Banishment zones for those on the sex offense registry are euphemistically known as ‘residency restrictions.’ In 2015, the top court in Massachusetts struck down such local banishment schemes and, in its ruling, gave them a Bronx cheer: “Except for the incarceration of persons under the criminal law and the civil commitment of mentally ill or dangerous persons, the days are long since past when whole communities of persons, such Native Americans and Japanese-Americans may be lawfully banished from our midst.” The Marshall Project’s Maurice Chammah digs into all this, have a look. –Bill Dobbs
The Marshall Project & The Texas Observer | Oct. 5, 2016
Making the Case Against Banishing Sex Offenders
Legislators won’t touch the subject, but courts are proving more sympathetic.
By Maurice Chammah
Excerpts: Mary Sue Molnar estimates that she gets at least five calls a week from Texans on the sex offender registry who can’t find a place to live. Numerous towns around the state have passed ordinances prohibiting those on the list from residing within a certain distance — anywhere from 500 to 3,500 feet — of a school, park, daycare facility or playground. In some towns, that’s almost everywhere. “We’ve got people living in extended-stay motels,” says Molnar, who runs the sex-offender-rights group Texas Voices for Reason and Justice. “We’re in a crisis mode.”
Restrictions on where registered sex offenders can work, live, and visit vary widely from state to state and city to city. Over the last few years, Molnar and her counterparts in other states have come to the same conclusion: Politicians aren’t going to help them.
So the activists have taken the route favored by other politically unpopular groups and turned to the legal system, where they are more likely to encounter judges insulated from electoral concerns. Their legal claims vary, but in numerous cases, reformers have argued that these restrictions associated with registration add up to a sort of second sentence, and that they are defined in a vague way that makes them difficult to abide by.
Their legal strategies are proving effective. This past August, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated a Michigan law that retroactively applied various restrictions to people convicted before the laws were passed. Judge Alice Batchelder wrote that the law “has much in common with banishment and public shaming.”
MORE:
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/10/05/making-the-case-against-banishing-sex-offenders
The Texas Observer has co-published this story:
The Texas Observer | Oct. 5, 2016
Making the Case Against Banishing Sex Offenders
Legislators won’t touch the subject, but courts are proving more sympathetic.
By Maurice Chammah
MORE:
https://www.texasobserver.org/sex-offenders-law-change-molnar/
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