received attention on conservative talk radio and television’s Fox News Channel for weeks. One Fox host, Bill O’Reilly, has devoted several shows to it and is selling pro-Jessica’s Law window decals and bumper stickers.

Nonetheless, California’s Democratic-dominated Legislature rejected the GOP bills last month. They are in the process of passing alternatives that toughen some punishments and parole rules but, they say, do not treat all sex offenders as deserving equal vigilance.

Republicans, frustrated that the Democrats resisted changes until the initiative became a political threat, have refused to endorse the Democratic alternatives.

Politics have been particularly personal during the fights. In the longest floor battle in the Assembly all year, two lawmakers spoke of their own molestations and legislators debated extensively over how much pornography warranted prosecution and how much smut could fit on a computer disk.

Republicans repeatedly called Democratic lawmakers “pro-criminal.” That led one Democrat, Juan Arambula of Fresno, to invite critics to “meet me outside,” presumably not for conversation.

Perhaps the most contested provision in the initiative would ban offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park. Local governments would be able to add additional prohibited sites, such as child-care centers.

In Iowa, many sex offenders, banned from entire communities through a similar law, ultimately ended up in isolated motels outside of towns, far from their probation and parole supervisors and treatment, said Ritchie of the prosecutors group.

He said that because residency was defined as where a person sleeps, some registered offenders would not move, but would simply drive to highway rest stops at night to sleep in order to comply with the law. Still others stopped reporting where they lived to the state’s sex offender registry. Prosecutors are now trying to repeal the law.

“Our members run for election,” Ritchie said. “They’re prosecutors. They’re not sympathetic to sex offenders. But we also understand that we’re wasting resources.”

Starting this year, California barred high-risk sex offenders from living within half a mile of schools. But that applies to fewer than 1,000 convicts; the initiative would apply to all 85,000 registered sex offenders.

Even some supporters of Jessica’s Law, such as Currie, say it may not work as planned. Currie, who emphasized that he was speaking only on behalf of the sexual investigators group, said, “Is the distance so far that it excludes the offenders from most cities and towns? If the answer is yes, where do they go? Do they go out in the middle of the Southern California desert, where there’s less law enforcement manpower to keep track of them?”

Another contentious component of the initiative would require all sex offenders to wear global positioning tracking devices from the time of their release until death.

San Diego County Dist. Atty. Bonnie Dumanis said 80 high-risk offenders in her county have been outfitted with such devices as part of a pilot program. She said law enforcement officials have been alerted eight times that the convicts were venturing into prohibited areas.

“In one case, he was moments away from the victim he had victimized before when the police were able to rearrest him because of the GPS monitor,” she said.

But the cost of applying such devices statewide to all released offenders is unclear, in large part because there is a legal disagreement about whether sex offenders who have already concluded parole would have to comply under the initiative.

The nonpartisan legislative analyst’s office estimates that within 10 years the initiative could cost an extra $200 million annually for electronic monitoring devices and extra parole officers needed to follow up on alerts.

“It costs an awful lot of money and it’s going to have virtually no effect,” said Ron Kokish, spokesman for the California Coalition on Sexual Offending, a group of treatment providers, public defenders and probation officers.

Despite what the attention to the issue might seem to indicate, sex crimes in California are on the decline. Although all adult felony arrests increased by nearly 16% between 1999 and 2004, forcible rape arrests dropped by nearly 23% and the number of all other sex felonies remained relatively flat, according to the attorney general’s office.

Although there is strong evidence that the worst sex offenders are likely to molest again, sex offenders overall are slightly less likely than other offenders to violate their parole and be returned to prison, according to California Department of Corrections records. Fifty percent of sex offenders released from prison in 2001 were returned within three years, while 59.2% of all offenders returned.

But advocates of the initiative say child molestation is too odious to be reduced to statistics.

“If you’ve ever sat across the table from a child and listened as they tell their stories of what someone has done to them, it becomes extremely important,” Currie said. “I think we should do whatever we can to protect kids.”

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Sex crimes decline

Although total adult felony arrests rose in California between 1999 and 2004, felony sex arrests fell.

*--* Year Forcible rape Other sex felonies All felonies 1999 2,491 7,742 399,433 2000 2,355 7,597 395,743 2001 2,386 7,750 408,684 2002 2,207 7,811 425,825 2003 2,155 7,766 446,203 2004 1,926 7,682 462,910 % change -22.7% -0.8% +15.9%

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Source: California attorney general