The void over at the Florida House Public Safety & Domestic Security Committee is beginning to fill with education.
The Miami Herald (11/4/09):
(...)
Marti Harkness, a criminal-justice analyst, told the House Public Safety & Domestic Security Committee that studies from Florida, Minnesota and Colorado showed almost no link between a sex offender's residency and the crime he committed.
But onerous residency restrictions increase the chances that offenders will be homeless, hard to track and more likely to commit new crimes, said Harkness, who works for the Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability.
``I'm not suggesting we should feel sorry for them,'' Harkness said. ``But I guess what I am saying is that research shows that to prevent a sex offender from living with their families or [to make them live] farther away from work or treatment because of residency restrictions, you may actually in fact diminish public safety.''
Harkness and the committee members said that more electronic monitoring of sex offenders was a better way to control them.
Under state law, sex offenders can't live within 1,000 feet of schools, day-care centers, parks or other areas where kids congregate. But 148 local governments across the state have imposed stricter requirements -- a 2,500-foot ban.
That has led to a crisis in places like Miami-Dade, where sex offenders live under the Julia Tuttle Bridge between Miami and Miami Beach to comply with the law. Showing a map of Miami-Dade, Harkness pointed out that sex offenders have almost nowhere else to live under a 2,500-foot ban -- except for Miami International Airport.
``You could have them lining the tarmac, I guess,'' Harkness said.
Miami Beach Rep. Luis Garcia, a Democrat and former councilman from Miami Beach who supported his city's ban, took issue with the Harkness report.
``As far as I'm concerned, if you want to send them to Georgia, I would be happy,'' Garcia said.
Rep. Darryl Rouson, D-St. Petersburg, said lawmakers should apologize for comments like Garcia's and ``knee-jerk'' policies like the residency restrictions.
Said Garcia: ``I'm not going to apologize.''
(...)
BTW. For a state experiencing such huge budgetary deficits, I'd say the purchase of electronic monitoring devices for all forced to register has about as much chance of making the Florida must have list as a fleet of snow plows.
