A story in today’s Naples Daily News titled, “How to prevent bad actors from slipping into your community under radar” written by some hack condominium attorney is a prime example of fear mongering.
The point of the story is to prevent persons required to register as sex offenders from moving into communities or how to kick them out once they are in. They write, “…Bingo, you now have a registered sex offender or convicted felon living in your community long-term. Once they are in, it can then be very difficult to get them removed from the community as long as there is no evidence they are breaking the community’s rules or regulations.”
Maybe the Naples Daily News could use an education on the fact that persons required to register have a lower rate of recidivism than any other criminal category? Or, that 95%+ of sexual assaults are convicted by someone not on the registry?
Perhaps we should educate them! If anyone cares to they can comment on their news story or email the paper at [email protected]
I believe there are two parts to this the first is the fact that discrimination was allowed in housing by the Jim Crow laws in plain terms it allowed communitys to set up zones, where classes of people were not allowed to live. they did this through city ordinances, County laws, they also controlled the real estate agents so that they would not show houses to certain people in certain zones and there was also some of the banks that would not loan money to buy houses within certain zones, this ended with the Jim Crow laws being declared unconstitution al. It wasn’t just African Americans that were affected by this Latinos and Asians were also exempt from living in certain parts of towns. Any form of discrimination against a class of people in housing is illegal and unconstitution al.. Now Understand that felons are a quasi-class and are provided these protections against discrimination .
The second part is the fact that this is in fact not only unconstitution al it is in fact illegal and this attorney offering this advice has opened himself up to having federal charges filed against him for conspiracy to deprive someone of their constitutional rights and anybody that follows these advices also opens themselves up to conspiracy to deprive someone of their constitutional rights. Putting something into a documentation that attempts to discriminate against another person by forcing them to give up one constitutional right to receive another one is a crime and by also by placing it in their contracts they have shown the intent to discriminate against a subclass of American citizens that is people with felony convictions. Also opens them up to be in charge with a felony under USC title 18 section 241 – 243
Homeowners associations can control the way a person uses their yard, the types of trees that can be planted, decorations that can be put out, how many cars you can own etc. but they cannot use their power to discriminate against anyone. this needs to be driven home to these people and the BAD ACTOR involved in HOAs need to be sued and imprisoned. When they’re put on the other side of the fence with the rest of us then they’ll start to understand.
Thank You will . I know you are entirely correct. There is a systematic cover up to hide the accurate statistics for political reasons. The question is how do we get this corrected?
I just posted my comments at the Naples Daily News on this article. They are only giving me 6 more free articles and then expect me to divvy up $9.99/month. Yuck!
Question for FAC: I keep reading at FAC that citizens on the registry are less likely to reoffend than any other criminal category. I thought I read somewhere that murderers actually had the lowest recidivism rate. Am I incorrect?
You are correct, Sarah. Murderers are lower but have longer sentences – many life.
Time for a reality check murderers do not have subcategories the re-offense rate for somebody with a murder conviction involved in another murder is around 1.7%
But registrants have all types of subcategories too many people rely on the Department of Justice studies that only look at 2 subcategories of registrants rapist and sexual assault, there are many other subcategories that are not included in those studies thereby the Department of Justice study is a bogus study when looking at the reconviction rate for people on the registry. that’s like saying let’s look at the safety of American cars and only evaluating the Corvair and the Pinto. Almost all of the studies that are out there rather they are looking at people coming out of prison or they are looking at people in treatment programs should be considered as limited or bogus study in that they do not look at the entire registry. The two evaluations of the entire registry have been limited to two states and they have shown a re-offense rate of 6/10 of 1% and less thereby being less than people with murder convictions in plain terms registered citizens have the lowest reconviction rate of any criminal class. There has been enough information and documentation placed on the front page of SOSEN.org to prove this information is this true all you have to do is read some of the older articles.
Done!
I hope they respond.
I read the lawyer’s article and noticed her gives short shrift to the scenario where a RC has lived in a condo or other HOA community before the community changes its standards (ie being grandfathered in). He also fails to discuss the fiduciary duties that condo and HOA board members have, and that breaching those duties by changing rules and trying to seek revocation of property rights could (and most likely would) put the board members in legal jeopardy for breaching g fiduciary duties.
What stinks is that you still have to pay HOA dues which will in turn go towards the attorney they have to retain to try and oust you.
Luckily for me I don’t have a SAG card, I’m not an actor at all 😀
Everyone has a right to live somewhere but more and more ordinances make it nearly impossible to find a place. Then you have to deal with that ONE nosy busy body neighbor who takes it upon themselves to go door to door to inform everyone about me. Luckily 85% of my neighbors likes me and the majority wins.
Pasco Co Detective Anderson asked my Ladlord how come he lets a Sex Offender live there. My Landlord replied, im got stuck with him. Ture in the sense I cant go anywhere, i cant move anywhere. In spite of not being on any paper for twenty years. Beings I commuted the crime labeled Sex Offense. The state has assured that i never have relations with anybody again.
In addition to what I just said:
Playing on people’s fears is much more likely to result in harm. The most logical and mature thing to do is to face and deal with reality. Shame on him for taking advantage of people’s vulnerabilities, for self serving purposes. He’s a lawyer looking for business, and he’s come up with a creative way to make more business by playing on people’s fears to encourage them to use his services. He and other lawyers would be the only ones benefiting from something like that.
Does anybody remember the 2004 movie “The Village”? This is what this reminds me of. The movie is about how families of victims of violence, who had met in a support group, created an exclusive community, separated from the rest of the real world, in order to keep themselves and their families safe. They created an elaborate plan to fool the children born into those families into believing something extremely ridiculous, to keep them from ever leaving that small community. The goal was to always keep them safe. They even had the local police in on their plan. They lived like this for many years, thinking they were safe from violent crime, until one of “their own” did exactly what they were living in fear of. He committed murder, killing one of their other own. The moral of the story was that they had gone to these extremes to keep themselves and their families safe from violence, and they actually had it in what was supposed to be their “safe” community.
As the saying goes, “What you fear most, you create.”
I Went ahead and E-mailed this moron:
To whom it may concern,
I am a former and retired Investigator for the State of Florida. I am very disappointed in your lack of knowledge as far as registered citizens are concerned. All your article does is create paranoia and misstates empirical evidence. You are obviously uninformed about individual’s who have perhaps make a single mistake in their lives and would like to move on, but because of individual’s with your mindset and misinformation can not. I would be glad to provide you with REAL and empirical evidence that refutes your ridiculous and poorly written Article. Everyone deserves a second chance in life and it’s individual’s like you that prevent that, that I am sorry for. Stay well.
Concerned Citizen.
sent to naples daily news:
And praytell, what is a bad actor?
Is it a young man who dated and perhaps later married a young 17 year old sweetheart? Is it someone who visited an adult dating service and was entrapped to go visit a young underage girl who was in fact a sheriff’s deputy waiting to arrest him? Was it a young man who believed a young woman who stated she was 18 when she was not?
Not all Sex Offenders [SO] are Jeff Einstein. He was an SO, certainly a bad actor as well. But most SO are not predators. They are individuals who perhaps made a mistake, if one considers being 19 and having sex with a younger girl friend a mistake. A mistake maybe; a crime, I tend to doubt it. These individuals were arrested, many of them with no victim, tried, convicted and served their time. They paid their debt to society, questionable as some of the debts may be.
Why are they being further punished with fear-mongering articles such as “How to prevent bad actors from slipping into your community under radar?” There is a name for this fear-mongering tactic, it is called ex post facto punishment and our constitution has declared it illegal.
I could understand the purpose of the article if it actually protected the community, but it does not fulfill that purpose. Why not? Because the community does not need protection from a vast majority of these people
Scholarly papers and peer-reviewed studies have shown several things about convicted SO. Primary findings indicate that recidivism rates among SO are in the 3-5% range. Only convicted murderers have a lower recidivism rate than SO. Courts are paying attention and have concluded that the registries are not effective in accomplishing what they set out to do. Michigan’s SO registry has been declared unconstitutional because of ex post facto considerations.
Most individuals who commit sex crimes against young children are not even registered, they are most often individuals who are known to the family and who use this acquaintance to the family to access the children. They are not the “bad actors” on some register, nor are they individuals lurking at a park waiting to pounce on a victim [the fabled stranger danger]. They are teachers, medical trainers for olympic athletes and other individuals we read about in the papers. The families actually bring the victims to them! They are generally first time offenders, not individuals conveniently pre-registered on some “bad actor” list.
Collateral victims of “bad actor” lists are family members of the convicted individuals. Because of “bad actor” lists, SO have difficulty finding a place to live, eg Miami-Dade. They are often unable to reside with their families. Scholarly Studies show that individuals who are reunited with family, have lower recidivism rates than those who are homeless. Individuals are suing states at this time because they cannot attend their children’s school functions because they are on a “bad actor” list. Often their “crimes” occurred decades prior, when they were 19 and being intimate with the woman who is now the mother of their children. The amazing thing is, decades later, they are still on the list!
We need less of fear-mongering and more facts about SO. They are not the “bad actors” we fear, they are individuals who have paid their debt to society and deserve the second chances we would desire for our own transgressions, whatever they may be.
There has been a lot of talk the last few days about the 60 minutes report about what Germany has accomplished because of there way of rehabilitating criminals in prison. Preparing them for civilian life. Connecticut has implemented a lot of the program. Kansas and Missouri are looking at it very seriously. On a discussion on radio they had a representative from Germany plus Mayors from a few City’s and a therapist that helped implement the program there. It all sounded ok until one of them made the comment ,”it would work very well on all except sex offenders “ . What is going on here?
Pose this question to them: You have two neighbors, one is a registered citizen, the other is not… which one is more likely to commit a sex offense?