Those familiar with Southeast Florida know the city of Miami Beach is an Island. To get to Miami Beach from the city of Miami, visitors would take Interstate 195. I-195, which is also called the “Julia Tuttle Causeway”, is a 4.4-mile-long freeway comprised of a large bridge connecting Miami (in the west) to Miami Beach (in the east).

In 2005, Miami Beach Mayor David Dermer argued for and obtained a Sex Offender Residency Restriction, banishing anyone registered as a “sex offender” from living within 2500 feet of schools, parks, etc. With practically no place to live, registrants were forced out of Miami Beach, across the bridge into the City of Miami.

It was very soon after that Miami politicians, in an effort to block the forced exodus from Miami Beach into Miami, passed their own identical ordinance. Exiled from both Miami and Miami Beach, with nowhere to go in between other than the bridge between the two cities, that’s exactly where they went.

Within two years, over one hundred registered individuals were living under the Julia Tuttle Causeway bridge. Although it was not the largest forced colony of registrants (there are currently over 250 registrants living homeless along the railroad tracks in a Hialeah, FL warehouse district), because of Miami Beach’s vast tourism industry, it became the most famous.

Unfortunately it didn’t stop as a battle between Miami and Miami Beach for who could pass the harsher ordinance – thereby dispelling the non-favored from their community. One-by-one, adjacent cities began creating their own ordinances and eventually the entire County of Miami-Dade established a 2500 foot exclusion zone.

Unfortunately again, it didn’t stop in Miami-Dade, but spread to neighboring Broward County, where 97% of the county is now off-limits to registrants and over 25% of the registrants in the County are homeless.

It did not stop there. Today Sex Offender Residency Restrictions (SORRs) exist throughout Florida and in a number of states. It has nothing at all with a spread of sexual offending. That’s not happening at all. It exists because, what starts in one city, snowballs into neighboring cities as bordering legislators scramble to create their own ordinances to block the mass exodus of those dispelled from the originating city.

In Minnesota, this phenomenon is apparent by examining the number of municipalities that passed SORRs as time passed. The Twin Cities Pioneer Press published this list:

2006: Albertville, Taylors Falls

2009: Otsego, North Branch, Wyoming

2010: Cohasset, Cuyuna, Duluth, Moose Lake

2011: Chisago City, Grand Rapids, Lindstrom

2012: Proctor

2013: Askov, Brainerd, Finlayson, Linwood Township

2014: Cloquet, Eagle Lake, Mankato, Morristown, North Mankato, Rochester

2015: Birchwood Township, Brooklyn Center, Chisago County, Cleveland, Columbia Heights, Elysian, Grasston, Lake Crystal, Le Center, Mahtomedi, Mapleton, Minnesota Lake, Pine Island

2016: Ada, Andover, Anoka, Battle Lake, Big Lake, Blomkest, Clear Lake, Coon Rapids, Corcoran, Elizabeth, Fergus Falls, Hilltop, Lauderdale, Little Canada, Maple Grove, Mounds View, Ramsey, Rush City, Sandstone, South St. Paul, St. Francis, St. Michael, Wabasha, Watertown, West St. Paul, Willmar

2017: Apple Valley, Cosmos, Dayton, Deephaven, Detroit Lakes, Excelsior, Farmington, Greenwood, Hastings, Independence, Inver Grove Heights, Le Sueur, Le Sueur County, Maple Plain, New Prague, Newport, Orono, Pelican Rapids, Rockford, Rosemount, Shorewood, Tonka Bay

As time passed, more began to pass ordinances in order to avoid becoming dumping grounds. That means more individuals displaced, increased homelessness, increased separation from family and support systems, decreased access to social services and transportation, fewer employment opportunities… INCREASED recidivism.

Thankfully, lawsuits are being litigated across the United States pushing back against these SORRs, which have been proven repeatedly to be ineffective. The ACLU represents us in a lawsuit against Miami-Dade. Where this all started. Trial is scheduled for 2018.

We hope to see this come full circle. Then, hopefully, sanity will snowball across the US.

 

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