NIJ conference

The National Institute of Justice is the research arm of the United States Department of Justice. I was at their annual conference earlier this week, at their expense, to participate as a panelist during a presentation focusing on the consequences of sex offender residency restriction laws. This is a topic that has appeared in the Chief’s Corner on several previous occasions. This is another example of the use of GIS to inform public policy.

The conference is attended mainly by academicians, with a few practitioners like me interspersed here and there. My specific role on the panel was to serve as a discussant—sort of a friendly critic, as my colleague and former Charlotte police chief Darrel Stephens put it. Earlier this year, I authored a paper for an academic journal, Crime and Justice Policy Review. The focus of my paper was how research in this field could more effectively influence public policy, and this was the same theme as my panel presentation.

In a nutshell, the research shows that residency restrictions don’t impact reoffending and that these laws have the side effect of destabilizing offenders; making it more difficult for them to find employment, obtain housing, preserve family relationships, and participate in aftercare or treatment. With a restriction that seriously reduces housing availability, there is a greater likelihood multiple offenders will live together or in very close proximity to one another, will lie about their place of residence, or will just drop off the radar altogether by not reporting their address changes as required by law. These unintended consequences, in my opinion, actually increase the risk of reoffending, rather than decreasing it.

My critique is centered on the fact that we have not done a good job in translating the research into practice. Despite this knowledge, city councils and state legislatures have scrambled to enact increasingly strict laws that prohibit sex offenders from living near schools, child care centers, parks, even bus stops.

This is not the case, however, in Lincoln or in Nebraska, where reason ruled in the City Council and the Legislature. Rather than the 2000 ft. restrictions common around the country, Lincoln (and later Nebraska) adopted a restriction of 500 ft. from schools. I believe this is the least restrictive law of the 30+ States that have adopted such statutes. The comparative impact is displayed in a very short PowerPoint—five slides:

Since they aren’t narrated, I will explain:

Slide one: The City of Lincoln

Slide two: A buffer of 2000 ft. from schools

Slide three: A buffer is added of 2000 ft. from parks. The blue areas would all be off limits if Lincoln had adopted the same law as Iowa. The areas that remain all have a story: many of these are Lincoln’s most exclusive residential areas. Others are places such as industrial tracts, Holmes Lake, and the Lincoln Municipal Airport.

Slide four: Zoomed-in view of one of those donut holes. How long does it take you to identify the type of place this is?

Slide five: The results of the law actually passed, a 500 ft. excluded zone around schools for high-risk (level 3) registered sex offenders whose victims were under the age of 19. As you can see, there is a lot of land available for sex offenders to lawfully reside—which I believe strikes a good balance by preventing some of those unitended consequences, such as more offenders disapparing and failing to report their address changes.