UPDATE 1-CALL TO ACTION: Volusia County Drafting Ordinance To Expand Residency Restriction to 1,500 Feet in the Unincorporated Parts of Volusia County for People Classified as a Sexual Predator

UPDATE 7/10/2023 – This item was removed from the County Commission Meeting Agenda for 7/11/2023.  We understand that Commissioner Danny Robins and County Attorney Russ Brown are calling for additional research. Please continue to send research studies and your opposition letters to the commissioners and county attorney (contact info below).

Next Volusia County Commission Meeting is August 1.

Major Concerns:

• Volusia County Council members voted to draft an ordinance that would extend the residency restriction requirement in the unincorporated parts of the county to 1,500 feet for people designated as a sexual predator. You can view the council meeting
• According to Municode.com, the towns in Volusia County (Deland, Daytona Beach, and New Smyrna Beach) already have 2,500-foot residency restrictions listed below, forcing many people on the sex offender registry, whether labeled as an offender or predator, out to the unincorporated parts of the county. As mentioned at the June 20 council meeting, expanding the residency restrictions to 1,500 feet in the unincorporated area of the county will reduce the available area of affordable housing by approximately 1/3.
• Daytona Beach: 2,500 feet of any school, child care facility, public park, beach, public or private playground including miniparks and recreational open spaces, library, or church
• Deland: 2,500 feet of any school, day care center, public park, playground, or public bus stop regardless of whether the school, day care center, public park, playground or public bus stop lies within the city limits of the city of DeLand or unincorporated Volusia County
• New Smyrna Beach: 2,500 feet of any child care facility, park, playground, or school
• The next Volusia County Council meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, July 11 at 9 am.

PLEASE Do the Following:

• Email, call, or send letters through the U.S. Mail to the Volusia County Council members to let them know that you OPPOSE the expansion of the residency restriction requirement to 1,500 feet in the unincorporated areas of the county for people required to register as a predator.
• You must include your full name, residential city, and subject (sexual predators residency distance requirement in the unincorporated areas of Volusia County).
• Ask family members and friends to also contact the council members to OPPOSE this expansion of the state’s 1,000-foot residency restriction requirement to 1,500 feet.
• If you choose to share any research with the council, the members are probably told NOT to click on links. Therefore, include a 1- to 2-sentence summary along with the title of the study or article that could be used in a google search.  You could also include the link if you choose to do so.
• IF YOU WRITE AN EMAIL OR LETTER, MAKE SURE THAT IT IS NO LONGER THAN ONE PAGE. YOU CAN CHOOSE TO USE SOME OF THE FOLLOWING TALKING POINTS OR YOU OWN IDEAS.  PLEASE DO NOT JUST COPY/PASTE BUT INDIVIDUALIZE YOUR LETTER.

Talking Points:

• If you live in Florida but not Volusia County, you could mention that you are opposed to increasing the residency restrictions as you do not want to see such a punitive measure spread to your county.
• If you do not live in Florida, you could mention that you feel extremely uncomfortable traveling to a state that passes laws NOT based on empirically-validated research.
• ALL research shows that residency restrictions have had no effect on sexual recidivism rates. County ordinances should be based on empirically-validated research.
• The 1,500 feet will be measured from the outermost boundaries of schools, etc., to the outermost boundaries of one’s residence. It will be a linear (straight line) measure.  Fifteen hundred feet is the equivalent of five adjacent football fields laid end to end.
• Statute 775.21 defines sexual predators as “repeat sexual offenders, sexual offenders who use physical violence, and sexual offenders who prey on children.”
• In Florida, there are people classified as “sexual offenders who prey on children” or “predators” who had medically documented dementia at the time of the offense. Florida statute does not allow courts to consider dementia in these cases.
• Councilman Don Dempsey stated there are people in prison and on the sex offense registry who are innocent, unwilling to play Russian roulette with a jury where a guilty conviction can result in a lifetime sentence. Corroborative evidence is no longer required.  All the child has to say is that their bottom was touched.
• Councilman Danny Robins said we all want to “save that one child”, but do we do it at expense of the lives of people accused of a sex crime they never committed? Do we do it at the expense of the people who have completed their sentence and are now law-abiding citizens who will never sexually re-offend?
• We all want to save the one child to whom Councilman Robins is referring, but how far do we take it? Released murderers, perpetrators of domestic violence (whose actions are at times more harmful to a child than certain sex offense cases are), violent gang leaders, armed robbers, etc., are allowed to live anywhere.
• The sexual recidivism rate for people with a past sex offense is lower than that for all other crimes, with the exception of murder.
• When threatened with legal challenges, Gainesville and Palm Beach County rolled back their 2500-foot residency restrictions to the state’s 1000 ft, and there has NOT been an increase in sex offenses because of the rollback.
• In 93% of sex offenses committed against minors, the child knows the perpetrator (family member, school staff, coaching staff, church staff, etc.), debunking the myth of “stranger danger.”
• Expanding the residency restrictions increases the homeless population. Research shows that being homeless makes it more difficult for people released from prison to reintegrate back into society successfully as law-abiding citizens, thereby increasing their chances of committing another offense.  Such instability makes society less safe.
• Residency restriction requirements have proven to be ineffective and punitive to people on the registry along with their family members; education is the key to prevention. Preventative programs should be offered in the Volusia County schools, colleges, workplaces, and other public venues to stop the cycle of abuse, raise awareness of the consequences, identify support resources, and ultimately restore families.
• Councilman Don Dempsey is to be commended for his defense of people required to register.

Contact Information for Volusia County Council Members:

Jeff Brower, County Chair – jbrower@volusia.org
Jake Johansson, At-large – jjohansson@volusia.org
Don Dempsey, District 1 – ddempsey@volusia.org
Matt Reinhart, District 2 – mreinhart@volusia.org
Danny Robins, District 3 – drobins@volusia.org

Troy Kent, District 4 – tkent@volusia.org
David Santiago, District 5 – dsantiago@volusia.org

County Attorney Russ Brown – rbrown@volusia.org

jbrower@volusia.org; jjohansson@volusia.org; ddempsey@volusia.org; mreinhart@volusia.org; drobins@volusia.org; tkent@volusia.org; dsantiago@volusia.org, rbrown@volusia.org

Phone number for all council members:

386-736-5920

Mailing address for all council members:

County of Volusia
Thomas C. Kelly
Administration Center
123 W. Indiana Ave.
DeLand, FL 32720-4612

Some of the research showing residency restrictions are ineffective:

• Why Maryland does not have residency restrictions – because evidence shows that residency restrictions do NOT help to prevent sexual offenses from occurring because the victims and the offenders, in most situations, know each other. (Maryland Department of Public Safety & Correctional Services, “Sex Offender Registry FAQs”, see question 15) https://www.dpscs.state.md.us/onlineservs/sor/frequently_asked_questions.shtml
• In 2017, the Illinois Task Force reported that research showed that residency restrictions lead neither to reductions in sexual crime nor recidivism. (Illinois December 2017 Sex Offenses & Sex Offender Registration Task Force Final Report, page iv)  http://www.icjia.state.il.us/assets/articles/SOTF_report_final_12292017.pdf
• “There is no research to support residence restrictions as effective in reducing sexual recidivism. The Minnesota Department of Corrections concluded in one study that ‘during the past 16 years, not one sex offender released from a Minnesota Correctional Facility has been re-incarcerated for a sex offense in which he made contact with a juvenile victim near a school, park, or daycare center close to his home.’”  (“Residency Restrictions for Sexual Offenders in Minnesota:  False Perceptions for Community Safety”, 2016)  MnATSA-Residency-Restrictions-2016.pdf
• In 2018, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, sex offender residency restrictions were declared unconstitutional. https://floridaactioncommittee.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/OrderGrantingDefsMotiontoDismiss.pdf
• “Residency restrictions have not accomplished the goals that politicians have promised they would but have caused collateral consequences that can actually make society worse off.” (Boston College Journal of Law & Social Justice, “No Place to Call Home: Rethinking Residency Restrictions for Sex Offenders”, Gina Puls) https://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1102&context=jlsj
• “Residency restrictions should be abolished.” (Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, Levenson, Leibowitz, and Grady, 2016, “Grand Challenges: Social Justice and the Need for Evidence-Based Sex Offender Registry Reform”, page 22) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304990286_Grand_Challenges_Social_Justice_and_the_Need_for_Evidence-based_Sex_Offender_Registry_Reform)
• From the African American Studies Program at the University of South Carolina, “policymakers need to rethink…residency restriction laws and change them to reflect empirical evidence based on the nature of sexual offending…that change could bring about meaningful reductions in homelessness, associated with being a registered sex offender.” (University of South Carolina African American Studies Program, “Sex Offender Residence Restrictions and Homelessness)  https://sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/artsandsciences/african_american_studies/about/news/2019/offender.php Actual Study: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0887403419862334
• In Broward County, 27.6% of registrants are homeless, and in Miami-Dade, 28.2% are homeless, with residency restrictions being the main obstacle in finding stable housing. OPPAGA-Report-21.pdf  (pages 25-26)

Some of the research showing most future sex crimes are committed by people NOT on the registry:

• “The majority of empirical studies indicate that those convicted of a sexual offense have no previous sexual offense on their record, and in one instance over 95% of all sexual offense arrests were committed by first-time offenders (Hepburn &Griffin, 2002; Sandler et al, 2008).” See Discussion on page 20.  (Journal of Experimental Criminology, Kristen M. Zgoba, Meghan M. Mitchell, 2021, “The effectiveness of Sex Offender Registration and Notification: A meta-analysis of 25 years of findings?”) The effectiveness of Sex Offender Registration and Notification: A meta-analysis of 25 years of findings (floridaactioncommittee.org)
• “…most new sexually-based crimes are committed by someone not on the registry. In Ohio in 1999, 92% of those convicted of a sex offense against a child and 93% of those convicted of a sex offense against a teenager were first-time offenders.  Most recently, Sandler et al., in their analysis of the effectiveness of Megan’s Law in New York, reported that 96% of all new arrests for sexual crimes occurred among those without previous sexual crime convictions.”  (National Library of Medicine, “Sexual Offender Laws and Prevention of Sexual Violence or Recidivism”, Kelly K. Bonnar-Kidd, PhD, 2010)  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2820068/:
• “Analyses…showed that over 95% of all sexual offense arrests were committed by first-time sex offenders, casting doubt on the ability of laws that target repeat offenders to meaningfully reduce sexual offending.” (“Does a Watched Pot Boil? A Time-Series Analysis of New York State’s Sex Offender Registration and Notification Law”, Jeffrey C. Sandler, Naomi J. Freeman, Kelly Michael Socia, 2008) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232505213_Does_a_Watched_Pot_Boil_A_Time-Series_Analysis_of_New_York_State’s_Sex_Offender_Registration_and_Notification_Law
• “Almost all (95%) of sex crimes are committed by someone who would not be on the sex offender registry.” (Psychology Today, “Sex Offender Registries”, Elizabeth Jeglic, Ph.D., 2019)  https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/protecting-children-sexual-abuse/201908/sex-offender-registries

Some of the research showing that minors know their perpetrators approximately 93% of the time, i.e., they are not strangers:

• Ninety-three percent of child victims know their perpetrator. (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, RAINN, “Children and Teens: Statistics”)  https://www.rainn.org/statistics/children-and-teens
• More than 9 out of 10 sexual assaults are committed by someone known to the victim. (Bureau of Justice Statistics Study, 2021)  https://bjs.ojp.gov/nibrs/reports/sarble/sarble19
• Under “Discussion”: “As upwards of ninety percent of victims and offenders know and prey on one another, we need to confront the uncomfortable truth that those who commit sexual offenses are usually not strangers.” (“The Effectiveness of Sex Offender Registration and Notification: A meta-analysis of 25 years of findings”, Kristen Zgoba and Meghan Mitchell, 2021)  The effectiveness of Sex Offender Registration and Notification: A meta-analysis of 25 years of findings (floridaactioncommittee.org)
• ”Concerning kidnapping and child sex trafficking, ‘stranger danger’ is usually not a factor in the equation. Kids are virtually never grabbed off the street and pulled into an unmarked van.”  (SocialMiami.com, “Senator Lauren Book: Masks Do Not Increase Kidnapping Risk”, Lauren Book) https://socialmiami.com/senator-lauren-book-masks-do-not-increase-kidnapping-risk-for-children/

Some of the research on false allegations of child sexual abuse:

• “A review of the literature revealed false allegations…numbering between 2 and 8 percent of referrals to child abuse clinics, 6 percent of emergency room referrals, and higher rates (between 36 and 56 percent) for allegations arising out of custody disputes.” (U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs, American Journal of Psychotherapy, “False Sexual-Abuse Allegations by Children and Adolescents: Contextual Factors and Clinical Subtypes”, E. J. Mikkelsen, T. G. Gutheil, M. Emens, 1992)  https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/false-sexual-abuse-allegations-children-and-adolescents-contextual
• “Data suggest that the overwhelming majority of children’s allegations are legitimate and true. But, in certain situations and circumstances, a child may lie and make up false allegations of abuse.  This phenomenon is seen most commonly in child custody cases and in criminal cases.”  (Psychiatric Times, “False Allegations of Sexual Abuse”, Alan D. Blotcky, PhD, 2022) https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/why-some-children-lie-about-sexual-abuse