Sex offender plan is selfish, misguided

In a move that could provide some relief to Pierce County, a proposal headed to Gov. Jay Inslee aims to avoid concentrating the state’s most violent sex criminals in any one area.

Analysis from the Tacoma News Tribune last summer found courts that ordered supervised releases from the Special Commitment Center since 2012 had placed nine of 16 released detainees in Pierce County, although none of the 16 came from Pierce County.

As a result of this investigation, a lot of lawmakers, activists, and public officials said, yeah, that’s not cool. Send them back where they came from. They’re not welcome here.

The Tribune reports the proposal asks courts to place detainees in the county where a court ordered their commitments, unless that would be inappropriate because of proximity to victims or negative influences.

“The judge will have an opportunity to balance all of those concerns and make a decision about what is in the best interest of the community as well as the victim,” Rep. Christine Kilduff, D-University Place, told the Tribune.

She told KIRO Radio last year:

“This proposal is really about fairness. The general rule of thumb will be that they return to the county in which they were committed. That makes sure that communities are safe and also makes sure there is a fair distribution of folks leaving the special commitment center so that we don’t have a vast majority of folks ending up in Pierce County.”

How big is that vast majority?

Kilduff explained, “12 percent of the population of our state resides in Pierce County, but currently we have 16 percent of sex offenders in the county. There’s a disconnect there. This bill is about making sure there’s fairness.”

If a judge does place an offender in a different county, state government would have to explain the reason to local officials.

Not everyone is happy with this for a number of reasons.

One defense attorney who represents offenders told lawmakers that making the release process more complicated would discourage supervised release, which gives offenders a valuable transitional period of adjustment to freedom.

The process would have similarities to one lawmakers have required for prison inmates. That has been successful in keeping Pierce County from being a dumping ground for offenders, said Rep. Dick Muri, R-Steilacoom.

“I think it’ll work,” Muri told the Tribune. “If not, we’ll be back with another bill.”

The proposal started out as a pair of bills pushed by the Pierce County delegation.

This is an interesting topic for a variety of reasons, but the implications are pretty startling.

This bill is the equivalent of the Marysville law that outlawed panhandling. Rather than treat the problem and try to end homelessness, they just push the problem on a neighboring community. This does the same thing with sex offenders.

Related: You can’t just make panhandling illegal

But how does this address the problem? The real problem isn’t that they’re in Pierce County instead of their home county. The problem is they’ve been released and you don’t want them released.

The Tribune reported:

“Take Douglas Ray Higgins, convicted in 1991 of a Snohomish County rape committed while on parole for a 1984 King County rape conviction.

An expert later concluded Higgins was especially dangerous because his crimes dated back to age 13, he had committed some at knife point and his victims’ fear and struggling had sexually stimulated him, according to court records.

But at the SCC, the state’s lockup for sexually violent predators, he participated in treatment and won freedom.”

It seems to me you should work on changing the punishments to keep these people behind bars longer. Make the treatment more intense. Maybe forgo treatment all together and keep them locked up.

Pushing them into another county seems useless and it’s certainly selfish. Why don’t you want them in your community? Because they’re dangerous. They might recommit. So you’ll push them, if you’re in Pierce County, back to Snohomish County to recommit?

If you want to live in a world where we let these people out, well, don’t you have to give them a chance?

Are you willing to? I don’t know if I’m willing to, but I do know if you don’t give them that shot and they end up homeless, living on the streets away from any further treatment and monitoring &#8212 they may recommit again.

I don’t want this to be signed solely because I’d rather them spend time on the actual problem.