[Editor: In 2005, a total of 414 fatalities among children age 14 and younger occurred in crashes involving alcohol. (source: stopthemaddness.org). Now, a Michigan State Legislator, David Law, also convicted in 2005 of drunk driving, wants to expand Michigan's Sex Offender Registry to include those convicted of sex crimes before 1995 in the interest of "child safety". Apparently, he accords greater danger to those (now adult) men who, when 18 years old, were convicted of having sex with 17 year olds sometime before 1995, than he does to himself.
However, statistics are clearly not on his side. Fewer than 40 children are murdered by a sex offender every year (source: U.S. Department of Justice) while, as cited above, many hundreds of children are killed every year by drunk drivers. If David Law wanted to make a contribution to reducing childhood victims of violent crime, then perhaps he should try implementing a public registry of drunk drivers or (to be more commensurate with sanctions taken against sex offenders) have their driver's licenses revoked for life. At a minimum, assign them orange license plates with the words "DRUNK DRIVER" appearing in place of "GREAT LAKES" ]
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Lansing State Journal
One state legislator is trying to debunk the theory that Michigan's sex offender registry is a comprehensive list of dangerous predators.
Offenders convicted before 1995 aren't required to register.
State Rep. David Law, R-Commerce Township, wants to change that.
He said sex crimes against minors left an imprint on him during his time working at the Oakland County prosecutor's office.
Law's bill would require some individuals convicted on or before Oct. 1, 1995 to register. It would cover offenders who were 17 or older when they sexually assaulted a child under 13.
"This bill is not about further punishing sex offenders - this is a matter of public safety," Law said. "The recidivism statistics of the most heinous sex offenders pose a significant threat to public safety and our children."
According to the Michigan State Police, the intent of the registry is "to better assist the public in preventing and protecting against the commission of future criminal sexual acts by convicted sex offenders."
Offenders are required to register if they reside, work or live in the state and have been convicted of specific sex crimes. The registry is a public record and includes the individual's name, photo, crime, physical description, last known address and aliases.
Elizabeth Arnovits, executive director of the Michigan Council on Crime and Delinquency, said sex offender reporting laws may make people feel more secure, but accomplish little and make people less vigilant because they're lulled into a false sense of security.
Arnovits predicts the bill will pass.
Patricia Caruso, director of the Department of Corrections, said the recidivism rates for sex offenders are extremely low, but because sexual assault is such an emotional issue, the facts often are ignored.
According to Caruso, laws that require offenders to stay a minimum distance from playgrounds and other areas with children are "meaningless and ineffective" because less than 1 percent of sex crimes against minors are committed by strangers."
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Previous Reports On David Law's Drunk Driving:
Gregory Herbert is a writer with the Capitol News Service.
Michigan state representative gets fine, probation for drunken driving
October 28, 2005, 7:58 AM
BERKLEY, Mich. (AP) -- The trip home after Major League Baseball's All-Star game in Detroit will cost a state lawmaker and former prosecutor $986 and six months of probation.
Rep. David Law was sentenced Thursday in Berkley District Court after pleading guilty to a reduced charge of operating a motor vehicle while visibly impaired.
Law was charged July 13 with drunken driving after Berkley police stopped him for speeding on Woodward Avenue. Police measured his blood-alcohol level at 0.13 percent, above the legal limit of 0.08 percent.
The Republican from Oakland County's Commerce Township told Judge William Sauer that he was embarrassed to be standing in the courtroom and that such an offense would never happen again.
Sauer also assessed fines and fees, prohibited Law from buying or possessing alcohol and ordered him to enter an intervention program.
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Information from: The Oakland Press, http://www.theoaklandpress.com
http://stopthemaddness.org/cached1/20050285.html
Michigan state representative gets fine, probation for drunken driving
BERKLEY, Mich. The trip home after Major League Baseball's All-Star game in Detroit is costing a state lawmaker and former prosecutor 986 dollars and six months of probation.
Representative David Law -- a Republican from Oakland County's Commerce Township -- was sentenced yesterday in Berkley District Court. He pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of operating a motor vehicle while visibly impaired.
Law told the court that he was embarrassed to be standing in the courtroom and that such an offense would never happen again.
Law was charged July 13th with drunken driving after Berkley police stopped him for speeding on Woodward Avenue.
Copyright 2005 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071229/NEWS04/712290334/1005/news
Published December 29, 2007
More registers
• The bill proposed by state Rep. David Law, R-Commerce Township, would require some individuals convicted of sex offenses on or before Oct. 1, 1995 to register with authorities. It would cover offenders who were 17 or older when they sexually assaulted a child under 13.
• Right now, sex offenders convicted before 1995 aren't required to register.
• The bill is pending in the House Judiciary Committee.
More sex offenders required to register under bill
Gregory Herbert
Special to the State Journal
Michigan Lawmaker, A Convicted Drunk-Driver, Wants To Escalate Sex Offender Registration
Sex Offender Won't Pay School Tax
Hernando Today, KYLE MARTIN
SPRING HILL - When Stephen St. Laurent went to re-register as a sex offender Thursday, an informal chat at the sheriff's office set his mind to thinking.First he mulled over the growing restrictions against his kind: the limited jobs he can take, the bi-annual registration, the new stamp he'll get on his driver's license in February.The penalty for breaking some of the conditions means immediate imprisonment.Then it dawned on him. For the past nine years, almost half of his property tax bill has been dedicated towards the county's schools. If he can't have anything to do with children, does this violate state statute?
"They're trying every way they can to entrap a sex offender," St. Laurent said Friday.The answer was clear to him.When he sent in his $1,100 tax bill this week, it was $400 short. A clerk at the tax collector's office was quick to respond and phoned to say the check would be returned if he didn't pay the school tax.St. Laurent, 65, expects that. When the check shows up in the mail, he will march down to the courthouse and file a lawsuit against the county and state for fraud and discrimination.
He's prepared to take his fight to the U.S. Supreme Court.Tax Collector Juanita Sikes said roughly 5,000 people out of the 112,000 property owners in the county refuse to pay their taxes each year."It's a small percentage," she said.A lien is placed on the property if taxes aren't paid by the deadline, but citizens have about a two-year window to pony up.If the accrued interest and past taxes aren't paid in that time, the house is put on the auction block.St. Laurent has been a faithful taxpayer up until this point, Sikes noted.Occasionally, people will gripe about the school tax because they don't have any children attending classes.
St. Laurent said that's not the point.Those people can still visit the schools and see their taxpayer dollars at work. St. Laurent can't.The school district's safety and security director, Barry Crowley, confirms as much.Any sex offender who steps on a campus is trespassing. Parents who are sex offenders are given limited access to their children. For example, they can pick up their kids after school and attend parent/teacher conferences.
But even that access is closely guarded and if the parent's offense was a sexually violent crime against a child, permission to step onto school grounds is denied.St. Laurent was convicted of committing a lewd act in front of children when a pair of teenagers looked through his window and saw him masturbating. Like other sex offenders without children in school, St. Laurent is explicitly banned."There are no special allowances," Crowley said.The school tax portion of the bill is applied towards debt, the general fund and capital outlay. That includes operating costs, teacher's salaries, construction projects and textbooks.
St. Laurent has authored an autobiography about the isolation and treatment he has received with the label of sex offender. He sees the growing restrictions on sex offenders as a violation of the Eighth Amendment, which protects citizens against cruel and unusual punishment.The knee-jerk legislation and rules "have got to come to an end and maybe this is the way to do it," St. Laurent said of his protest. Full Story
Constitutionality of Sex Offender Law Challenged
TROY, OH, Dayton Daily News — Ohio's new Adam Walsh Act was challenged Friday in a Miami County court by lawyers arguing the law's reclassification of previously convicted sex offenders and new registration requirements for those offenders are unconstitutional.
Troy lawyer Jose Lopez filed injunction requests on behalf of six people in county Common Pleas Court and said he plans to file similar complaints for others Monday in Shelby and Auglaize counties.
The challenges are believed to be the first in Ohio against the law passed this summer by the Ohio General Assembly. ...
Previously, judges determined classification — sexually oriented offender, predator, etc. — after looking at a number of factors.
Lopez said he sees two "chief problems" with the new law. He said making the law retroactive changes the penalty for crimes that occurred years ago. Full Story
California Prison Budget Up By 79 Percent
Vittorio Hernandez - AHN News Writer
Sacramento, CA (AHN) - California's budget for prison maintenance is expected to go beyond $10 billion in 2008. The 79 percent hike compared to 2003's $8.5 billion allocation, is caused by an 8 percent rise in prison population, now more than 173,000.
Prison spending tops the state's budget allocation for any other major program, except public schools and healthcare for the poor. The budget hike for the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is not expected to slow down. According to the Legislative analyst's office, California will have to adjust upward its prison spending by 6 percent per annum for the next 5 years due to the construction of new prisons. ...
New state law, such as the Jessica's law, which restricts residential choice of released sex offenders and requires tracking by satellite for life, also contribute to the higher spending on prisons. ...
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed releasing over 200,000 non-sex offenders who are on their last months of serving sentence to reduce the state budget deficit.
Full Story
Children's rape case puzzling
'A problem most don't know about'
CHRISTIAN BOONE, Atlanta Journal Constitution
After announcing the rape charges leveled against three boys, ages 8 and 9, Acworth Police Capt. Wayne Dennard said he had "never seen anything like this."
And he's a seasoned cop.
The details are shocking enough. So are the potential repercussions, for the alleged victim — an 11-year-old playmate of the boys — and the accused.
Most startling of all: Sexual assaults committed by children, against children, are not as uncommon as parents want to believe, though some experts question whether boys as young as 8 are capable of rape.
"In my counseling center, we see lots of sexually aggressive children" said Dr. Julie Medlin, director of the Medlin Treatment Center, which treats both the victims and perpetrators of sexual abuse of all ages. "I can't tell you how common it is."
"This is a problem most people don't know about."
Sally Thigpen, statewide coordinator for Stop It Now! Georgia, a public health campaign targeting child sexual abuse, agrees the problem is a growing one. There's no single cause, she said. Some children may be repeating behavior they've experienced. Others may be influenced by repeated exposure to pornography. [Ed: This is a "boiler plate" explanation from abuse industry experts who've invested so much into the idea that children are asexual unless they have been "sexualized" by abuse or pornography, in defiance of both scientific evidence and common sense. They prefer to redefine childhood by enforcing their bizarre mass-amnesia on anyone who was once a normal child]. ...
A 1989 study in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry found rates of false allegations made by children range between 2 percent and 8 percent. ...
Regardless of whether the accusations in the Acworth case are valid, Medlin said the problem of child-on-child sexual abuse is only getting worse.
"Porn is becoming more and more accessible, and children are like clay," she said. "At that young age, if they hadn't seen it, they may have never thought about it." [Ed: Of course! Being asexual and all...]
Intervention is key
[Ed: I would argue that intervention is, more often than not, DISASTER!]
"When you see this happening, you need to do something," Medlin said. "It's much, much easier to treat a younger child than a teenager or adult." [Ed: It's also much easier to screw them up permanently, a talent for which you therapists are most accomplished]. Full Story
Sex offenders getting younger, more violent
Kim Curtis, Associated Press
STOCKTON -- Courts have seen the number of sex offense cases involving juvenile offenders rise dramatically in recent years, an Associated Press review of national statistics found, and treatment professionals say the offenders are getting younger and the crimes more violent. ...
Robert Prentky, a psychologist and nationally renowned expert on sex offenders in Bridgewater, Mass., thinks the statistics are misleading.
"There aren't more kids, there are more laws," he said. "We now have fairly draconian laws with very harsh sanctions that apply to juveniles." ... Full Article
Jessica's Flaw
Daily Breeze
There are, as of last count, about 660 convicted sex offenders wandering free around California, not wearing the monitoring devices that Jessica's Law requires. And state officials say there's nothing they can do about it.
That ought to come as a shock to California voters, who overwhelmingly approved Jessica's Law at the polls last year - under the promise that the state would finally get tough on child predators.
Turns out we were had, again. Full Story
Ohio Gets More Draconian, Must Disclose Email Address
Register-Herald
Beginning Jan. 1, 2008, Ohio's sex offender law will be changed to comply with the federal Adam Walsh Act.Tier 3 offenses include:
•Rape
•Sexual battery
•Aggravated murder with sexual motivation
•Murder with sexual motivation
•Unlawful death or termination of pregnancy as a result of committing or attempt to commit a felony with sexual motivation
•Kidnapping of minor, not by parent
•New section of Gross Sexual Imposition
•Felonious assault with sexual motivation
•Pre-AWA predators unless reclassified after hearing under ORC
•Any sexual offense that occurs after the offender is classified as Tier 2 or 3
•Automatic classification after SVP specification
•Includes an attempt, complicity or conspiracy to commit any of these offenses.
"Where we used to have sexually oriented offenders and sexual predators, they are now going into three groups. These tiers will be based on what they are convicted or found guilty of," Preble County Sheriff Mike Simpson said.
Tier 3, which is the most serious offenders, are required to check in every 90 days for the rest of their life.
Tier 2 offenders must check in every 180 days for 25 years.
Tier 1 offenders are required to check in once per year.
"Tier 3 is the one subject to area notification. We have to notify everybody within 1,000 feet of where they are living," Simpson said.
According to Simpson, there are a total of 54 sex offenders in Preble County and beginning the first of the year, 22 people in the county will be classified in the most serious category. That number is up 12 from the old law.
"We've got some people based on what they are convicted of that are going from oriented offenders with no community notification and were probably going to drop off (the list) in 10 years, to Tier 3, every 90 days for life," Simpson said.
Simpson said there are going to be 21 people in the Tier 2 category and 11 who fall into Tier 1.
According to Simpson, what used to take his office about 40 mintues to register a sex offended will now take closer to an hour.
"It will definitely increase our workload a little bit," Simpson said. "But, if all these offenders register like they're supposed to, it will increase our ability to keep track of them. It's going to create (workload) more so if they don't, because you don't know where that sex offender is, which isn't good."
And, if the offender works in another county, that individual will have to register in that county as well, according to Simpson.
Simpson said the offender is required to give all his/her information to his office, which includes physical description, tattoos, birthmarks, vehicles, address, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, if they volunteer anywhere.
"If they have an e-mail address, a MySpace account, anything they are supposed to tell us," Simpson said. "Because, if they fail to tell us, that's considered failure to register because they left out information."
Simpson said all the sex offenders received letters from the Attorney General's office notifying them of the change in the law and what their new classification will be beginning Jan. 1.
"If they live in Preble (County) and also work in Montgomery, they also have to register there to let that sheriff know they are working in that county," Simpson said."They have an obligation and a duty to notify the sheriff where they work."
According to Simpson, each of the offenders who have had his/her classification changed will have the right to challenge the new classification.
"They had 60 days after they received this letter to file a petition in Common Pleas Court in the county where they reside," Simpson said. "It's a civil action, meaning they are not entitled to an attorney. They have to hire their own attorney, they have to pay the fee to file the petition in the clerk's office. And if they don't file within that 60-day period, they waive their right to contest."
Simpson noted Ohio is one of the few states in the county to adopt this new law.
"Ohio's on the front end of it. Really, Ohio's system of eSORN, the e-mail notification, we are way ahead of the game in Ohio as opposed to other states," Simpson said.
Simpson said he encourages people to vist his website and register for an e-mail. The site address is preblecountysheriff.org.
"If a sex offender moves within a mile of your house, you are going to get an automatic notification," he said.
Simpson said people can register multiple addresses, such as other relatives' homes or child day cares, for example.
Facts about the Adam Walsh Act
•The Adam Walsh Act was signed into law on July 27, 2006. At the time of passage, at least 100,000 of more than a half million sex offenders in the United States and the District of Columbia were "missing" and unregistered.
•The act was signed on the 25th anniversary of the abduction of Adam Walsh from a shopping mall in Florida. Walsh was found murdered 16 days after his abduction and the perpetrator of the crime has yet to be found.
•Expands the National Sex Offender Registry.
•Strengthens Federal Penalties for Crimes Against Children.
•Makes it harder for sex predators to reach children on the Internet.
About eSORN
According to Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann, eSORN is one of the most important programs in the Attorney General's office. The database is connected to all 88 counties in Ohio.
The eSORN is a state-of-the-art electronic sex offender registration and notification website to help Ohioans protect their families and communities. This website marks the first time the public and law enforcement have electronic access to a list of all registered sex offenders in the state in one location.
Providing easy access to this website gives more information to the public and helps make our communities safer. The enhanced database provides a secure link for the exclusive use of law enforcement.
Users will find the name, address, type of offense and photo of each convicted sex offender the Attorney General's Office is permitted by law to include. The website is searchable by offender name, county, ZIP code and school district. It also provides links to county sheriffs offices' websites. By law, the eSORN public website may only contain information on offenders who have been convicted in adult criminal court.
State law requires county sheriffs to provide information for the eSORN database. Many, but not all county sheriffs, have a local convicted sex offender database. The website and enhanced database supplies a critical link between local and state databases to share information.
The Attorney General's Office furnishes technical assistance to sheriffs' offices interested in creating their own sex offender website.
In addition to the public website, there is secure access, for law enforcement agencies and prosecutors, to more detailed information on all convicted sex offenders, including victim preference, release date and fingerprints.
The Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation updates the database with relevant information pursuant to Ohio's SORN law. This section of the database is designed to increase communication among law enforcement agencies. A new mapping function is now operational, allowing both the public and law enforcement agencies to determine if sex offenders live within a certain radius of his or her residence.
With few alternatives, sex offenders sent to live in homeless camp
By SARA KIESLER
Staff Writer
ORLANDO -- Walk along the snaking trail past abandoned tires, the huddled tents and old yellow strands of police crime tape, and you'll find a small group of homeless sex offenders awaiting the end of their probation.
They don't want to be in the woods off John Young Parkway and W.D. Judge Road. There's no running water. No sanitation. No electricity.
They found out about the camp from officials of the state Department of Corrections, who say they have nowhere else to send them. Full Story
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