Sex Offenders Make Up Large Share of Homeless Population, New Report Shows

https://www.city-journal.org/article/homeless-population-sex-offenders-sh
elters 

Most Americans understand the link between homelessness and crime. But
activists and academics reject the connection, insisting that the
homeless pose no elevated crime threat. A new report from the Cicero
Institute complicates their argument, revealing that a large share of
the nation’s homeless population is composed of registered sex
offenders. 

The report, covering 41 states, compared counts of sex offenders listed
as “homeless” or “address unknown” on state registries with the federal
Point-in-Time Count database to determine what proportion of a state’s
homeless population appears on its sex-offender registry. 

The results are alarming. Sex offenders account for more than 20 percent
of the unsheltered homeless population in 20 states, and more than 10
percent in 32 states. In eight states—Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois,
Massachusetts, North Carolina, Nebraska, Rhode Island, and
Wisconsin—more than 50 percent of the unsheltered homeless population is
on the sex-offender registry. 

The median state’s share of sex offenders among its unsheltered
population was 20 percent—higher than the proportions of families (5
percent), elderly (5 percent), veterans (5 percent), and transgender- or
gender-nonconforming-identifying (1 percent) and HIV-positive persons (1
percent) combined. 

Many sex offenders struggle to find work and therefore to afford
housing. But that’s not the only reason that they are overrepresented on
the streets: such offenders also have higher rates of cognitive
impairments, substance abuse, and severe mental illness, each associated
with higher rates of homelessness. And many shelters refuse to admit sex
offenders, making them even more likely than other homeless subgroups to
be unsheltered and living on the streets. 

Many other misconceptions exist about sex offenders and the registry.
For example, reform advocates assert that individuals often get
registered for relatively low-level crimes, like public urination.
Lourdes Portillo, a researcher at the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and
Housing Initiative, suggested that the lack of public bathrooms could
land some homeless people on the registry. 

This is misleading. Prosecution and registration for indecent exposure,
the category within which public urination is classified, is
comparatively rare as an isolated offense without a criminal sexual
motivation. Most states’ registries consist primarily of people who have
committed serious offenses like rape or the sexual abuse of a child. 

Sociologists often claim that sex offenders are not especially
dangerous. That claim is also misleading—and even less relevant when it
comes to homeless sex offenders, who have a heightened risk of
recidivism. It’s true that, according to the Bureau of Justice
Statistics, sex offenders have the second-lowest recidivism rate by
offense type, after murderers. But there are strong reasons to be
skeptical of these figures: incidents of sexual violence are grossly
underreported. Moreover, sex offenders commit new sex crimes after their
release at two to four times the rate of other offenders, suggesting a
distinct pattern of specialization. 

Homeless individuals are generally more likely to commit crimes than
non-homeless people. The San Diego District Attorney’s office found that
homeless individuals were hundreds of times more likely than the general
population to commit crimes like robbery, arson, and assault. A large
study of homelessness by UCSF’s Benioff Initiative found that nearly
eight in ten homeless people reported going to jail, and more than three
in ten had been in prison. The literature on recidivism indicates that
homeless offenders are much more likely than non-homeless offenders to
commit new crimes. 

Despite these risks, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development allows publicly funded programs to include sex offenders in
facilities and services that help women, children, and other vulnerable
populations. This misguided policy may be one reason why homeless people
have such high rates of sexual victimization—they are forced to live
around sexual victimizers. 

More research is needed to determine which policy interventions can best
mitigate sex-offender homelessness. While many criminologists point to
residence restrictions and community-notification policies as potential
drivers of homelessness, the scholarly literature is inconclusive,
partly because these policies are not consistently enforced. 

Meantime, policymakers should use available tools of social control to
reduce the public-safety risks posed by large numbers of sex offenders
living on the street. They can enforce prohibitions against street
camping and failing to register or provide an address; restrict the
parole of sex offenders lacking a housing plan; and expand the use of
sex-offender civil-commitment laws. 

The prevalence of unhoused sex offenders should motivate municipalities
to adopt a more assertive approach to street homelessness. Failure to
act leaves communities—including vulnerable homeless individuals—less
safe. 


-- 
November 5, 2024 - Congratulations President Donald Trump.  We look 
forward to America being great again.

We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that 
stupid people won't be offended.

Every day is an IQ test. Some pass, some, not so much.

Thank you for cleaning up the disasters of the 2008-2017, 2020-2024 Obama 
/ Biden / Harris fiascos, President Trump.

Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the 
The World According To Garp.  Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood 
queer liberal democrat donors.