A newly released study by a
professor at Arizona State University is suggesting that people deemed “high
risk sex offenders” are more likely than low risk sex offenders to live in what
he called “school zones”. The media will certainly milk this story for what
it's worth, accepting its implications at face value. But there is more to this
study than meets the eye.
This
geographical study tracked the movements of registered sex offenders in Hamilton
County, Ohio (Cincinnati) from 2005 to 2007. The study found that people forced
to register were far more likely to move than the average person, and that
people who were considered “Tier 3” offenders, the so-called high risk
category, were 3.9% more likely than Tier-1 (“low risk”) offenders to live in a
school zone. Obviously, the research study is implying that high risk sex
offenders are somehow violating the law and are intentionally living closer to
schools for the purposes of reoffending.
I
know better.
I
know because for the past 10 years (with the exception of my 14 months living
in Alabama), I have lived in Cincinnati, Ohio. Around the time the study began,
I was classified as a “Tier 1” offender, and arbitrarily reclassified as a “Tier
3” offender on the basis of moving from a state where everybody registers for
life. In June 2004, when I was still considered a tier 1 offender, I moved into
a slum property that allegedly met the residency restriction laws of the state
of Ohio, 1000 feet from schools and day care centers. For nearly a year, I
lived a quiet life, working, paying my bills on time, and keeping to myself as
much as possible.
In
the spring of 2005, when I was arbitrarily reclassified, the city determined I
was living to close to a business called the “Life Skills Center”. This place
offers GED courses for individuals aged 16 to 24, but for the purposes of the
state’s residency restriction laws, the Life Skills Center was considered a
school, and I fought unsuccessfully to keep my residence. As I stymied the
city's case against me as long as I could, I called well over 100 places to try
to find a new place to live. After nearly a year, I stumbled upon a new
apartment (much bigger than my meager sleeping room at $150 a month) that met the
current residency restriction laws.
Just
after Thanksgiving 2006, I moved into my new apartment. I had not even finished
unpacking when the city of Cincinnati was debating a new ordinance that would
increase citywide residency restrictions to include a number of places not
covered by state law – YMCA centers, boys and girls clubs centers, swimming
pools, parks, and recreation centers. My first true taste of advocacy was
addressing the Cincinnati city Council against the new ordinance. I fought
successfully to keep my current residence. The city still passed the ordinance,
but dropped parks from its list of banned locations, while grandfathering
register citizens so long as they lived in their current residence.
This move was
undoubtedly inspired by my personal circumstances. My new residence was close
to a place called Triangle Park. It is a city run Park maintained by the
Cincinnati Parks and Recreation Commission, but it is not a part in the
traditional sense of the word. Triangle Park is nothing more than a stone wall
with a small flower garden and a couple of trees, a half-acre peninsula
extending at the far corner of the block in which I reside. It is not the kind
of Park someone takes her children to play, but to take their dogs to poop. In
fact, when I was in the Cincinnati Restoration Church (where we raised funds
for the church by selling candy), we referred to that location as the “doo-doo
spot”. The park is still a part, no matter what it is called or what purpose it
serves. If not for the grandfather clause or the removal of parts from the
ordinance, I would have been forced to move again.
We
are too quick to take media accounts or even research at face value without
questioning how we came to certain conclusions. This study would have you believe
that all sex offenders move to elude detection. That is simply untrue; as a
result of social ostracism, threats made against sex offenders, or at times,
legal actions from overzealous city prosecutors all play roles in forcing
registered citizens to move on a more frequent basis. I am sure this study did
not take into account the negative effects of the postcards the city of
Cincinnati sends to individuals when a sex offender moves into the
neighborhood.
The
implication of this study assumes sex offenders move close to schools for the
purpose of obtaining victims. This is simply untrue. When Cincinnati sought to
pass their own ordinance in December 2006, they passed out a color-coded map of
restricted zones within the city. There were a number of overlapping circles
which gobbled up potentially available housing in the vast majority of areas
where sex offenders could afford to live. In places like Over-The-Rhine, where
many of the poorest residents tended to live before the urban renewal project
started, there were no spaces where a registered citizen could legally live at
all under the new ordinance.
Cincinnati
was not the only city in Hamilton County to have an increased residency
restriction law. The city of Reading, for example, is an independent suburb of
Cincinnati with its own police force in city Council. The city passed a 2000
foot restriction which made virtually the entire city off-limits to any person
forced to register as a sex offender. Another suburb, Norwood, also had its own
residency law restrictions. Did the study take these ever-changing laws into
effect when asserting that sex offenders move more frequently in the average
citizen?
In
my personal case, I did not move by choice, but by law. My motivation for
choosing a new residence was necessity coupled with affordability. I simply
looked or a place I can afford to live that met the legal requirements of the
law.
In
recent months, there have been a number of questionable studies. A few months
ago, a study from Utica College in New York claimed a large number of sex
offenders were intentionally lying about their residents, allegedly based upon
computer software used to determine credit card fraud. To this date, the
researchers have never formally published the results including methodology in
any peer-reviewed publication, yet the story spread like wildfire and accepted
as fact. Nobody questioned the validity of this study or how they came to this
conclusion. I can understand the reason why, as many research studies use
complex algorithms and algebraic formulas to come to their conclusions.
Sometimes reading a research paper requires an advanced mathematics degree to
understand the conclusions they arrive at based upon the numbers they crunch.
If
independent research was not bad enough, influences from the victim industry
Advocates with no formal training offer more misinformation to further confuse
the uninformed public. A very recent example is a much publicized graphic from
the Enliven Project which suggested that roughly 9 of every 10 sex crimes are
unreported, with a very small number of falsely accused. This graphic is very
inaccurate. The people who created this graphic claim they used reports like
the national crime victimization surveys (NCVS), yet the current NCVS states
that only about half of sex crimes are unreported. However, there are some
major flaws even with the NCVS surveys-- they rely on self-reports and include
the broader term “attempted rapes” which are broadly defined as any situation
in which a person feels that they were in danger of being raped. Even Anna
Salter, a longtime victim industry advocate, has stated that self-reports are
notoriously unreliable and lead to incredibly inflated statistics. The NCVS is
indeed a self-report survey.
Unfortunately,
these results of these studies are easily misinterpreted, or in many other
cases such as the graphic from the Enliven Project, the studies are flat-out
false. Who is going to take the time to critique these assumptions? It is
obvious the average citizen is not going to question the media. We are all too
eager to accept something as fact when it is attuned to our personal belief
systems, especially when it involves something or someone we particularly hate.
However,
in order for true conflict resolution to take place, we must look beyond our
preconceived notions and questioned the things we have been taught to believe
with an open mind. It is difficult, but not impossible to look outside of our
own way of thinking. Only by looking at the issue from all sides can we have any
hope of coming to a true solution rather than a mere Band-Aid for a
long-standing societal issue.
