From AP:
"They gave me a tent, a few warm blankets. Now they're my family -- and my town," said Glen Edward Garity, a 41-year-old registered sex offender. "This gave me a new meaning to stay out of prison."The creeps did their time--they were not given a life sentence.
Garity, convicted in 1991 of lewd conduct with a child under 16 and released last year, was among more than a dozen people to testify in favor of leaving what Occupy Boise backers call a "vigil site" in place.
Another registered sex offender, Louis Scruggs, said he found a home among the Occupy Boise site's homeless, adding that he, too, is fearful closing the encampment will leave him without a place to sleep because some homeless shelters won't accept him.
"Basically, I feel helpless," said Scruggs, 34, convicted of lewd conduct in 1998. "I leave it in your hands, ladies and gentlemen, my fate."
But the third paragraph states "some homeless shelters won't accept him." Not all of them. And the logic of this ex-con is bizarre: The legislators need to keep the state capitol Occupy camp open--so ex-con sex offenders have a place to stay.
Idaho: Do what just about every other jurisdiction has done--shut down the Occupy camp. Camping is not free speech.
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7 comments:
"The creeps did their time" - get over yourself. If you learned math in second grade, in about five seconds you would have realized that both of these men were TWENTY years old at the time of their crimes. They aren't child molesters or rapists. Your elementary, baseless judgment of them demonstrates your lack of knowledge on the subject of sex offenders...maybe next time you should choose a topic you actually know something about.
Until you or someone you love has been caught up in the travesty our country calls sex crime legislation, you have NO idea how punitive and harmful it is. The fact that these men are homeless and have to go to court to petition their right to be homeless otherwise they'll end up in jail is SHAMEFUL. Our country has much bigger problems than this.
Although estimates of recidivism vary, sex offenders often attack again. For instance, the man who kidnapped Jaycee Dugard and held her for over a decade was a convicted sex offender.
Also, please closely read my post. One of the pair said "some" homeless shelters won't take him in. SOME. And to use that weak point to advocate turning the grounds of the state capitol into a campground is a pathetic argument.
Actually, sex crime recidivism doesn't vary much at all. If you need proof of this, please visit http://www.endsexcrime.org/education.html. Studies have consistently shown that recidivism is very low, and not just since the registry became public information. There are studies spanning as far back as 30 years in some of these studies. I have spent hundreds of hours researching this subject because I wanted to learn the real truth, not the media's portrayal of the relatively few high-profile cases that occur from time to time. Of course some sexual predators re-offend - the case of Jaycee Dugard is a good example. What happened to her is terrible, but it is not an accurate representation of the majority of sex offenders.
Sex crimes continue to occur at the same rate - and the number of individuals on the registry increases steadily every year, reaching almost 750,000 in 2011. If our methods were effective, this wouldn't be the case.
I do agree that the men in this particular case may have other options - I don't know what the reasons are that they wouldn't choose to stay in the other homeless shelters. However, my guess is they are taking this as far as they are to bring this issue to the public's attention as it is not a new issue by any means, but one that is consistently ignored.
I'd like to add within my circle of acquaintances are two rape victims--both were underage at the time and they have had substance abuse issues and needed therapy.
Sexual assault of a child or an adult is absolutely something that this country needs to manage better. There's no question about that, and because we're clearly not making any headway in preventing these types of crimes, we need to re-examine our approach.
Being willing to learn about sex crime, and what the real statistics are, does not mean that you support sex crime. Don't you agree that the only way to address a problem is to understand it at the base, and not just react emotionally? You might think that by classifying all sex offenders as "creeps", you're showing your disdain for sexual assault. Unfortunately, that's not the case. All it shows is that you're either too scared or too proud to admit you might not know all there is to know about it, and that you don't care to learn.
Our current methods of managing sex offenders are not effective - the registry is approaching 750,000 individuals and increases steadily each year. Sex crimes are going to continue at the same rate if drastic changes aren't made. Sex crime isn't prevented simply by talking about how bad it is, or punishing those who've been convicted forever. If we don't start focusing on sex crime prevention and reforming emotion-driven legislation, nothing will ever change.
got this from http://www.endsexcrime.org/education.html
"Among the 1,649 sex offenders released from the Arizona prison system to the supervision of state parole officers, 70% eventually returned
to prison with a new felony conviction for a sex crime, including 1.5% who committed a new sex crime while under state supervision."
You missed the paragraph above: "Among the 3,205 released sex offenders, 25.2% returned to prison in Arizona at least once within an average follow-up period of 6.85 years.
Among the 3,205, 18.9% returned with a new felony conviction, 10.0% with a new felony conviction for a crime against persons (violent or
sex crime), and 5.5% with a new felony conviction for a sex crime."
Did you go through all the studies until you could find ONE that sounded like it had a high recidivism rate?
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