OFFICIALS announced Thursday, March 26 that the California government would stop enforcing a key provision of a voter-approved law prohibiting all registered sex offenders from living close to schools.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) said it would no longer impose the blanket restrictions outlined in Jessica’s Law, which forbids all sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park, regardless of whether their sex crimes involved children.
High-risk sex offenders and those whose crimes involved children under 14 will still be prohibited from living within a half-mile of a school, the CDCR agency said. Otherwise, officials will assess each parolee based on factors relating to their individual cases.
The loosening of policy comes nine years after California voters approved the controversial law, which has also made it difficult for many sex offenders to find places to live.
On March 2, the California Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Jessica’s Law violated the constitutional rights of parolees living in San Diego County who argued that the limitations made it impossible for them to obtain adequate housing. As a result, advocates said, some parolees were living in places like riverbeds and alleys.
“While the court’s ruling is specific to San Diego County, its rationale is not,” CDCR spokesman Luis Patino said Thursday. “After reviewing the court’s analysis, the state attorney general’s office advised CDCR that applying the blanket mandatory residency restrictions of Jessica’s Law would be found to be unconstitutional in every county.”
The CDCR sent a memo to state parole officials on Wednesday outlining the new policy change. The directive said residency restrictions could be established if there was a “nexus to their commitment offense, criminal history and/or future criminality.”
The memo said officials would soon provide further direction on how to modify conditions for parolees who are already living in the community.
In the ruling, the Supreme Court determined that the blanket policies for parolees “severely restricted their ability to find housing.”
“[The rules] increased the incidence of homelessness among them, and hindered their access to medical treatment, drug and alcohol dependency services, psychological counseling and other rehabilitative social services available to all parolees,” wrote Justice Marvin R. Baxter.
A CDCR report found that the number of homeless sex offenders statewide increased by about 24 times in the three years after Jessica’s Law was implemented. Parole officers told the court that homeless parolees were more difficult to supervise, and posed a greater risk to public safety than those with homes.
A San Diego County parolee convicted in 1991 challenged the law, telling his story of severe illnesses and his inability to live with a relative (who was a health professional) because of the residency restrictions. Instead, he stayed in an alley behind the parole office.
The court ultimately determined that the residency restrictions did not advance the goal of protecting children, but infringed on parolees’ constitutional rights to be free of unreasonable, arbitrary and oppressive government action. (With reports from Los Angeles Times)