Rights group questions sex-offender policies

Last update: September 12, 2007 - 8:44 PM

NEW YORK - Many state laws targeting convicted sex offenders violate the rights of people who pose little risk, a human rights group said Wednesday. It called for repeal of laws restricting where these offenders can live and for curbs on access to online registries.

Human Rights Watch depicted its report as the first comprehensive study of sex-offender policies in the United States. It said many of the laws are of questionable value in protecting children but expose offenders who have served their sentences to harassment and violence.

"These are laws that weren't based on reason -- they were based on a few horrific cases," said Jamie Fellner, director of the U.S. program at Human Rights Watch.

The report criticizes the three main categories of laws that have spread nationwide in the past 15 years: those that require registration of convicted sex offenders, create online registries accessible to the public and impose residency restrictions.

Concern about such laws has grown in recent years. At least four homicides have been attributed to self-styled vigilantes who killed men listed on the registries, and some law enforcement officials contend that residency restrictions cause more problems than they solve by driving offenders away from jobs, relatives and treatment programs.

But support for the measures among politicians and the public remains high.

Human Rights Watch called for repeal of all broad-based residency restrictions, saying that traditional parole and probation laws can be used to restrict individual high-risk offenders.

The report urged states to limit access to sex-offender registries, while developing narrower, more sophisticated ways of alerting residents in a given neighborhood.

Minnesota won praise in this regard for tailoring its policies based on individual assessments of an offender's threat level.

All sex offenders leaving prison in Minnesota are placed in one of three categories that indicate their likelihood to reoffend. In Hennepin County, sex offenders in the two highest categories -- Level 2 and Level 3 -- are placed under intense supervision for about a year. A Level 3 designation triggers a community notification meeting, in which the offender's name, crime and block they live on is made public. There are no restrictions where an offender can live.

There are 607 offenders with a Level 3 designation, but only 25 percent are living in residences. (The rest are either in local, state or federal custody).

ASSOCIATED PRESS