The Safety & Justice Task Force has been formed to help bring Florida’s justice system into the 21st Century with improved public safety, fairness, and accountability.
The members are:
- State Attorney Andrew Warren, Chair (Hillsborough County/Tampa)
- Public Defender Carlos Martinez (Miami-Dade County/Miami)
- Sheriff Walt McNeil (Leon County/Tallahassee)
- Marcia Brown, Executive Director, Teen Leaders of America (Duval County/Jacksonville)
- Asha Terminello, MS; Chief Executive Officer; ACTS, the Agency for Community Treatment Services (Hillsborough County/Tampa)
These people need to be educated so that they can make data-driven decisions. Their report will come out some time this summer.
Contact information:
Mr. Andrew Warren 419 Pierce St Tampa, FL 33602 Mr. Carlos J. Martinez 1320 NW 14th Street Miami, Florida 33125 305-545-1600 [email protected] Sheriff Walt McNeil Leon County Sheriff’s Office P. O. Box 727 Tallahassee, FL 32302 850-606-3300 [email protected] Marcia Brown 13720 Old St. Augustine Rd, #8-123 Jacksonville, FL 32258 904-419-8336 Asha Terminello 4612 N 56th St. Tampa, FL 33610 813-246-4899 SOURCE
James, your Psychology Today article gives a link to a study showing a 13.7% sexual recidivism rate. When I go to the study, though, I have to purchase it to be able to read it. Is there another source where I can get directly to that information that is legal?
I’ve wondered if setting up a meeting with a board member living near a registrant would be effective. Maybe bring a loved one telling them face to face what it’s like to live under the registry and the laws surrounding it. Could it cast some doubt? Can’t make an omelette without cracking an egg otherwise you’ll be beating an empty bowl.
I don’t have the time to write to every person, but I felt the need to write the sheriff on this matter:
Dear Sheriff McNeil,
I wanted to write you today in regard to your participation in the newly created Safety and Justice Task force. As a member of law enforcement, you bring an important perspective as you and those who serve the public with you are the boots on the ground and have more direct knowledge of the struggles with crime in our communities.
In reading the 2021 strategic plan, I commend you for working to build more trust in the community and also for your goal to be more data driven in addressing crime. It is on these two goals I wanted to share a perspective. In the past decade, there has been a staggering increase in the number of people who have been convicted of breaking our nation’s laws. With almost one third of citizens having a criminal record, we can no longer separate people into the “law abiding” and “criminal” buckets and consider the “criminals” as people who are disposable and unworthy of participation in society for the greater public good. We realized this when our nation’s prison populations were bursting at the seams over 10 years ago, and with sensible releases and other sentencing reforms, the trend in prison populations have been declining steadily since then. I don’t think anyone would disagree that returning people to their communities sooner was a bad thing in retrospect. We have to come up with other solutions to crime besides the brute force method of incarceration. It just doesn’t work to reduce crime in the long term. Rehabilitation and restoration has to be part of the solution for the vast majority of those who’ve broken the public trust. Many would call this reform, but I truly believe that this is nothing novel, but rather is in agreement with our founding principles and our nation’s Christian religious heritage.
If you are still with me at this point, then I would encourage you to leave aside any prejudicial feelings you may have toward a particular group of citizens which have broken our laws in the past and consider a different approach to engaging these members of our communities, with the hope of ultimately producing better citizens and therefore, better communities. For many, the term “sex offender” evokes revulsion, yet as a member of law enforcement, you know that thankfully few who bear this label have terrorized communities by snatching children off our streets and victimizing them. Rather, more than 9 out of 10 sexual assaults are committed by someone known to the victim (https://bjs.ojp.gov/nibrs/reports/sarble/sarble19). These are fathers, brothers, uncles, teachers, and friends. These are people we inherently trust. With the problem of sexual crime so rampant, can we really believe all of them are “monsters”? If so, how comfortable can we feel having over a million “monsters” living free in society today? That statistic alone should bear evidence to the fact that we’ve misunderstood why sexual crime happens and the nature of offending itself. Can we really consider a million people consigned to a life of public derision disposable? I would argue no, that we have to set a higher bar than hoping we can banish, GPS tag, or monitor our way out of this problem. I would argue that the same principles of rehabilitation and restoration must apply to these individuals as well, otherwise we will likely be forever entangled with a failed justice policy in which our community maps become an ever increasing sea of red pin dots where registrants live.
To be more data driven, you must be willing and open to all of the data. To that end, I would encourage you to consider that registration laws have only a small potential deterrent affect on the frequency of new sexual crime, as it is reported that 95% of sex crimes are committed by people not on a sex offender registry (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/protecting-children-sexual-abuse/201908/sex-offender-registries). Think of the resources your department commits to registration and registry enforcement. With 29 absconded individuals currently in your county alone, are you willing to commit the resources needed to track down all of these people to enforce what amounts to an administrative felony? If there was no registry, these people would be guilty of nothing, and sadly, all of this effort, statistically, will not likely prevent much future recidivism. A leading researcher in the field of sexual recidivism risk, Dr. Karl Hanson, who created the most commonly used risk assessment tool, the Static-99, has documented future recidivism risk in a study of over 7000 former offenders tracked over periods longer than 20 years. It may come as a surprise to you, but even individuals with an above average risk of reoffending have a recidivism risk lower than the desistence threshold after being 15 years offense-free in their communities (see https://youtu.be/9TtY6WyJNZM, timestamp 39:03). I highly encourage you to watch the entire video as there is a plethora of useful information you probably have never been exposed to in your law enforcement circles. To better partner with your communities, it’s so very important to hear perspectives outside of your “tribe”. Please do the community you serve the benefit of listening to every voice, not just those with the most influence or who are the most vehement.
Thank you for your time. Be blessed!
This is great, you can always cc all the others.
James,
What a wonderful letter. Are so welcome post, you made great points, and I believe that you cut the sheriffs attention.
Here’s the big question James, how much of your leather can I plagiarize? Lol?
The facts speak for themselves. I don’t care if you copy it verbatim. Let the truth speak!
Hey James,
Well said. With your permission, I would like to use this to contact the others. On your behalf or mine, whichever you prefer. I intend to snail mail, for a more personal touch.
Please do!
Excellent, James. Please send this to all of the task force members. That is what I am doing — I want all members to read what I send.
Would be glad to mail them directly. Do you have a materials suggestion?
I would be glad to email them. Please send points i should make besides the violation so law are to the constitution
I will post some ideas soon.