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States Struggle With What to Do With Sex Offenders After Prison

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Behind razor wire and locked metal doors, hundreds of men waited on a recent morning to be counted, part of the daily routine inside a remote facility here that was built based on a design for a prison.

But this is not a prison, and most of these men — rapists, pedophiles and other sex offenders — have already completed their sentences. They are being held here indefinitely under a policy known as civil commitment, having been deemed “sexually dangerous” or “sexual psychopathic personalities” by courts. The intent, the authorities say, is to provide treatment to the most dangerous sex offenders until it is safe for the public for them to go home.

Yet not one of the more than 700 sex offenders who have been civilly committed in Minnesota over the past two decades has actually gone home. And only a few men have been provisionally discharged to live outside of state facilities under strict supervision. “You knew you were going to die here,” said Craig Bolte, a sex offender who has been held here nine years and who says he would rather be sent to prison, where “there is still hope.”

But now Minnesota’s civil commitment program — which detains more people per capita than any other state — is facing an overhaul. Earlier this year, a federal judge found it unconstitutional, calling it “a punitive system that segregates and indefinitely detains a class of potentially dangerous individuals without the safeguards of the criminal justice system.” The judge, Donovan W. Frank, of Federal District Court in St. Paul, is expected to order changes to the program as soon as this week.

Minnesota is not alone in revisiting its policies. In Missouri, a federal judge last month found that state’s program violated people’s right to due process, potentially imposing “lifetime detention on individuals who have completed their prison sentences and who no longer pose a danger to the public, no matter how heinous their past conduct.” Of about 250 people held since Missouri began committing people in 1999, state officials say seven have been granted what the state considers release with court-ordered restrictions, though some of those men remain in a group-home-like setting behind razor wire at a state facility. (Read more from “States Struggle With What to Do With Sex Offenders After Prison” HERE)

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California Loosens Sex Offender Residency Restrictions

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ChainsCalifornia will alter its 8-year-old ban preventing all registered sex offenders from living near schools or parks, state officials announced Thursday, instead imposing the restriction only on pedophiles and others whose sex crimes involved children.

The state corrections department said it is changing its policy in response to a state Supreme Court ruling that found the blanket prohibition unconstitutional. The high court ruled this month that restrictions imposed by California voters in 2006 go too far to limit where sex offenders can live.

Parole agents can still force sex offenders to live more than 2,000 feet from schools and parks where children gather, as required by the ballot measure commonly known as Jessica’s Law. But they will have to make the decision for individual cases.

The March 2 ruling applied only to registered sex-offender parolees in San Diego County, but prison officials will apply the ruling statewide. Some local governments outside San Diego County also have begun repealing their local residency restrictions in response to the high court’s ruling. (Read more from “California Loosens Sex Offender Residency Restrictions” HERE)

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You’ll Never Guess What Creepy Object Police Found in a Child Sex Offender’s Home [+video]

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Louie, the Joyland Clown mascot, was found in a sex offender’s home. Louie went missing more than a decade ago.

Louie disappeared from the Joyland property in 2005 or 2006 but wasn’t reported stolen until 2010. Louie played Joyland’s Wurlitzer organ (see video below).

The Wichita Police Department will pursue charges against two suspects in the case.

Wichita police say officers found the clown Tuesday at a home of 39-year-old Damian Mayes, who is serving a prison sentence for a 2010 conviction for aggravated indecent liberties with a child and aggravated criminal sodomy. Mayes used to build and repair organs at the park. He’s in prison on child sex crimes.

“It was quite a shock, because we had visited that residence before. They didn’t expect us back, they thought it was a done deal, closed, forgotten case, but like I said, through social media and a lot of interest not only in Joyland but the clown in particular, kind of kept it alive,” said Det. Matt Lang, Wichita Police Department. “There’s many articles that said once Louie disappeared, he would never see the sight of day again.” (Read more about the creepy object police found HERE)

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DHS Official: US Not ‘Routinely’ Notified When Sex Offenders Enter the Country (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP / Elaine Thompson

Photo Credit: AP / Elaine Thompson

A Homeland Security Department official testified Friday before the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security that U.S. authorities are not “routinely” notified when foreign sex offenders enter the United States.

“We can receive information on foreign criminal records, and in fact the NCB (National Central Bureau) is the vehicle through which 190 countries can communicate, and there are … registered sex offenders, but routinely, that information actually would not come unless there’s a specific case or a specific law enforcement inquiry,” Alan Bersin, Assistant Homeland Security Secretary of International Affairs and Chief Diplomatic Officer, told the subcommittee.

The hearing was called to examine the issue of passport security in light of the recent revelation that two Iranians boarded missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 using stolen passports.

Rep. Candice Miller (R-Mich.) asked whether INTERPOL would be alerted if a sex offender from Germany, for instance, flew into the U.S.

Read more from this story HERE.

Feds Release Thousands of Immigrants who are Sex Offenders

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Photo Credit: Breitbart

Photo Credit: Breitbart

The United States government has released nearly 3,000 immigrant sex offenders, some of whom were illegal immigrants, since September 2012. Of those, nearly 3,000, or about 5%, were not even properly registered with local authorities as sex offenders.

According to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released last week, “nearly 3,000 sex offenders are part of the 59,347 immigrants who the courts have ruled cannot be held” as of September 2012 because they were unable to be sent home. These immigrants were released “under some sort of supervision.”

As Stephen Dinan of the Washington Times noted, though, the GAO concluded that “about 5 percent of the time U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement didn’t ensure that the immigrants released were properly registered with local authorities as sex offenders.”

“I’m surprised that only 5 percent of them are not properly registered,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).

Read more from this story HERE.

Lesbian Sex Offender Supporters Clamor for Special Treatment

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Photo Credit: RedStateBy Adam Cassandra. We have become accustomed to public outrage and protests based on claims that homosexuals are discriminated against and given unequal treatment under the law, but a recent petition campaign receiving an explosion of media coverage argues that homosexuals should not be treated equally under the law, and implicitly supports criminal sexual activity with a minor.

Kaitlyn Hunt, an 18-year-old Florida high school student, is facing two felony charges of “lewd and lascivious battery on a child 12 to 16” for engaging in sexual activity with a 14-year-old female student at her school. Hunt’s parents launched a petition on Change.org alleging their daughter “is not guilty of anything other than a high school romance,” and blamed the 14-year-old child’s parents for pressing charges because “they are against the same-sex relationship.” The petition has over 145,000 signatures, and a Facebook page in defense of Hunt has over 39,000 supporters.

The charges against Hunt are punishable by up to 15 years in prison and could require her to register as a sex offender. She has until May 24 to accept an agreement with prosecutors to plead no contest to a lesser charge of child abuse which would likely result in house arrest and probation, but no jail time or registration as a sex offender.

Left-leaning advocacy groups and the media are defending Hunt, insisting without proof that she is being discriminated against because she is a homosexual-discriminated against in order to equally apply the law. Their main argument is that 18-year-old boys and 14-year-old girls have sex all the time without charges filed or parents seeming to mind, so Hunt is obviously being singled out. Besides being completely untrue that males are not charged with such crimes, or that the parents of the victims don’t care, the argument is irrelevant. Once authorities know a crime has been committed, they have a duty to enforce the law no matter the offender’s sexual orientation.

“If this was an 18-year-old male and that was a 14-year-old girl, it would have been prosecuted the same way,” Indian River County Sheriff Deryl Loar told reporters during a press conference Monday. And despite claims by Hunt’s defenders that the 14-year-old child victim was “in love” and consented to the sexual acts, Florida state attorney Bruce Colton told the media, “The idea is to protect people in that vulnerable group from people who are older, 18 and above … The statute specifically says that consent is not a defense.” Read more from this story HERE.

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Taxpayers Spend $536,526 on Study Regarding Stopping Homosexual Smoking

By Fred Lucas. The National Institutes of Health issued a $536,526 grant to the University of Illinois, Chicago, for a two-year program ending in July to study the smoking cessation of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender population.

“The purpose of this study is to develop and evaluate the benefits of culturally targeted smoking cessation intervention for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender smokers,” the NIH grant description said. “Findings will contribute to the scientific literature on reducing smoking-related health disparities among underserved populations.”

The funding began on Sept. 30, 2010 and will conclude on July 31, 2013.

“NIH research addresses the full spectrum of human health across all populations of Americans. Research into unhealthy human behaviors that are estimated to be the proximal cause of more than half of the disease burden in the U.S. will continue to be an important area of research supported by NIH,” the NIH press office said in a statement to CNSNews.com.

“Only by developing effective prevention and treatment strategies for health-injuring behaviors such as smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, drug abuse, inactivity and poor diet, can we reduce the disease burden in the U.S. and thus, enhance health and lengthen life, which is the mission of the NIH,” it added. Read more from this story HERE.

Paroled Sex Offenders Disarming Tracking Devices

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photo credit: photologue_npThousands of paroled child molesters, rapists and other high-risk sex offenders in California are removing or disarming their court-ordered GPS tracking devices — and some have been charged with new crimes including sexual battery, kidnapping and attempted manslaughter.

The offenders have discovered that they can disable the monitors, often with little risk of serving time for it, a Times investigation has found. The jails are too full to hold them. “It’s a huge problem,” said Fresno parole agent Matt Hill. “If the public knew, they’d be shocked.”

More than 3,400 arrest warrants for GPS tamperers have been issued since October 2011, when the state began referring parole violators to county jails instead of returning them to its packed prisons. Warrants increased 28% in 2012 compared to the 12 months before the change in custody began. Nearly all of the warrants were for sex offenders, who are the vast majority of convicts with monitors, and many were for repeat violations.

The custody shift is part of Gov. Jerry Brown and the legislature’s “realignment” program, to comply with court orders to reduce overcrowding in state prisons. But many counties have been under their own court orders to ease crowding in their jails.

Some have freed parole violators within days, or even hours, of arrest rather than keep them in custody. Some have refused to accept them at all.

Read more from this story HERE.

Senator’s Office Gone Wild: Sex Offenders, Hookers and Homeland Security

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photo credit: paul lowry

New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, who allegedly often visits the Dominican Republic to have sex with underpaid hookers at “bunga bunga” style sex parties, employed a sex offender to work as an intern in his office on immigration policy throughout 2012. Zavaleta just so happens to be an illegal immigrant but the Department of Homeland Security instructed ICE agents to postpone deporting him until after Menendez’s reelection in November. You just can’t make this stuff up.

U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez employed as an unpaid intern in his Senate office an illegal immigrant who was a registered sex offender, now under arrest by immigration authorities, The Associated Press has learned.

The Homeland Security Department instructed federal agents not to arrest him until after Election Day, a U.S. official involved in the case told the AP.

Read more from this story HERE.