<<previous  |  index  |  next>>

IX. Residency Restriction Laws

My intent personally is to make it so onerous on those that are convicted of these offenses … they will want to move to another state.

—Georgia State House Majority Leader Jerry Keen, co-sponsor of a bill, signed into law, which prohibits sex offenders in Georgia from living within 1,000 feet of schools, daycares, churches, playgrounds, and bus stops³⁴²

The proliferation of these types of restrictions is making it more difficult for communities to fulfill their mandate of helping offenders make a successful re-entry into society.

—Paul Olney, research associate for the Center for Sex Offender Management³⁴³

As detailed above, registered offenders may be hounded from their homes by angry neighbors or denied housing by private and public landlords. But their right to establish and maintain homes in which they can live with their families is also threatened by a growing number of state and municipal laws that expressly forbid them from living near places where children gather. At least 20 states have enacted laws that prohibit certain sex offenders from living within a specified distance of schools, daycare centers, parks, and other places where children congregate (for a list of residency restriction statutes by state, see Appendix).

In addition, hundreds of municipalities (in states with and without residency restriction statutes) have also passed similar ordinances prohibiting registered sex offenders from living within specified distances of places where children congregate.    The least restrictive distance requirement is in Illinois (500 feet), but most common are 1,000- to 2,500-foot boundaries.

Public officials have discovered that by increasing the length of the restrictions and expanding the list of the places that trigger a residency restriction (in addition to schools and daycare centers, pet stores, movie theatres, public parks, and swimming pools are being added) they can create “sex offender-free zones.”³⁴⁴ Some laws prohibit registered offenders from “loitering” within designated areas.³⁴⁵Legislators have even proposed banning offenders from entering or working in certain public areas, such as shopping malls and municipal buildings.³⁴⁶

Although all the residency restrictions are keyed to distances from areas in which children congregate, only four states that Human Rights Watch knows of limit their residency restriction laws to persons convicted of sex offenses involving child victims.³⁴⁷ In the other states and municipalities, residency restriction laws apply to all registered offenders, regardless of whether their crimes involved children.

The number of residency restrictions in the US continues to grow, in part because of the horrific abduction, rape, and murder of nine-year-old Jessica Lunsford in 2005. The man convicted of Jessica’s murder is John Couey, a convicted child molester who lived within sight of Jessica’s home.³⁴⁸ Jessica’s father has advocated for “Jessica’s Law,” which, among other things, calls for residency restrictions for sex offenders. In 2006 alone, at least 10 states and a number of municipalities adopted or enhanced laws restricting where sex offenders could live.

The inability of convicted sex offenders to find housing when they are released from prison has become a significant barrier to their successful reintegration into society.  This is particularly problematic for registrants who have limited resources, or for those who because of work, community, or family obligations want to live in particular locations. Residency restrictions prevent offenders from living in the areas closest to jobs and public transit, since schools, daycare centers, and parks are often built in the center of main residential areas of cities and towns.

Registrants and their family members have found that in some cities there is literally nowhere they are allowed to live.³⁴⁹ For example, a study in Orange County, Florida, which has a 1,000-foot restricted buffer zone around attractions, bus stops, daycares, parks, and schools, found that only 5 percent of the city’s residential areas were outside the residential restriction zone.³⁵⁰ Max C., who is on the Georgia sex offender registry, told Human Rights Watch that because of that state’s residency restrictions, “I can honestly say that I have nowhere to live in the community I have lived in for 30 years.”³⁵¹ An Iowa sex offender was found living with his family of three in a car on an abandoned farm property because residences in the small farm towns were either off-limits or too expensive.³⁵² In Florida, a 2004 survey of sex offenders found that half of the respondents reported that residency restrictions had forced them to move from a residence in which they were living, and 25 percent were unable to return to their residence after their conviction.³⁵³ Nearly half reported that residency restrictions prevented them from living with supportive family members.³⁵⁴ Recently, newspapers have reported that in Miami, five sex offenders are living under a bridge—with the state’s approval—because the residency restrictions in their county made it impossible for them to find housing.³⁵⁵

A mother of a Florida registrant told Human Rights Watch about her son’s search for housing after he was released from prison:

My husband and I wanted him to come live with us for awhile, while he got adjusted to life on the outside and got on his feet. He was not allowed to do so because we live within 1,000 ft. of a school bus stop. So he had to go to a different county, where he had no support system. He was placed in a dirty disgusting motel because it was the only place he could find to live. It was next door to a XXX nudie place. He had to be in his motel room from 6pm until 7am daily. He could not attend church services and church support groups due to this time constraint. He was very lonely and depressed. The motel was very expensive and between that and paying for probation and counseling, he was finding himself further and further in the hole financially. He eventually started drinking again and violated parole by staying out too late.³⁵⁶

Residency laws even preclude registered offenders from living in homeless shelters within the restricted area. A Texas registrant told Human Rights Watch,

 I was homeless—I went to two homeless shelters—told them the truth—I was a registered sex offender—I could not stay. No one helps sex offenders I was told. The 3^rd shelter I went to—I did not tell them. I was allowed to stay, November 2002 I was to register again—my birthday. If I told them I lived at a shelter—I would be thrown out—if I stayed on the streets I would not have a [sic] address to give—violation. So I registered under my old address—the empty house, which was too close to a school.  Someone called the police—told them I did not live at that address anymore—! I was locked up, March 2003. I was given a 10-year sentence for failure to register as a sex offender.³⁵⁷ 

Some public officials want to limit sex offenders’ access to emergency shelters. A Tampa sheriff is sending “letters to registered sex offenders and predators, urging them to plan now for a safe place to stay in the event of a hurricane.” When a colleague asked whether the county should plan to offer alternative emergency accommodations, the sheriff told the local paper, “I think my answer was no, they can take care of themselves … As far as spending resources to have some school or jail special for them, I think there are other people more needy of our resources.”  If a sex offender is found in a hurricane shelter, the sheriff vows that the offender “could be arrested as a violation of the conditions of his release.”³⁵⁸ The state now directs registrants to report directly to prison in case of a hurricane. Six registrants stayed in prisons during July 2005 hurricanes.³⁵⁹

Residency restrictions are justified as a means of “taking away a portion of the opportunity for sex offenders to reoffend.”³⁶⁰ While residency restriction laws are popular, there is little evidence that they make sense or that they make children safer from sexual violence.  Indeed, the experience of several states suggests the laws are counterproductive as well as unnecessary and profoundly unjust.

Iowa

We made a mistake.

—Republican Iowa state legislator, on the state legislature’s support of a 2,000-foot state-wide residency restriction³⁶¹

In 2002 Iowa legislators passed a law prohibiting registered offenders whose victims were minors from living within 2,000 feet of any school or child care center.³⁶² Violators face up to two years in prison and a $5,000 fine.³⁶³

Legal challenges delayed it from taking effect until 2005, when a federal court of appeals declared the law constitutional. The restrictions apply regardless of the length of time a former offender has lived offense-free in the community— and the restrictions remain in place for life.³⁶⁴ The restrictions apply to all individuals convicted of a sex offense against a child, regardless of whether the conviction required them to register as a sex offender. The only exception to the law is that offenders do not have to move from their residences if they had been living there before the law was enacted.³⁶⁵

The Iowa law has had the effect of excluding sex offenders from entire communities, driving them underground or across state lines to municipalities without residency restrictions. For this reason, some of the toughest and most vocal critics of Iowa’s residency restrictions are law enforcement officials.

As one law enforcement official points out, “We’ve taken stable people who have committed a sex crime and cast them out of their homes, away from their jobs, away from treatment, and away from public transportation. It’s just absolutely absurd what these laws have done, and the communities are at greater risk because of it.”³⁶⁶

The Iowa County Attorney’s Association asserts that the state has lost track of over half its registered sex offenders since the restrictions went into effect.³⁶⁷ Lynn County, Iowa Sheriff Don Zeller reports that his county had 435 sex offenders registered in 2002. After the residency restriction went into effect in 2005, 114 moved, 74 have been charged with violating the ordinance, and others disappeared. “We went from knowing where about 90 percent of them were. We’re lucky if we know where 50 to 55 percent of them are now … the law created an atmosphere that those individuals can’t find a place to live.”³⁶⁸

Douglas Dykstra, a probation and parole supervisor for the Iowa Department of Corrections says that many individuals can be safely supervised in the community without distance restrictions. “You can’t take any law and blanketly apply it to everybody, because people are different and pose different degrees of risk to the community,” Dykstra said. “To all of a sudden up the ante and treat everyone as if they are the highest risk is not really a wise use of resources.”³⁶⁹

The county attorney of Dubuque, Iowa, Fred McCaw, worries about the law’s inflexibility: “The law doesn’t take into account the ones that have behaved themselves for however many years and have done the rehabilitation programs and are now contributing members of the community. None of that is considered.”³⁷⁰

In January 2006 the Iowa County Attorney’s Association issued a statement opposing Iowa’s 2,000-foot sex offender residency restriction law, citing the fact that the law “does not provide the protection that was originally intended and that the cost of enforcing the requirement and the unintended effects on families of offenders warrant replacing the restrictions with more effective protective measures.”³⁷¹

Iowa resident Zane S., who was convicted of child molestation in 1997 and released in 2003, explained to Human Rights Watch why the law led him to leave the state. “When I was released, I went to live with my grandmother, who is sick. I thought I could help take care of her. But then the zoning law went into effect and, because I moved in with my grandma after 2002, I could not stay there—she is too close to a daycare. There was nowhere I could live legally in the county that I could afford. A group of sex offenders were thinking about living in a trailer park at the edge of town, but I didn’t think that would be good for my recovery. So I had to leave my grandma.  I decided to go live in Nebraska, because there were no residency restrictions.”³⁷²

Registrants in Des Moines, Iowa’s largest and most densely populated city, have had a particularly hard time finding housing outside the sex offender-free zones created by the residency restriction law. In effect, sex offenders who have committed crimes against children are zoned out of Des Moines.

All sex offenders required to register must provide a home address, but because of the residency law, some sex offenders do not have a home. Law enforcement officials in Des Moines have resolved this conundrum by allowing individuals to register as homeless, as long as they specify a location.³⁷³ When users go to Iowa’s online registry, they may be surprised to see a registrant’s address listed as “on the Raccoon River between Des Moines and West Des Moines,” “behind the Target on Euclid,” or “underneath the I-80 bridge.”³⁷⁴ The areas are industrial, polluted, noisy, full of debris, and, in one case, right next to an active railroad track.³⁷⁵  A Des Moines law enforcement officer explained to Human Rights Watch, “We don’t expect that the registrants are actually living under the bridge, its just one of the few places where they are legally allowed to admit they are living, and so they list that as their address, and go live someplace else.”³⁷⁶ The officer estimated that city police had lost track of at least 300 sex offenders who were registered as living in Des Moines before the residency restriction went into effect.³⁷⁷

Gavin D.’s Story

Oklahoma

Iowa is not the only state experiencing increased difficulties keeping track of sex offender registrants after residency restrictions have been enacted. Recently, Oklahoma City law enforcement officials reported that since a 2005 state residency restriction law went into effect, banning offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or daycare, less than 16 percent of the Oklahoma City area is available for sex offenders to live, and most of that consists of land surrounding industrial areas that does not have residential housing. As of 2006, nearly 200 offenders have dropped off the state registry.³⁸² “We recognize that’s directly attributable to these laws,” said Mark Pursley, a senior probation officer with the Oklahoma Department of Corrections who specializes in the supervision of sex offenders. “[The law has] raised the bar too high.”³⁸³ 

Georgia

In 2006, Georgia passed a sex offender zoning law which would prohibit any registered sex offender from living within 1,000 feet of places where children gather, including bus stops and places of religious worship.³⁸⁴ One of the state senators sponsoring the bill asserted that his goal was to make Georgia a sex offender-free state. “We want them all out of here,” Georgia House Majority Leader Jerry Keen said.  “If it becomes too onerous and too inconvenient, they may just want to live somewhere else. And I don’t care where, as long as it’s not in Georgia.”³⁸⁵

Before the law could go into effect, the Southern Center for Human Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia filed a class-action lawsuit to enjoin the state from enforcing the law, especially as applied to places of religious worship and bus stops, because it would have the effect of virtually “banning the state’s 11,000 registered sex offenders from living in Georgia.”³⁸⁶ Among the plaintiffs who would have to leave their homes under the law is an elderly man with Alzheimer’s, living in a nursing home; a blind man; a disabled man; a woman convicted as a teenager of statutory rape for having consensual sex with her teenage boyfriend; and a woman convicted as an accessory to statutory rape for allowing two teenagers, one of whom was her child, to have sex in her home.³⁸⁷ In July 2006 the judge issued an order enjoining the state from enforcing the bus stop provision of the Georgia law. As of July 2007 the rest of the restrictions are in effect, banning registered offenders “from living within 1,000 feet of schools, child care facilities, churches, swimming pools, and areas where minors congregate, including public and private parks, recreation facilities, playgrounds, skating rinks, neighborhood centers, gymnasiums, and similar facilities providing programs or services directed towards persons under 18.”³⁸⁸

Human Rights Watch spoke with John A., who was convicted of rape in 1984 and who has spent the past 20 years working at a faith-based shelter for homeless men.³⁸⁹ His home near the shelter fell within 1,000 feet of a church and he was unable to find another place to live that was affordable and within a reasonable distance from his workplace. John A. has become a devout Christian since his conviction for rape, and he wanted to continue to work for a Christian organization. He told Human Rights Watch, “I did not see how it would be possible to continue to live in Georgia and be allowed to work with Christian-based shelters.” He thought about moving to another state, “but I had a feeling that Georgia will not be the last state to pass a law restricting where sex offenders can live.” With the support of his mentor, the Rev. Jim Lewis, who runs a number of faith-based community programs, John A. applied to become a missionary in Costa Rica. He was accepted and he left the United States in August 2006.³⁹⁰

Human Rights Watch also spoke with another person in Georgia subject to the residency restrictions, a man in his 70s who had been convicted of molesting his granddaughter a decade ago. The residency restriction law forced him to leave his home and he moved to a trailer in a wooded area outside of Atlanta, Georgia. “I couldn’t afford to move to a trailer park. I didn’t know where to go. I feel like there is no other place I can go except here. But here I am isolated. I don’t have easy access to the world. What if I fall down and break my hip? I will admit that at first I considered not registering, going underground. But I wanted to do the right thing, whatever that is in this situation, and so I am trying to abide by the law.”³⁹¹

Sheriffs in Georgia, who are responsible for enforcing the residency restrictions, are not uniformly supportive of the law. “I think anyone who knows anything about tracking and monitoring sex offenders would not support this law,” one county sheriff told Human Rights Watch. “It’s going to be a disaster for us. We are certainly going to lose track of the sexually violent offenders.”³⁹²

California

In November 2006 California voters by a large measure (70 percent) passed Proposition 83, a ballot initiative that, among other things, prohibits any registered sex offender from living within 2,000 feet of any school, daycare facility, or place where children gather.³⁹³ The law applies to all 90,000 of the state’s registered sex offenders.³⁹⁴    

Proponents of Proposition 83 argued that residency restrictions are a tool to keep “dangerous child molesters … away from our children and monitored for life.”³⁹⁵ A rebuttal by the California Attorneys for Justice argued that Proposition 83 “ignores the sad lessons learned by other states … that [residency restriction] laws should be repealed because they have proven to be ineffective, a drain on crucial law enforcement resources, and far too costly to taxpayers.”³⁹⁶ The rebuttal also pointed out that “proponents claim that the law is directed at ‘child molesters’ and ‘dangerous sex offenders,’ but … would apply far more broadly: even to those convicted of misdemeanor, nonviolent offenses.”³⁹⁷

Opponents of Proposition 83 included the California Coalition against Sexual Assault (CALCASA), a state-wide coalition of 84 rape crisis centers and sexual assault prevention programs. Calling the law “a shortsighted approach to sex offender management that will place California communities in greater danger,” CALCASA believes the law will “waste valuable resources on sex offenders who are unlikely to reoffend, while leaving a deficit of treatment, supervision, and focus on offenders who we know should be receiving more intense scrutiny.”³⁹⁸

Before the election, analysts from the California Research Bureau³⁹⁹ concluded the residency restrictions limit would effectively prohibit registered offenders from living in many California cities. In August 2006 it released a study on the impact of residency restrictions in other states that have them.⁴⁰⁰ The report found that parole officers in those states have trouble finding housing for sex offenders just released from prison, and warned that the new law may actually place communities at greater risk by leaving some offenders homeless and driving others underground and off the registries.⁴⁰¹ 

A federal judge temporarily enjoined enforcement of Proposition 83, pending the conclusion of a suit challenging the constitutionality of the law.⁴⁰² The suit was filed by an anonymous plaintiff, John Doe, whose sex offense occurred decades ago and who has lived in the same community for 20 years.⁴⁰³ In granting the temporary restraining order, the judge said, “‘John Doe’ has been a law-abiding and productive member of the community since his conviction and will suffer irreparable harm if forced to comply with Proposition 83.”⁴⁰⁴ 

After the court order, then-California Attorney General Bill Lockyer declared that Proposition 83’s residency restrictions were not meant to be retroactive even though the law’s language would cover offenders who registered prior to its enactment.⁴⁰⁵ As CALCASA noted, “[Supporters of Proposition 83] cannot argue that the initiative … only affects future offenders and at the same time argue that it will protect the community from the threat of offenders currently in our community.”⁴⁰⁶ A federal judge eventually ruled that Proposition 83 may not be applied retroactively, meaning that those offenders living in the community prior to when the residency restriction law went into effect are not subject to the restriction.

Local Ordinances

An estimated 400 municipalities have enacted local zoning ordinances restricting where sex offenders can live within their boundaries.⁴⁰⁷ At least 113 municipalities in New Jersey alone have local residency restrictions.⁴⁰⁸ For example, the township of Jackson, New Jersey, restricts sex offenders from living within 2,500 feet of any park or playground, movie theater, or amusement park (Jackson is home to the Six Flags Great Adventure Park).⁴⁰⁹ In Florida, where more than 60 municipalities have residency restriction ordinances,registered offenders cannot live within specified distances of parks, playgrounds, churches, libraries, bus stops or any other place where minors normally congregate. In Snellville, Georgia, the city council implemented an ordinance banning sex offenders from living within 2,500 feet of any school, over twice the distance of the restricted area under the state’s residency restriction law.⁴¹⁰

Do Residency Restrictions Protect Public Safety?

As a city council member who supported restrictions for his district acknowledged, “If we can get these people out of our community, it’s not that these crimes won’t happen, [i]t’s just that they won’t happen in my community.”⁴¹¹ 

There is no evidence, however, that these laws do in fact diminish crimes against children. For registered offenders, the main impact of the laws may be simply to drive them underground or to uproot them from their families and communities. Iowa’s experience with residency restrictions has caused at least one state to resist enacting such laws. In November 2006 lawmakers in Kansas decided not to adopt residency restrictions after reviewing evidence that Iowa’s law had doubled the number of registered offenders unaccounted for since it took effect.⁴¹²

Residency restriction laws reflect an assumption that former offenders are most likely to commit new offenses against children who gather near where they live—either because the proximity of children tempts them or simply because they are easier to access. But this assumption is not borne out by research. The Colorado Department of Public Safety found that convicted child molesters in Colorado who reoffended while on probation were randomly scattered throughout the geographical area, and did not seem to live closer than non-recidivists to schools or child care centers.⁴¹³  A small study by the Minnesota Department of Corrections found that the proximity of a former offender’s residence to schools or parks was not a factor in recidivism. In fact it found the opposite: sex offenders who recidivated were more likely to travel to another neighborhood to seek victims. During the study period, the only two recidivist acts of child sexual assault committed in parks on unknown victims occurred several miles away from the offenders’ homes.⁴¹⁴

Most recently, a 2007 study by the Minnesota Department of Corrections analyzed the sexual reoffense patterns of 224 sex offender recidivists released between 1990 and 2002 to determine whether the crimes would have been prevented by residency restrictions.⁴¹⁵ The study found that residential proximity had very little impact on a recidivist’s opportunity to reoffend. More than half the recidivists, 113, came into contact with their victims not through residential proximity but through “social or relationship proximity” to the individual.⁴¹⁶ The most common example was that of a male offender who came into contact with his child victim(s) in the course of dating their mother.⁴¹⁷

A few years before Proposition 83 was passed, a California newspaper reviewed the criminal histories in a one-year period of nearly 500 released sex offenders who lived near schools and daycare facilities to see whether they had tended to commit new abuses against children they lived near.⁴¹⁸ The newspaper found that former offenders were not tempted into new offenses by proximity to children, and that only one of the 500 convicted sex offenders was arrested during the year, and that was for committing a parole violation and not another sex crime.⁴¹⁹

Residency restrictions may also be counterproductive from a community safety perspective. As evident in the experience of Iowa and Oklahoma, residency restrictions can push former offenders into homelessness and transience, interfering with effective tracking, monitoring, and close probationary supervision.⁴²⁰ If registrants are forced to move to rural areas to find affordable places in which they can legally live, they may find themselves with diminished access to employment and treatment options, both of which help reduce reoffending.⁴²¹ Sex offenders with positive, informed support systems—including stable housing and social networks—have significantly lower criminal and technical violations than sex offenders who had negative or no support.⁴²² Yet residency restrictions upend such support and stability.  A survey of 135 sex offenders in Florida revealed that housing restrictions increased isolation, created financial and emotional stress, and led to decreased stability.⁴²³

As a psychologist who specializes in treating sex offenders noted, “Residency restrictions meant to protect the community may instead lead to banished sex offenders coming to believe their essential identity is as a sex offender, which then stimulates reoffense.”⁴²⁴

Impact on Family Unity

Human Rights Watch spoke to a number of families who were no longer able to live together because of residency restrictions.

Doug E., a registrant in Oklahoma, spoke to Human Rights Watch about his family’s decision to live separately rather than try to find affordable and safe housing outside the prohibited zone for sex offenders: “I want to live with my wife and kids very much.  But I didn’t want to make my kids move to a bad situation, a bad part of town. I didn’t want them to leave school, and I didn’t want my wife to have to give up our family home—the only one we have ever had. So I moved to the edge of town.”⁴²⁵ 

Another registrant subject to residency restrictions in Michigan discussed the financial stress of trying to keep two households, “I could only find a place to live at a seedy motel, and I was not dragging my family there with me. The kids cry when I leave at night, and my wife worries sick that I have to stay away at night. This restriction only makes us more stressed. I think if I could just fall asleep next to my wife, with my kids in the house, everything would work out okay.”⁴²⁶

Rethinking Residency Restrictions

Residency restrictions that apply to whole categories of sex offenders should be abolished. This does not mean that limitations cannot be placed on where former offenders may live. Residency restrictions for convicted sex offenders should be determined on a case-by-case basis, for example by courts or probation and parole officers, and be subject to periodic review. The restrictions should be reasonably tailored to such factors as the specific crime the offender committed; an assessment of his or her employment, family and other support systems; the nature of supervision and treatment the offender is receiving; and the length of time the individual has lived in the community offense-free. For former offenders who are not subject to probation or parole supervision, states could create expert panels to undertake similar periodically reviewed assessments to determine whether any type of residency restriction is warranted for a particular individual and for how long.

Other Countries and Sex Offender Laws