Judge Orders Sex Offender Back Under Bridge

[varkam]

Local 10 News
Miami, FL
Link

MIAMI -- A convicted sex offender is forced to continue living under a Miami bridge after a judge turned down his request to go back to jail.

Kevin Morales, who has served his time and is on parole, asked a judge Thursday if he could go back to jail instead of living under the Julia Tuttle Causeway, but a judge denied his request.

The state ordered Morales and four other sex offenders to live under the bridge because the state has nowhere else to put them that would not be close to children.

The reason they are allowed to live outdoors is an ordinance intended to keep predators away from children, which makes it nearly impossible for them to find housing, County officials said.

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I thought this was an interesting story because it illustrates a developing problem with such ordinances - namely, what to do with convicted sex offenders. It seems to me that ordering people to live under a bridge because they can't live anywhere else is absurd and reflects a growing problem with the way that current laws are framed.

[PDJane]

1. Not to mention a problem with priorities ......

We can't put them anywhere, so we'll just let them live under a bridge with no protection and no running water.....I mean, they're not real people anyway. Maybe someone will beat them to death or something.

What the HELL is wrong with the judiciary and the rest of the administration???

[Webster Green]

2. Nobody has found a remedy for this situation yet??

Unbelievable!

Florida appears to be dysfunctional on a lot of different levels.

The Bush Boy's Banana Republic.

[rumpel]

3. this is insane

I saw a report about this a few days ago - these people need professional help. While as a parent, I readily admit it is scary to have someone with such mental problems in the vicinity of your child, casting them out of society this way is certainly not a solution.

I presume there are varying degrees of their mental problems, some may never recover - I wish the mental health profession comes up with some ideas.

[Old Vet]

4. Nobody will do anything until............

Until someone goes down there and kills one or all of them. Right now there sitting ducks, Maybe thats the point?

[youngdem]

5. We need to create leper colonies for REAL sex offenders

NOT for the 19 year old who has sex with his 17 year old girlfriend, and NOT for the public urination guy, but if you molest a child and are convicted MORE THAN ONCE for it, you should be sent to a colony where it is 100% offenders and NO children. If they don't want to move to the leper colony and they aren't among the population of offenders who need long term inpatient psychiatric treatment, stay in jail.

I used to work with sex offenders. There is little hope for any of them with current treatments. The recidivism rate is so high you wonder if the balance haven't re-offended but hidden it better. It burned me out.

Hopefully one day we will find a way to medically disable the obsession, but right now we are freeing time bombs into all of our cities and waiting for them to go off.

The colonies, as horrible as they sound and are, would protect the public, but it would also stop the creation of new offenders, because a sex offender is almost uniformly a victim of abuse themselves. (The balance are usually mentally disabled in some capacity). So, if we stop the abuse, in a generation, we should have far fewer sex offenders.

I know it sounds horrible, but to me the only choice is mandatory life for a second offense or this. Letting them out is fucking insane and irresponsible public policy.

[varkam]

6. A couple of points.

According to the DOJ, recidivism rates for sex offenders over a five year period are among the lowest of any type of criminal (compared with drug offenders, violent offenders, theft-related offenders, etc). There is, apparently, a class of sex offender that does pose a risk for higher recidivism - but they are, by far, in the minority. Perhaps that is a consequence of the term "sex offender" being so widely applied.

The majority of sex offenders have not been abused themselves, though the rates are, indeed, higher. Approximately thirty percent of sex offenders have suffered abuse themselves as children, but seventy percent have not. Further, a vast minority of child sex abuse survivors become perpetrators themselves. While abuse may play a part, it's clear that there are other factors in play as well.

[Clark2008]

8. That may be true, but, other than the violent offenders, those

repeat crimes aren't nearly as damaging to the society at large.

I mean, no one wants to get burglarized or robbed, but I'd rather be burgled than have my kid molested.

[varkam]

12. True that many of the crimes are in no way palatable

But it is disregarding current scientific data to say that sex offenders almost always commit new crimes.

[youngdem]

10. I don't know where you got your info from, but in my personal experience

Our facility had hundreds of offenders over the years, and the discussion with the offender was always who offended on them when they were a child, not who. I can remember NO inmate we had in our custody at the facility or that we considered getting from the jail that did not have an offense upon them as a child.

They do exist, as some mental illnesses cause sexual deviancy, but for the vast majority of cases, the offender learned the behavior, the grooming, the intimidation procedure, the methods - from somewhere. And it wasn't a book from Barnes & Noble.

And yes, the recidivism rate that you cited was likely skewed because it probably included statutory rape, public indecency and other non-sex crimes lumped in. The actual recidivism for real juvenile sex crimes is SCARY SHIT.

We had NUMEROUS incidents at the facility where I worked either before I got there or while I was working where an offender raped another patient/inmate, and whenever we had guys that were at level to go to public outings before being released, they would groom anyone that came near them and would often attempt to isolate nurses at clinics or anyone they encountered while out on public service duty. It was horrendous and it was a constant battle.

I sat in on many, many hours of the sexual deviance treatment shit with these guys. They game the therapist, hit the six steps and they are out the door to re-offend. These guys were unable to feel - they were all so traumatized by their own abuse that they were incapable of empathy or anything like a conscience. And many had ABSOLUTELY no sense of shame because their walls had been destroyed by abuse.


Finding and reading diaries, notes or drawings (read homemade porn) were some of the most disturbing things I have ever read.

A sex offender of a certain type is predatory and it is at our own peril that we don't treat them as such.

[varkam]

13. One source

Is the Center for Sex Offender Management which is funded by the Department of Justice. I pulled the sex abuse data from a book written by John Q. LaFond and published by the American Psychological Association entitled Preventing Sexual Violence. I would give you the citation, but I am not currently at home. You can view the Amazon.Com page for the book here.

Our facility had hundreds of offenders over the years, and the discussion with the offender was always who offended on them when they were a child, not who. I can remember NO inmate we had in our custody at the facility or that we considered getting from the jail that did not have an offense upon them as a child.

Perhaps there was something unique about your facility, or perhaps this is a case of selective memory (i.e. remembering more frequently the cases that fit with a pre-existing mental schema). The scientific data, AFAIK, would disagree with you. I can get you that citation, if you wish.

They do exist, as some mental illnesses cause sexual deviancy, but for the vast majority of cases, the offender learned the behavior, the grooming, the intimidation procedure, the methods - from somewhere. And it wasn't a book from Barnes & Noble.

Learning takes place from all kinds of sources, not just personal experiences. Media (such as the internet), peer groups, home life, etc. We don't know what makes someone into a sex offender, but my money is on the notion that it takes an interaction of a variety of different variables and circumstances.

And yes, the recidivism rate that you cited was likely skewed because it probably included statutory rape, public indecency and other non-sex crimes lumped in. The actual recidivism for real juvenile sex crimes is SCARY SHIT.

Not true. There are different kinds of pedophiles and different kinds of rapists. Intra-familial offenders (sex offenders who molest their own children) have a low rate of recidivism whereas approach pedophiles (the proverbial predator) are much more dangerous.

We had NUMEROUS incidents at the facility where I worked either before I got there or while I was working where an offender raped another patient/inmate, and whenever we had guys that were at level to go to public outings before being released, they would groom anyone that came near them and would often attempt to isolate nurses at clinics or anyone they encountered while out on public service duty. It was horrendous and it was a constant battle.

And again, perhaps there was something unique about your facility (perhaps you dealt exclusively with high-risk individuals?). I'm not arguing that such individuals do not exist, just that they are far fewer than most people would believe.

I sat in on many, many hours of the sexual deviance treatment shit with these guys. They game the therapist, hit the six steps and they are out the door to re-offend. These guys were unable to feel - they were all so traumatized by their own abuse that they were incapable of empathy or anything like a conscience. And many had ABSOLUTELY no sense of shame because their walls had been destroyed by abuse.

See above.

Finding and reading diaries, notes or drawings (read homemade porn) were some of the most disturbing things I have ever read.

Without a doubt.

A sex offender of a certain type is predatory and it is at our own peril that we don't treat them as such.

I agree with you. A sex offender who truly poses a risk needs to be closely monitored lest he or she commit a new crime. The rub is determining who is and who is not a risk. You don't want any false positives, as that needlessly subjects an individual to punishment (and costs the state a good deal of money) and you certainly don't want any false negatives for the obvious reasons.

[Clark2008]

7. They can't find housing that is 2,500 feet from a school?

Why?

Is there a school on every corner in Miami/Dade? Or is it ALL places where children gather: parks, churches, daycares, schools, etc.?

And, also, what kind of "sex offense" was he convicted of?

[varkam]

14. Most registration laws

require that an offender live a requisite distance away from all places that children tend to gather; playgrounds, day care centers, and schools are the big three in most states. Some states add bus stops to that list as well. When you add it all up, it means that housing for many sex offenders is difficult to obtain (if not impossible, as is presumably the case here).

I don't know what crime he was convicted of, but as far as the registry in most states is concerned it does not matter. He could of been convicted of sleeping with a 16 year old girl when he was 19 and he'd still be living under that bridge. That's probably not the case with him (being that he's on probation) but I remember reading a court injunction from Georgia to stop a bill that would of banished sex offenders from living in metro Atlanta from a woman who was convicted of such a crime.

[MissB]

9. Trolls, eh?

I am surprised that a judge would order anyone to live under a bridge.

[femmedem]

11. We had a sex offender in our community who was homeless for 7 years

without committing another crime. He was banned from public housing. He was banned from shelters. He couldn't get work.

All the police and social workers knew him as a sober, safe, law-abiding guy. Finally, after the homeless folks here organized with the help of some local ministers, the city changed the shelter rules to say something about sex offenders being allowed in the shelter at the police's discretion.

Since then, he and some other formerly homeless people have formed a shared-income community and have year-round housing. This man frequently speaks at City Council meetings advocating for the homeless. Last week, the council voted against banning sex offenders from public parks--probably because of this one man.