The Sex Offender Housing Dilemma

Front matter

MONICA WILLIAMS

THE SEX OFFENDER HOUSING DILEMMA

Community Activism, Safety, and Social Justice

Introduction

The Production of Siting Conflicts over SVP Placements Political Mobilization in Countrified Suburbia

Politics, Litigation, and Disorganization in an Urban City

The Local Context of Community Opposition to SVP Placements

Solving the Sex Offender Housing Dilemma Acknowledgments

Appendix: Selecting Cases, Gaining Access, and Collecting Data in Three Communities

Notes Statutes Cited References Index

About the Author

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

FIGURES

Figure 1.1.

Figure A1.

TABLES

Table 1.1.

Table 5.1.

Table 5.2.

Table A1.

Table A2.

Table A3.

Percentage of Communities Engaged in Different Response Strategies

Case Selection Strategy

Demographics of Communities That Received or Were Proposed to Receive an SVP Placement in California from 2003 through 2014

Community Orientations to Political Authority Community Orientations to Legal Authority

Characteristics of SVP Siting Conflicts and Local Populations

Sample Demographics

Position Titles of Officials Interviewed

35 185

Introduction

In Washington State, Tammy Gibson beat a sex offender with a baseball bat after receiving notification that he had moved into her neighborhood.’ Neighbors in Detroit assaulted a man suspected of raping a teenager,’ and two people in Texas did the same to a registered sex offender there.* Such acts of violence have sometimes escalated to murder, as was the case in South Carolina when two people killed a registered sex offender and his wife.* Other, less extreme cases have involved not violence but property damage, such as the suspicious fire that burned down a trailer meant to house a man in California who was labeled as a sexually violent predator (SVP).° These kinds of stories focus public attention on extreme but relatively rare instances of physical violence, threats, and harassment against individual sex offenders.°

While media accounts would have us believe that vigilantes across the country lie in wait for sex offenders who move into their neighborhoods, responses to sex offenders more often involve collective, nonviolent political and legal actions. For instance, communities across the nation have built tiny pocket parks in neighborhoods where local ordinances prohibit sex offenders from living near schools or parks.’ Residents in one Florida town protested a proposed sex offender village not by torching the proposed site but by attending town hall meetings, signing petitions, and rallying behind political and law enforcement leaders.* These types of responses to sex offender housing proposals may be more socially desirable than vigilantism, but they still pose severe challenges to sex offenders trying to reintegrate into society.

This book focuses on the problem of finding housing for sex offenders. The public has little sympathy for these offenders, but a lack of social supports and stable housing can increase the likelihood of reoffending.’ For these and other reasons, many scholars have critiqued policies restricting where sex offenders can live as ill-founded and potentially counterproductive. For example, residence restriction laws in many states prohibit sex offenders from living within specified distances (usually five hundred to one thousand feet) of schools, parks, and playgrounds.*® A growing chorus of voices has called for the repeal of or moratoriums on residence restrictions because empirical evidence suggests that they are not effective in decreasing recidivism rates.’* Few sex offenders live in restricted zones to begin with, and residence restrictions have little to no impact on recidivism rates.’* Far from ensuring public safety, residence restrictions can make it more difficult for sex offenders to reintegrate into society, which may in turn increase the likelihood of reoffending.”*

Community notification laws exacerbate the situation. These laws require law enforcement to notify the public about some types of sex offenders, with the assumption that doing so will enable communities to keep themselves safe. Ironically, community notification may have the opposite effect. Those who receive notification do not appear to engage in self-protective behaviors.'* Instead, people become afraid and have fewer social interactions with other community members. This in turn weakens the social integration necessary to support individuals returning to society after incarceration.’* In addition to these negative effects on community members’ sense of safety and well-being, notification laws do not appear to reduce the likelihood of reoffending.’® These outcomes suggest that community notification laws serve largely symbolic functions that may be important for expressing societal disapproval of deviant sexual behavior but have little to no positive impacts on the behaviors of either identified sex offenders or the general public.’” Instead, community notification laws appear to make it harder for those identified as sex offenders to find places to live.

Repealing empirically unfounded laws would be a step in the right direction, but sex offenders returning to society after incarceration would still face problems associated with their stigmatized status. The Tammy Gibsons of the world and the less violent but just as damaging people who band together to keep sex offenders out of their neighborhoods would continue to create major obstacles to reintegration. Beyond laws and policies, the everyday realities of trying to find housing for a highly stigmatized and feared group of people make the problem seem almost insurmountable. Where should these offenders go? How can we facilitate their successful reintegration into communities? How do we balance individual rights with public safety when trying to find housing?

Some have answered these questions by calling for individualized reentry plans based on risk assessments and partnerships between communities, researchers, and policy makers.'* These suggestions warrant serious consideration, but we cannot solve the problem of sex offender housing without looking closely at how and why communities oppose sex offenders in their neighborhoods. This book takes on this task by examining community opposition to SVP placements in California.

On the surface, local protests against sex offenders seem to reflect a simple “not-in-my-backyard” (NIMBY) attitude. Closer examination reveals more complex issues. As Tammy Gibson assaulted the sex offender in Washington, she reportedly told him, “If it were up to me, Td kill ya.’’° This comment reflects a sense of powerlessness. Gibson, like others who harass individual sex offenders, acted not only out of extreme hatred but also from a sense of dissatisfaction with the institutions that regulate sex offender releases. Because justice was not “up to” Gibson to decide, she brought about her own version of justice. Others agreed with her actions. After the media reported on the case, Gibson received widespread support online. “I applaud her,’ said one commenter. “She was protecting her children from a predator!!”*° “You go girl!” said another. “I'll buy you a lifetime supply of bats!”?’ For these individuals, justice required working outside of the law to protect children and other vulnerable populations from sex offenders, which suggests skepticism of how formal institutions deal with these offenders.

Similar concerns emerge in the more common, nonviolent community responses to sex offenders. One such response occurred one evening in April 2009 when community members in an unincorporated town in Monterey County learned of the proposed placement of an SVP in their town. I attended the community notification meeting to see how community members and local officials managed this potentially volatile situation. When I arrived at the local winery that was hosting the meeting, people milled about the gravel parking lot and reception hall discussing what they had heard about the SVP who might soon be moving into their neighborhood.” I sat in a folding chair next to a burly man who lived on the same road on which state officials had proposed the SVP placement. The man worked for a winery equipment business, and he told me that the community had never before faced anything like the proposed SVP placement.

After a few minutes, the county supervisor called the meeting to order by inviting the panel of local politicians, law enforcement officers, and a California Department of Mental Health (DMH) contractor to introduce themselves.”* The audience generally quieted, but one man quickly interrupted the introductions, demanding that they “eliminate the bullshit and get to the questions.” The county supervisor, trying to maintain order, assured him there would be an opportunity for public comment in due time. After a brief exchange between the two men, order prevailed. Panel members made their introductions and then provided some information about the placement.

When it came time for public comment and questions, one audience member questioned the legality of the judge’s decision to place the SVP in the neighborhood. The supervisor answered that the decision was “probably” legal, but that he was not a legal expert and that we were not there to debate the judge’s ruling. Instead, he said, the purpose of the meeting was to figure out how to move forward. After repeated attempts to continue asking the same question about the legality of the decision, the audience member picked up his young son and left the reception hall. After his abrupt exit, more questions about the decision-making process followed: How had the house been chosen? Why hadn't the public had the opportunity to comment before the judge made his decision? Why had the law even allowed for the SVP’s release?

These were not the hysterical, irrational responses that I had expected based on pervasive popular stereotypes of community members as vigilante NIMBY crusaders. Concerns about the safety of children and other community members eventually crept into the conversation, but they did not constitute the bulk of the comments or questions. Instead, residents’ concerns focused on the criminal justice and political decision-making processes that had brought a sexually violent predator into their neighborhood. While these concerns were rooted in resistance to a specific person moving in, they did not reflect the mindless, knee-jerk resistance often associated with NIMBY characterizations. Instead, these community members wanted to engage in serious conversations about criminal justice policies and practices.

Near the end of the two-hour meeting, a vigilante response finally emerged. A man with a breathing tube and inhaler made his way to the front of the room. Despite clearly struggling to breathe, he read a lengthy letter he had written to the editor of the local newspaper. After three pages explaining how the proposed SVP placement had come to their town, he reached a surprising conclusion: the community should gather torches, encircle the house, and burn it down, making sure that the SVP did not slip out the back door.

At first, I thought he was joking; however, the serious look on his face suggested otherwise. I waited for the reaction of others in the audience, while planning what to do next if they turned into the stereotypical angry mob of vigilantes. Finally, the man next to me chuckled. Across the room, I saw a woman roll her eyes. To my relief, the rest of the audience also rejected the vigilante proposal. While some may have secretly hoped for vigilantism, they took the socially acceptable path of nonviolence. Community members had had their chance to turn into a torch-wielding mob, but clearly they had no intention of engaging in vigilante violence.

The events in Monterey County resulted in more questions than answers. Community members shared with vigilantes an underlying desire for a voice in decisions about where to house sex offenders, but when a vigilante response could have emerged, audience members laughed it off as a ridiculous proposal. Then, they dispersed with few subsequent efforts to oppose the placement. Yet, according to media reports, communities in other California towns have resisted SVP placements by engaging with their local politicians, going to court, and mobilizing grassroots informal networks. If nobody wants a sex offender in their town, then why do communities in different places pursue different strategies of opposition? Why do some engage in vigilante violence while others mobilize politically or legally? Why don't similar concerns about sex offenders translate into similar strategies of opposition? To find out, I collected data on responses to SVP placements in three California towns. The data came from a vast array of sources, including in-depth interviews with residents and political officials, media articles, archival documents, and participant observation in each location. To add more context to these case studies, I also collected data on community responses to all SVP placements in California from 2003 through 2014.

As I discuss later in this introduction, I define community responses as those in which groups of activated residents oppose SVP placements in the name of their communities. In the community responses in California, the mere suggestion that a sex offender might move in ignited controversy over larger issues of perceived injustices perpetrated on communities by counties and the state. While residents held individual SVPs responsible for their crimes, these same individuals rarely blamed offenders for their geographic locations. Instead, activists focused on the political and criminal justice systems that targeted their towns for undesirable people and projects.

Contrary to the prevailing image of individual and collective vigilantism against individual sex offenders, the communities in my research and throughout California focused on mobilizing against formal institutions. For instance, in the case studies, local opposition more closely resembled political conflict than vigilante outrage, as residents often situated their anger in terms of their towns’ histories of being neglected by county-level politicians rather than in terms of local crime rates or crime control efforts. These types of concerns were pervasive in all three communities, but they translated into different strategies for opposition in each place. Community members in the town I call Ranchito engaged in political mobilization; those in Deserton pursued legal routes; and in East City, community members engaged in a variety of largely disjointed strategies.”* While these responses all centered on a perceived injustice perpetrated by political and legal systems, they took different forms in different places.

I argue that these differences in mobilization strategies stem from variation in local political and legal contexts. I characterize local contexts in terms of what I call “dominant community orientations” to political and legal authority. Later in this chapter, I explain how the concept of dominant community orientations to authority draws from and extends previous work on the role of local legal and political institutions in communities and collective action. Using this as a lens through which to understand variation in community responses to SVP placements, I show how relationships between communities and local politicians, political structures, law enforcement, and the courts manifest as community orientations to political and legal authority, which in turn shape local responses to SVP placements. This novel interpretation of local opposition to SVP placements opens new avenues for understanding not only how we might go about solving the seemingly intractable problem of where to house sex offenders but also the role of communities and expert decision makers in solving other complex criminal justice problems.

SVP Placements in California

As of 2013, twenty states and the federal government had implemented SVP statutes or sex offender civil commitment laws.” Processes for SVP placements vary by state, and most SVP laws have changed over time. California enacted its first sexual psychopath law in 1939 amid sensationalistic media accounts of sexual murder cases.’ The law, which allowed the state to commit some sexual offenders to mental health facilities, underwent several revisions in the ensuing decades. In 1996, California became the fifth state to enact an SVP commitment program,” and in 2006, more than 70 percent of voters approved the most recent SVP statute.

In California, when a sex offender nears the end of his or her term of incarceration, the DMH conducts psychiatric evaluations and risk assessments to determine if the sex offender “has a diagnosed mental disorder that makes the person a danger to the health and safety of others in that it is likely that he or she will engage in sexually violent criminal behavior?” A judge or jury evaluates the expert evidence and determines whether a particular sex offender should be labeled as a “sexually violent predator” and committed to a state hospital. Although the SVP label lumps individuals with a variety of sex offense backgrounds and levels of risk into one category, the label itself implies a “worst of the worst” categorization that highlights some of the rarest types of sex offenses and neatly classifies a heterogeneous group of people as “outsiders.””? By January 2014, California’s sex offender registry included 774 SVPs,*° and by December 2015, the state housed 886 SVPs in the state hospital?"

The SVP label applies even to those who have successfully completed inpatient treatment, further complicating the public’s perception of these people. According to the SVP statute, the DMH must conduct annual evaluations of the SVPs in their custody. Those in custody can choose to participate in treatment, but many do not. By one estimate, more than 80 percent of SVPs in Californias state hospitals chose not to participate for a variety of reasons, including not wanting to admit to the crimes they had been charged with and objecting to the treatment program as a “scam” to keep them indefinitely confined to the state hospital.*” For those who do participate in treatment, annual evaluations determine whether they have made sufficient progress to be considered for conditional release, in which case individuals may “petition the court for conditional release to a less restrictive alternative or for an unconditional discharge.’** Upon reaching this phase, hospital representatives, defense attorneys, and prosecutors appear before a judge to determine the appropriateness of and terms for conditional release. California began conditionally releasing SVPs in 2003. By October 2014, the courts had allowed twenty-six SVPs to enter into the conditional release program,** and by December 2015, twelve remained on conditional release.*°

Even when conditional release is granted, sex offenders remain classified as sexually violent predators. Despite the continued signal of dangerousness implied by this label, the process of placing SVPs in communities has little statutory guidance. The statute states that “the community program director, or his or her designee, shall make the necessary placement arrangements” It specifies neither the process by which those involved should “make the necessary placement arrangements” nor the role of surrounding communities in this process. This legal silence leaves it to decision makers to develop their own processes for siting SVPs in communities.

Despite state laws saying nothing about site selection processes, once a site has been chosen, the SVP statute mandates that the DMH notify local law enforcement and the district attorney at least thirty days before recommending a placement location to the court. Those entities have fifteen days to submit written comments to the court for consideration in determining the final placement site. While public notification is not required, the law enforcement agencies and district attorney's offices that are notified of proposed placements sometimes choose to invite public comment to include in their responses to the court. At this point, local siting conflicts begin as decision makers try to convince local residents that despite the implication that “sexually violent predators” are extremely dangerous, they can be safely released into communities. Predictably, community members resist this idea and start strategizing about how to exclude the SVP from their town. Local law enforcement officials, caught between correctional goals of reintegration and community notions of public safety, either join the community’s opposition or emphasize their duty to protect both the SVP and community members from harm.

Local opposition to SVP placements has led in some cases to multiple placement attempts before finding stable housing. While California law mandates that SVP placements conclude within thirty days of a courtordered release, they vastly exceed that amount of time in practice, with extreme cases having been drawn out for almost two years because of community opposition. These protracted placement processes allow the state to hold people labeled as SVPs in custody for prolonged periods after a judicial order for release. This complicates reintegration efforts and frustrates community members who are trying to control what happens in their towns. These outcomes may ultimately compromise public safety while also straining already fragile relationships between and among the public and government officials.

Moral Panic or Civic Activism?

Previous studies of negative societal responses to sex offenders have approached the phenomenon as threat-driven moral panic. National reactions to sex offenders have all the hallmarks of the archetypal moral panic: a heightened level of concern, hostility toward a perceived threatening deviant, general agreement about the seriousness of the threat, concern disproportionate to the nature of the threat, and episodic eruptions of moral outrage.*” Latent anxieties about disruptions to social order contribute to a shared feeling of moral outrage against sex offenders, and interest group mobilization helps explain how and why these fears erupt into moral panics.** As one scholarly account put it, “Energetic advocacy by child welfare societies, social workers, psychiatrists and therapists, women’s groups, prosecutors, law-enforcement bureaucrats, and members of the mass media” has shaped the ebb and flow of moral panic over sex offenders in the United States.*” Political discourse has also fueled this panic by perpetuating irrational fears,“ encouraging citizens to perceive themselves as victims,“ and enacting legislation that addresses only the rarest, most extreme sexual offenses.*” Local and national political activities help create panics over sex offenders and even encourage mobilizing emotions to achieve political goals.“

Moral concerns may explain some aspects of broad societal reactions to sex offenders, but according to a national public opinion survey, support for punitive sex offender policies also stems from a host of other factors, including concern for victims, sex offender stereotypes, and perceptions of crime trends.** Survey results also suggest a strong effect of conservatism on support for punitive sex offender policies and sex offender treatment. This finding implies that while moral concerns matter, we must closely examine citizens’ relationships with their government to fully understand local reactions to sex offenders.

The focus on moral panic explanations has drawn attention away from the institutional and local roots of community opposition to sex offenders.*° Despite the important role of communities in perpetuating and solving the sex offender housing dilemma, the moral panic perspective has contributed to framing the problem as one of recalcitrant communities that cannot and should not participate in reintegration efforts. For instance, one account of trying to find housing for those labeled as SVPs in Wisconsin described the public as an impediment to siting processes, in part because of a lack of education on issues related to sex offender threats, recidivism, and treatment.*° In that case, the public’s resistance interacted with a lack of political support for the placement process to ultimately thwart the siting committee's efforts to find housing. In this framing of the issue, the most obvious solution is to educate citizens and garner more political support for siting processes. These types of solutions may improve some aspects of the sex offender housing dilemma, but they fail to address the institutional structures that create the problems associated with sex offender housing and perpetuate community members’ ongoing resistance to any mention of sex offenders in their neighborhoods.

This book takes a different approach. While community members may be misinformed about issues related to sex offenders, I begin with the assumption that successfully reintegrating these offenders requires recognizing community members as legitimate actors in reintegration efforts. This starting point provides opportunities to recast local opposition to SVP placements as locally contingent siting conflicts rooted in and shaped by communities’ relationships with political and legal institutions. By this definition, community responses to SVP placements are more aligned with civic activism than with irrational, hysterical vigilantism.

To develop this new perspective on local opposition to sex offenders, I draw on insights from literature on siting unwanted facilities. In many ways, SVP placements resemble conflicts over other unwanted land-use projects such as attempts to site waste facilities, landfills, nuclear power plants, and prisons in communities. As one reporter put it, “Sexual predators are right up there in the NIMBY Top Ten, next to nuclear waste dumps, public housing and methadone clinics. In fact,

INTRODUCTION | n those may be preferable to the sexual predator. A predator can turn on you at any second. At least you know a dump is always a dump.”*” In all these cases, communities resist what they see as risky projects imposed upon them, but, as the reporters comment indicates, some key differences can heighten local opposition to SVP placements. First, SVPs are human beings, not inanimate facilities. They must have avenues for release from involuntary commitment, and there is always some potential for changes in their behavior once they are released. Second, other land-use projects often involve two sides, with proponents arguing that despite the potential risks, the facilities in question can benefit communities and broader society by promoting economic growth and collective public goods.** These potential benefits have even led some communities to recruit prisons,*” waste management facilities,” and biohazard labs.°* No one actively recruits sexually violent predators to their town.

Despite these differences, current understandings of conflicts over siting unwanted facilities can shed light on local opposition to SVP placements. For example, media reports and other sources often downplay local opposition to SVP placements and other kinds of siting decisions as knee-jerk NIMBY reactions. Yet, NIMBY concerns appear to play only a minor role in community responses to a variety of siting decisions. One study of a local protest against a public housing project in Australia reported that activists generally supported public housing, but they opposed a specific housing project because of an unfair decision-making process.°” Others have documented similar dynamics in local opposition to renewable energy projects,” therapy communities for the homeless,”* and biohazard labs." In each of these instances, concerns over a lack of input in siting decisions fueled conflicts between community members and decision makers. Consistent with a procedural justice perspective,”° these accounts suggest that community members resist siting decisions when they believe that the steps leading up to a decision have been unfair.

A city council member in Martinez, California, pointed out another common concern among those involved in opposing siting decisions. When explaining the community’s opposition to a proposed SVP placement there, a newspaper article quoted him as saying, “This is not about Nimbyism. Our backyard’s full. Weve got the refinery, the dump and the jail and 47 people who are sexual offenders. It’s time for other communities in the state to share the load% Community members across the state shared this local politicians concern over the disproportionate siting of unwanted people and facilities in some communities. They believed that because these communities, particularly those marginalized based on their race, class, and geography, were relatively powerless to stop siting decisions, decision makers chose them more often as sites for unwanted people and facilities.**

These concerns recognize the realities of inequalities in both punishment in the United States and site selection for unpopular people and projects. Mass incarceration in the United States has disproportionately targeted inner-city black communities, with large proportions of black men being taken out of their communities. This practice can decimate families, increase local crime rates, and burden community members with supporting reintegration despite their lack of access to the resources necessary to do so.” These kinds of racial disparities in punishment and reentry appear in sex offender laws as well, with black men being required to register as sex offenders at higher rates than others, and communities with higher levels of social disorganization housing more registered sex offenders.*"

At the same time, decision makers choose the path of least political resistance when selecting sites for unpopular people and projects. They look to communities with little political power,® touting the benefits of proposed projects to gain local support in these marginalized communities. As a result, low-income communities of color and rural communities disproportionately become sites for unpopular people and projects.

When disadvantaged communities point out the unfairness of unequal siting decisions, outsiders often perceive their resistance as simple NIMBYism, a characterization that makes it easier for the media, scholars, and the general public to ignore their claims. Instead, this book reinterprets community responses to SVP placements as civic activism rooted in local political and legal institutional contexts. As with most communities, those that oppose SVP placements do so to gain and maintain local control over local issues. They too desire a decent quality of life and safety for their most vulnerable members. Some of their concerns about SVP placements no doubt stem from resistance to the idea of sex offenders in local neighborhoods, but a sense of civic duty motivates them to mobilize in the name of public safety.

This interpretation of community opposition to SVP placements as local civic activism contrasts sharply with the image of weakening social ties and declining civic engagement that Putnam has argued characterizes contemporary public life.°** While in the past civic engagement may have revolved around long-term volunteerism within community organizations, shifts in social and economic structures have precipitated new ways of participating in public life, including one-shot activism.” In the contemporary United States, this one-shot, short-term activism can involve addressing local crime-related issues, especially as crime has provided new ways for citizens to interact with local legal and political institutions.°° For instance, politicians increasingly use “tough on crime” rhetoric to gain support for their political agendas,®’ creating new opportunities for community members to become civically engaged by interacting with the criminal justice system. As Garriott’s ethnography of a rural community in Baker County demonstrated, this civic engagement may take the form of local residents working with law enforcement to solve a seemingly intractable crime-related problem.” In that case, local law enforcement educated community members about the realities of methamphetamine use and abuse and then recruited them to police and watch others in the community to identify suspected dealers and users. Through their attendance at community meetings and educational presentations, as well as their informal police work and surveillance, community members became active in trying to solve the local methamphetamine problem. In short, a collective focus on solving the drug problem activated community members to work with local institutions to increase public safety as well as their quality of life.

Similar processes occur in poor, urban neighborhoods where the structure of federal political and legal institutions can force residents to address crime problems locally.’ While national political institutions tend to tout harsh punishment as the solution to crime problems, those who live in high-crime neighborhoods recognize that crime control requires attending to quality of life issues, harm reduction, and helping victims.’® Without the narrowly framed messages that resonate at the national level or the resources to engage with national interest groups, residents in these neighborhoods attend local meetings, organize citizens groups, and call their local political representatives. These types of activities more clearly fit a traditional definition of civic engagement than those of the residents in the rural community who worked with law enforcement to address their local drug problem, but both involve marginalized communities becoming active in solving a local problem by engaging with their local institutions. In a society in which safety is a key indicator of community well-being and crime is increasingly viewed as a joint problem for communities, politicians, and criminal justice institutions, civic engagement may well have shifted toward vocal participation in public safety issues.