Ron Book, ‘Average homeless person lives 13 to 17 years fewer’
In an article on South Florida’s CBS4 News on vaccinating the homeless, Miami-Dade Homeless Trust Chair Ron Book made an interesting statement. “The average homeless person lives 13 to 17 fewer years than either you or I will live,” he said. 17 years is a lot of years. That’s more than 20% of the average lifespan in the US.
It got me thinking… If there are actual statistics to back up that statement, and we know there are studies to demonstrate that Sex Offender Residency Restrictions (SORRs) lead to homelessness, we have a causal connection between SORRs and a pretty significant lower life expectancy.
The government has been arguing for years that Florida Statute 775.215 (Residency restriction for persons convicted of certain sex offenses) as well as the myriad of County and local SORRs are not “punishment”. The primary rebuttal has been that SORRs are tantamount to common law banishment, which has historically been considered punishment. In many states that argument has prevailed, but no such luck in Florida.
But would being legislated into a consequence resulting in a reduced life expectancy constitute punishment? Untimely death is a “pain or loss”, isn’t it? Even prisoners (who are unquestionably being punished) have safeguards to protect against “non-punishments” that harm them. For example, when it comes to scientific research involving the use of inmates, 45 CFR §46.306 states that the research can involve “no more than minimal risk and no more than inconvenience to the subjects;”
… sure walks and quacks like a duck, huh?
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Derek is right on two points. Florida is an incredibly tough state in the courts and too many registrants are waiting for a messiah. Florida registrants can’t do much about the courts but if more registrants get off of the sidelines, you will see more results sooner.
“It’s an ambitious plan but Book hopes the entire homeless population can be vaccinated by early Summer.”
Did anyone think to ask him if that includes homeless registrants? Or if he’s screening for registrants when dolling out vaccines? Or which would he prefer, that homeless registrants die or live to continue being homeless and (presumably) miserable?
I’ve been on the registry for 24 years and I’m almost 50 years old. I’ve had to engage in contracting type manual labor as a self employed person now for almost 2O years in order to earn a steady and decent living.
In that time, I have:
1) Suffered a severe arm laceration and almost bled to death while working alone on an abandoned farm.
2) Broke my foot while moving a during an eviction. Thought it was initially a sprain. No health insurance and didn’t go to a Dr until forced to do so 2 YEARS LATER. Had a foot fusion surgery. Out of work 2 months.
3) I’ve suffered severe heat exhaustion on two occasions that had long lasting effects. Came very close to heat stroke.
4) Always have anxiety and some times panic attacks when on jobs out of fear for being on the registry.
4) My body itself is wearing out from all this hard work as I age.
Everything I have listed is an indirect result of me experiencing life long state sponsored character assassination by The State of Florida. And for the record, I have NEVER been convicted of a crime and have NEVER been to prison.
Douglas O, if you have ner been convicted of a crime, then why are you forced to register?
We (Florida) are blessed with the Book family. They live to make life harder for us.
Article written by Hallie Lieberman (NARSOL) about Janice Bellucci.
One day in 2011, Bellucci, a 67-year-old California attorney who spent most of her career in aerospace law, was talking to Frank Lindsay, a water treatment specialist who was fixing her home’s reverse osmosis system, when he mentioned that he had written a book. “Quite frankly,” she says, “reading his book changed my life.”
Bellucci found out that in 1979 Lindsay had committed a sex crime against a child under the age of 14, a crime for which he spent a year in jail, nearly all of it on weekends, thanks to a work furlough program. More than three decades later, he had not reoffended, but he was still subject to legal restrictions and potentially deadly threats. “A stranger broke into his home and tried to murder him because he was on the Megan’s Law website,” Bellucci says. “He escaped from his own house after being hit a couple times with a hammer. I just couldn’t believe that any group of people in our country today [was] being treated that way.”
On a sabbatical from her work at a California nonprofit, Bellucci couldn’t get the sex registry out of her mind. “This issue kept popping up, kind of like a jack-in-the-box,” she says. “And finally I sat down with myself, and I said, ‘Why did I go to law school?’ It was the movie To Kill a Mockingbird, and the character Atticus Finch. I’m like, ‘What would Atticus do?’” The answer seemed obvious to her.
Bellucci initially tried to interest the American Civil Liberties Union of California in the issue. “They basically said [they couldn’t help] because they’re afraid that if they became known as sex offender attorneys, their funding would disappear, which I think is a very cowardly position,” she says.
Bellucci’s children were adults, she was unmarried, and she decided she could “do anything I want to do.” So she founded the Alliance for Constitutional Sex Offender Laws (ACSOL). To this day, a needlepoint of “What Would Atticus Do?” sits on her desk, next to a Ruth Bader Ginsburg action figure.
Like many in the movement, Bellucci believes sex offender restrictions are unconstitutional. As a lawyer, she could do something about that, but she did not have a lot of resources. So she and the few early members of ACSOL decided to go after “low-hanging fruit”: Halloween-related restrictions in California.
In Simi Valley, Bellucci learned, sex offenders were required to post signs on their front doors during Halloween, alerting neighbors that they were on the registry and warning trick-or-treaters to stay away. She sued the city, arguing that the requirement was a form of compelled speech prohibited by the First Amendment. She won.
The Halloween signs are a good example of sex offender policies that have no basis in fact. A 2009 analysis of 67,000 sex crimes against children committed by people other than their relatives, reported in the journal Sexual Abuse, found “no increased rate on or just before Halloween.” The researchers concluded that “these findings raise questions about the wisdom of diverting law enforcement resources to attend to a problem that does not appear to exist.” . . . .
Bellucci wants the registry to be based on science and reason. But that’s hard to accomplish, she says, because when people “hear the term sex offenders, they just panic. They’re thinking of the worst sexual assault that you can ever think of.” It is therefore difficult for them “to absorb new information or to analyze the information that’s in their brain.”
To combat that emotional response, Bellucci assures people that “we believe all children should be safe. We’re not here to unleash a bunch of sexual predators on the public.” Her message, she says, is that “the registry gives people a false sense of security,” because “they’re looking in the wrong direction,” given that “more than 90 percent of the perpetrators are not on the registry.”
Bellucci is admired by other reformers because she didn’t join the movement to defend her brother or father or child; she did it because she saw an injustice. “The fact that she doesn’t have what we call ‘skin in the game’ [makes her] more amazing,” says Vicki Henry, president of Women Against the Registry (WAR).
So, it’s not punishment…when I was a kid and I did something wrong and my Mom called me into the house I knew I was going to be punished.
When I go in to report the truth to the registration police I get the same feeling that I got from standing in front of Mom….I have made mistakes and didn’t get punished , yet. That’s how I feel when I get to walk out of the Sheriff’s office….I feel lucky that I was able to walk away from there.
It does no good to defend with civility those to threaten out families with deadly force. The answer is clear choose your own path.