Sunday’s story by The News-Journal’s Lyda Longa, Frank Fernandez and John Gallas seemed a particularly apt table-setter for Halloween: Two seedy motels in Volusia County cater exclusively to registered sex offenders.

The immediate reaction is to recoil in horror as if overturning a rock and discovering a nest of creepy-crawlers. The next is to worry about public safety.

However, housing sex offenders openly and collectively, where they can be monitored and the public is made aware of the situation, can be a more effective strategy in dealing with them post-prison than attempts to banish them from society.

The key is to be transparent about it.

That wasn’t the case with two properties owned by Julie Martin: an unnamed motel at 3753 W. International Speedway Blvd. and the Sunrise Motel at 1108 W. Canal St., near New Smyrna Beach. The name of the motels’ owner and their tax and purchase information had been kept “confidential” by Volusia County Property Appraiser Morgan Gilreath for the past four years by request of a Daytona Beach correctional probation specialist who worked for the Florida Department of Corrections.

Gilreath acquiesced because he agreed that Martin “is at risk by some of the people she rents to and people who won’t like what she’s doing.” However, those property records aren’t exempt from state public records laws. To Gilreath’s credit, he released the records when The News-Journal formally requested them.

The appraiser acknowledged, “In retrospect, we probably should not have done it.” Indeed.

The motels’ clientele isn’t a secret, though. Volusia County deputies notify residents of the surrounding areas when a new sex offender starts renting a room. The addresses of the offenders are also listed on the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s website. That arms the public with the knowledge to treat the motels like it would a box of snakes.

Yet, as skin-crawling as it is to have so many offenders — including sexual predators — concentrated in one area, that’s preferable to having them scattered and undetected, which has been the unintended consequence of popular laws that restrict where convicted sex offenders live.

Like many other states, Florida prohibits registered sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of schools, day care centers, playgrounds and other places where children congregate. Many cities have expanded those zones; Deltona in 2006 was among the first to ban certain sex offenders and predators from living within 2,500 feet of designated areas.

As those forbidden zones expand, sex offenders who have served their time behind bars find it more difficult to reintegrate into society, as they have fewer places to live and work. As a result, some offenders are forced to live on the streets or in wooded areas, or far away from rehabilitative services they need. Worst of all, some go underground and can no longer be monitored by law enforcement.

If offenders cannot be trusted to be released back into society, then the solution is to keep them incarcerated by increasing their sentences up front rather than banishing them through zoning. Perhaps the next best method, though, is to house them in group homes, which are essentially what Martin’s motels are. Law enforcement can keep track of them, and the public knows where the potential dangers lie and can take appropriate precautions.

 

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