Feeling the heat of worldwide focus on an encampment of citizens living beneath the Julia Tuttle Causeway, Miami-Dade Commissioners have repealed the hodge-podge of sex offender residency laws created and passed by municipalities within the county lines.
Previous NIMBY restrictions literally exiled anyone designated as an offender from living within Miami-Dade, leaving many on the streets, legally restricted from housing or shelter with friends or family living within the designated off-limit zones. As the laws stood unchallenged, cities and counties throughout Florida wildfired the concept of restricting residence within the individual communities.
Thanks to the grassroots efforts of many effected by these laws, the general population became educated on the broad range of offenses considered sexual in nature, many which involve no physical interaction with anyone. Thanks to the Florida legislature who stood by and watched the laws take on a life of their own--quick easy vote-getters--more and more citizens found themselves facing such charges and upon conviction, branded with a label that most immediately associate with child molestation. As an example, teenagers engaged in typical adolescent behaviors (i.e. inappropriate texting as one example)--arrested and convicted of the same--are required to register as sex offenders.
Took a few years, but thanks to the efforts of overzealous law enforcement, soon most everyone knew someone or of someone designated as a RSO and the circumstances surrounding that distinction.
The Julia Tuttle Causeway encampment of sex offenders living under the span quite effectively underscored the homelessness consequence created by such restrictions. The fact Ron Book, Chairman of the Miami-Dade Homeless Trust had lobbied for passage of such laws at the state and municipality levels provided the exclamation point of what the hell is going on here?!?!The new ordinance in a conch shell:
--1,000-foot buffer zone for all other places where children gather (Florida state law)
--300 feet no-loitering zones where children congregate
My first impression. Define loitering. I'd like to know if as taxpayers, those registered will now be permitted to utilize state parks, public boat launches and all and any community area as would any other Floridian.
Many questions remain. The prediction is as goes Miami, so will the rest of Florida.
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Miami Herald, 1/21/2010:
(...)
(Miami-Dade) County Commissioners on Thursday passed, 12-0, a sex offender ordinance that repeals more than 24 different sex offender laws enacted by municipalities within county borders. The new law creates one standard that it hopes will balance the need to protect children while still giving housing options to sexual offenders.
The ordinance also creates a new provision that supporters say is a more workable and realistic solution to protecting children: child-safety zones.
Almost all the municipal ordinances tend ``to create zones in which sexual offenders are completely excluded from available housing,'' the ordinance reads.
Under the child-safety zones, sex offenders are prohibited from loitering within 300 feet of where children congregate. In other words, it restricts sex offenders from being near children, but doesn't leave them homeless.
Read more here.
