Elizabeth Wilson — Record-Bee staff
LAKE COUNTY ? California”s Jessica”s Law, an initiative approved by 70 percent of voters in November 2006, is a difficult law to enforce due to the way it was written, officials are discovering. And it could create problems for rural areas because of a potential influx of offenders from urban areas, and lack of state funding to implement the law.
The law has strict requirements that offenders distance themselves from places where children congregate, such as schools and day care centers. Because cities have more of these places per square mile than do rural areas, offenders who fall under the new law are required to relocate. A city like San Francisco would then theoretically be void of those offenders, if they abide by the law.
But a place like Lake County could attract more offenders as a viableplace to live because there are fewer and more widely placed schools.
The new law does not include a provision of extra law enforcement to those rural areas to regulate the potential displacement of offenders into those areas.
Senior Deputy District Attorney John DeChaine, who handles all sex-related offenses in Lake County, said the county has “a much more aggressive approach to prosecutions of sex offenders,” in his experience, as compared to other jurisdictions. Every sex offense
that occurs in the county comes across his desk, he said.
There are 91,162 registered sex offenders in the state of California as of February 2003, according to the Attorney General”s Web site.
But most are not covered by the law, Proposition 83, because their crimes predated it. In San Francisco, there are 824 offenders. In
Lake County, 197 are spread across the county and in some cases, concentrated in certain pockets within communities, according to a map of sex registrants” locations on the site.
“My concern with the adoption of Jessica”s Law, which I generally support, is that certain aspects of it may make things worse for Lake County in many ways,” DeChaine said. “Sex registrants will be limited in the locations in which they can live in urban settings, and the consequence of those limitations may prove to be that sex registrants are forced to live in more rural areas like Lake County.”
Last Thursday, California Corrections Secretary James Tilton began notifying county law enforcement agencies that the state would no longer pay for tracking devices once offenders leave parole.
And after a nearly one-year anniversary of the law, the state has not yet fully outfitted all sex offenders still under its supervision
with satellite tracking. Only 2,000 of the more than 4,000 offenders required by law to be tracked are wearing the devices.
Very few local agencies in the state are equipped to handle the costs of satellite monitoring. And the law does not specifically say
whether they have to. It does not spell out who should monitor offenders, how to define the restrictions on sex registrants living near places where children are present or how to pay for the costly tracking. The lack of detail is spurring a growing population of
people who in general support the law, but also critique it. Lake County Dist. 3 Supervisor Denise Rushing, who represents Upper
Lake and the northern part of the county, said the law is one of many “unfunded mandates” after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger used his blue pencil to cut funding from a variety of programs to lower the state”s $38 billion deficit. She said the county supervisors have not had any conversations about Jessica”s Law, and the issue of how the county would cope with its
funding has not yet been breached.
“Lake County already has a disproportionate problem with funding for law enforcement. It is a known fact that people come to rural areas to do things they don”t want seen,” she said, acknowledging the recent large-scale marijuana busts that puts Lake County number one in the state for pot seizures. “We”re already really stretched thin with law enforcement.”
Dist. 5 Supervisor Rob Brown, who represents Kelseyville and surrounding areas, echoed Rushing”s concern about the law being yet another unfunded mandate. He said the county would find money to enforce the law even if the state is falling through. “We have to find the money for it somewhere. We need our children safe before we need anything else?They can take it out of my check, that”s how strongly I feel about it,” Brown said.
Some help may come from one organization, The Jessica Marie Lunsford Foundation, a group that wrote the first Jessica”s law in Florida, and helped enact the law in 33 states. According to the foundation”s Web site, its financial support goes directly to “fight to change legislation, provide grassroots awareness and continuous support base,” and to “search, locate and help law enforcement apprehend absconder pedophiles.”
For more information about Jessica”s Law, visit www.jmlfoundation.org/faq, or the Attorney General”s Web site on Megan”s Law: http://meganslaw.ca.gov
Contact Elizabeth Wilson at ewilson@record-bee.com
