IL: An impossible situation
Beginning January 1, the City of Chicago will ban unhoused people on the sex offense registry from seeking shelter on public buses and trains.
Terrance has followed the same routine for years. Once a week, he leaves his family around 7 AM and drives to the Second District police station, a rectangular, two-story building of beige bricks at 51st and Wentworth in Chicago’s Fuller Park neighborhood. Inside, he joins a handful of other people sitting on worn wooden benches in the dimly lit waiting area. After a time, he steps up to meet a detective behind the front desk and hands over a white sheet of paper on which he’s written the address of every place he stayed the previous week.
Terrance, who asked to use only his first name for his safety, is homeless—but not because he doesn’t have a place to stay. He could be living at home with his wife of two years, but the state’s amalgamation of housing banishment laws has made vast swaths of Chicago illegal for him and hundreds of others similarly situated. A sex offense conviction from more than 15 years ago means he’s barred from living within five hundred feet of a school, playground, or day care.
Terrance is meticulous; anything less could spell disaster. If he misses a single week or transcribes even one address incorrectly, he could be hauled off to jail on the spot and charged with a new felony. “It’s a life-and-death situation,” he says. By law, he can’t stay at the same address more than twice in one year, otherwise he’d have to register it as a “temporary residence.” This means he has to find 183 different places to stay annually.
Yet, beginning January 1, he and the rest of the city’s weekly registrants will have even fewer options for shelter as Chicago plunges into the depths of winter. The Chicago Police Department (CPD) is planning to enforce a policy that bars people with sex offense convictions from riding public transit for more than two hours at a time, say multiple registrants and advocates in interviews with the Reader. The change, the latest in a constantly shifting landscape of rules governing nearly every aspect of the lives of people with sex offense convictions.
Chicago – Sex Offender Homeless Flyer
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How can you legally restrict public transportation? Despite someone’s prior offense? Wouldn’t it be a violation of the freedom of movement clause? This just goes to show that states are trying to mandate laws, that are designed to throw us in jail indefinitely. There’s no other way to explain it. It’s clearly easy to see.
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.
From Wikipedia :
Cruel, inhuman (inhumane) or degrading treatment (CIDT) is treatment of persons which is contrary to human rights or dignity, but is not classified as torture. It is forbidden by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the United Nations Convention against Torture and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.[1][2][3][4] Although a distinction between torture and CIDT is maintained from a legal point of view, medical and psychological studies have found that this distinction is virtually nonexistent from a psychological point of view, and that people subjected to CIDT experience the same consequences as survivors of torture.[5] Based on this research, some practitioners have recommended abolishing the distinction.[6]
Inhuman treatment
The Equality and Human Rights Commission defines inhuman treatment as:[7]
serious physical assault
psychological interrogation
cruel detention conditions or restraints
physical or psychological abuse in a healthcare setting
threatening to torture someone…..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruel,_inhuman_or_degrading_treatment
And exactly how can they enforce this? Will there be a police officer on every bus that compares a list of sex offenders to every person who boards that bus? Then if they get a match, set a timer? What if they are in-between stops and the timer hits zero? Does that police officer force the driver to stop and then force the RSO to get off? Or are they relying on (the often unreliable) face recognition software? And if it gets a match, does it start its own timer? Lets be real – its one thing to pass an ordinance and/or law but it entirely another thing to enforce it. This absurdity definitely falls under the “impossible to enforce” category.
Sad to see this. What malice. This feels like another law passed with only that and no facts.
This is a ruse to get more people back in jail and prisons. Pretty soon there will not be a place left in the United states of confusion for us to live. Their goal is to get us all back in the system where we can never petition to be released from the registry.
And please, please, if you are removed, do not move to another state because I have seen so many get removed, then move to another state, only to be place on that state’s registry.
As this year comes to a close, we are all wondering what 2026 has in store for us, both bad and good for our futures. Stay safe and survive, if not for yourself, then for your loved ones who have stood by our sides all these years, even when most have shunned us.
I was convicted in Illinois and staying there was an absolute nightmare. Smartest thing I ever did was get the hell out of Illinois. Do research on the registration laws in other states first because you will find many states have different laws for registration based on in-state and out-of-state convictions. I lived in Minnesota for five years and as far as registration requirements go it was a paradise – zero residency restrictions, an annual mail in update, and yes, you got a 90 day visit from police but they were very polite and professional. I mean one called me and asked if it was a good time to stop by! THEY ASKED FOR PERMISSION TO CHECK ON ME!! It blew my mind! And for the record, I am on life time registration.