Despite the passage of mandatory sentencing, electronic monitoring, and other measures like registration requirements, notification programs, and Amber Alert broadcasts, challenges to managing sex offenders remain. One in five girls and one in ten boys are sexually exploited before they reach adulthood, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The number of registered sex offenders in the United States is more than 600,000. Every 40 seconds a child is reported missing or abducted, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. That translates to over 2,000 children per day, and over 800,000 per year.
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Why mandatory sentencing is important:
Mandatory minimum sentences achieve two important goals. First, they send a strong message to our communities that we will not tolerate sexual crimes, especially those perpetrated against children. Second, they help ensure that sexual predators cannot easily victimize another innocent child. Some judges, perhaps overconfident in their ability to see change in first-time sex offenders, often hand down modest sentences that do not do justice to past or future victims. The statistics speak for themselves. Sex offenders are four times more likely than other criminals to commit a new sex offense. That statistic understates the risk: it compares convicted sex offenders with other criminals, not the general population; it describes one-time sex offenders, not two-time offenders, who are more likely still to repeat the crime; and it counts only re-arrests, ignoring repeat offenders not apprehended.
Moreover, of the released sex offenders who committed repeat offenses, 40 percent perpetrated the new offense within a year of their discharge from prison; and the majority of the children they molested after leaving prison were age 13 or younger, according to the Justice Department study. Other BJS surveys show that in almost half of the child-victim cases, the child was the perpetrator’s own son or daughter or other relative. Other studies show that number to be 80 percent or higher.
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Why GPS monitoring is important:
Studies of GPS monitoring programs in New Jersey and Florida show that the increased likelihood of getting caught provides a powerful disincentive to repeating a sexual crime.
New Jersey ’s State Parole Board released a study in December 2007 that concluded that the state’s GPS monitoring “has contributed to a lower recidivism rate than nationwide data indicates for high-risk sex offenders.” Since August 2005, the state has tried around-the-clock GPS monitoring on 225 of its most dangerous registered sex offenders on parole. Only one of the 225 has been charged with a new sex crime while under GPS supervision. And that one repeat offender was arrested at the scene of the crime, which was a rape in April 2006. “Even if the sex offender had left the scene,” the study notes, “GPS data was available to pinpoint his presence at the time and place of the crime, and was ready to serve as a vital aid to the investigation.” In short, New Jersey ’s experience strongly suggests that GPS monitoring helps catch repeat perpetrators of sex crimes and, most important, deters the commission of sex crimes in the first place.
Florida ’s experience with GPS monitoring is similarly positive. A 2006 study conducted by three researchers at Florida State University and published in the journal Criminology & Public Policy examined data on 75,661 serious offenders placed in home confinement in Florida from 1998 to 2002. The study was broader in scope than the New Jersey study, analyzing criminals convicted of both sexual and serious non-sex crimes and monitored by both GPS and radio. Its results bear relevance to the subject of today’s hearing. The study found that offenders tracked by GPS or radio were 90 percent less likely to abscond or re-offend than those not electronically monitored. “Both radio-frequency and global positioning system monitoring significantly reduce the likelihood of technical violations, reoffending, and absconding for this population of offenders,” according to the study’s authors. Electronic monitoring of offenders “may prove an effective public safety alternative to prison,” the study concluded.
GPS monitoring may have another, less obvious advantage: it helps clear the people it monitors of sex crimes they did not commit. The New Jersey Parole Board study reports that “on more than a dozen occasions, GPS data was able to eliminate the entire GPS caseload as suspects in new sex crimes, by showing that all of these individuals were elsewhere when the crime took place.” GPS monitoring protects the innocent as it thwarts the guilty. Law enforcement officials have told me that sex offenders often prefer to subject themselves to GPS monitoring, which allows them to leave prison and provides evidence that can refute unfounded allegations.
In most states where GPS monitoring is required by law, the offender is responsible for paying the costs of the GPS
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The Ride For Jessie...
Why sex offender treatment programs aren't sufficient punishment:
Therapy benefits for sex offenders are greatly disputed. Treatment plans known as relapse prevention have been a cornerstone of efforts to reform sex offenders for the past 20 years. Yet there is no convincing evidence that the approach works, or that others do either.
Similar to aspects of Alcoholics Anonymous, relapse prevention has sex offenders own up to wrongdoing and resign themselves to a lifelong day-to-day struggle with temptation. One of the few authoritative studies of the method, conducted in California from 1985 to 2001, found that those who entered relapse prevention treatment were actually slightly more likely to offend again than those who got no therapy at all.
Clinicians who work with sex offenders often cling nonetheless to the promise of relapse prevention through treatment, and its durability speaks volumes about the troubled, politically fraught science of rehabilitating sex offenders. Not only is relapse prevention of questionable value, but so are the tests to gauge whether sex offenders in treatment still get inappropriately aroused, including the methods used to predict risk of reoffending. In March 2007 the New York Times investigated treatment programs in California, Florida, Massachusetts, South Carolina, Wisconsin, Canada, and Great Britain and found that as recently as the 1970s, research on treating sex offenders was practically nonexistent. The dearth of reliable studies has several causes. Among them, first, is the fact that there are fewer convicted sex offenders than most other kinds of criminals—so that sample groups are unreliably small. Second, sex offenders tend to be so secretive that according to a Florida psychologist who has treated sex offenders since 1982, “it is really hard to get information from them that you can have confidence in.”
Much of the research into the treatment of sex offenders has come out of Canada , where national criminal history records are easily accessible.
Canadian psychologists have studied not only treatment outcomes but also risk assessment, or determining who is likely to re-offend.
Combining findings from hundreds of smaller studies, R. Karl Hanson, senior research officer for the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness in Canada, found that roughly 15 percent of convicted sex offenders are caught reoffending after five years and that those driven by deviant sexual interests, like pedophiles and exhibitionists, are the likeliest to do so. Dr. Hanson’s research shows that “most treatments don’t work very well,” but that, overall, treatment has a modest beneficial effect. One analysis he published in 2002 found that 12 percent of offenders who got treatment were subsequently caught committing new sex crimes, compared with 17 percent of untreated offenders. These statistics are hardly comforting. And on average, treatment programs tend to cost more than keeping sex offenders in prison.
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"Did you ever meet a child who loved to clean the bathroom? Well, Jessie did — window sills, the tub, the floor and everything," Grandma Ruth said. "But, that was Jessie. She kept her room perfect, her drawers neat, with everything ‘professionally' folded, everything in her closet lined up perfectly."
That was Jessie. Everything just so.
She was Grandma's girl from the time she was 1, when Jessie's mom and dad split up. She and Grandma Ruth loved to go shopping together, to J. C. Penney at the mall and Wal-Mart in Homosassa. Everybody in those stores knew Jessie, Ruth said, even the ladies back in the catalog department at JCPenney.
Oh, did that girl love clothes! Especially "skorts" and capri pants. When her church had a fashion show last year, Jessie modeled white and lime green-patterned capri pants and matching green top and a black, shiny raincoat. She loved that raincoat so much that she wanted to wear it all the time, no matter how hot it was outside.
Jessie wanted to be an Olympic swimmer — and a fashion designer. She would cut up old dress-up clothes and make clothes for her dolls. She and Grandma collected dolls together, from Barbies and Bratz dolls to porcelain collectibles.
"She couldn't sew," Ruth said, "but my friend Helen would give Jessie all her (fabric) scraps and she would make clothes, sarongs and things that tied."
Jessie was all girl. She loved purple and pink. She watched the Disney Channel all the time and had a collection of Disney videos. She especially loved "The Princess Diaries."
Jessie and her friend, Tiffany, liked to do cheerleading and gymnastics together.
"She liked doing cartwheels — I taught her to do that," Tiffany said. "We used to play on my tire swing, but it made us dizzy so we stopped."
The two were going to have a band, but they didn't have any instruments, only a microphone. So, they decided just to sing and dance. They liked doing karaoke together at Jessie's house.
They liked to ride bikes. Even though Jessie had several two-wheeled bikes, the one she liked riding best was an old three-wheeler with no brakes that Grandpa Archie had given her.
She loved jewelry and shoes and putting clothes on her dog "Corky." She loved makeup.
"I gave her an old box of cosmetics that she would play with," Ruth said. "Well, one Sunday we were getting ready to go to church and she came out with all this makeup on! I said, ‘Jessie, that's too much for church.'"
She went right in and washed it off. That was Jessie. Never an argument or a tantrum. Just "Yes, Ma'am" or "No, Ma'am."
Church was a big part of Jessie's short life and she was a big part of Faith Baptist Church in Homosassa, where she attended the King's Kids Wednesday night program. Out of 35 kids, Jessie was one of six who recently memorized the names of all the books of the New Testament and the memory verse,"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" (Philippians 4:13).
"She (recited) it the night before she disappeared," said Kim Bidlack, her King's Kids leader and friend. "She was always smiling. There's an emptiness now when you go to church."
Jessie was born in Gastonia, N.C. She came to Homosassa a year ago.
She attended Homosassa Elementary School and was in Diane Hart's third-grade class. Every morning Grandpa Archie would drive her to the bus stop and every afternoon Grandma Ruth would pick her up.
She liked music, Celine Dion and Lil' Romeo. She loved to sing.
She always said, "I love you." She always wanted to go to the store with Grandpa because she knew he would buy her candy. She always, always, always gave her daddy a hug every morning.
She was "Daddy's girl" and would call him as soon as she got home from school. She liked playing on the sand piles at his work site. She had just gone to the state fair with him shortly before she disappeared. That's where her daddy bought her the now-famous pink hat she's shown wearing in her picture.
Jessie was kind and tenderhearted and easy to please — but don't you dare put "green stuff" (parsley) on her pasta! Plain with butter only. "Everyone at Luigi's knew that," Ruth said, "and they'd start fixing it for her as soon as she'd come in through the door."
She loved "rainbow noodles," too — that's what she called elbow macaroni.
Besides green stuff on her pasta, Jessie didn't like seeing or hearing about anybody being mistreated; she didn't like to see anyone cry.
"She was a great comforter," Ruth said. "She would take you in her arms — she'd done that many times with me; last year I had four major surgeries and she helped take care of me."
Her mother, Angie Bryant, said she will forever remember the day she was born and seeing her "sweet, innocent face." Her father, Mark Lunsford, will always remember his last hug.
Her pastor, the Rev. Laverle Coats, will remember how she loved people, loved her family, loved "her Lord and wanted others to love him, too."
"She was a fun kid," Ruth Lunsford said. "It was good times when Jessie was around."
This article was done by The Citrus Co Chronicle Online
March 26 of 2005
Who I'd like to meet:
www.jessiesplacecitrus.org
What We Do To Help
Jessie’s Place is a Children’s Advocacy Center designed to be warm and welcoming, so that child victims of abuse and neglect have a safe haven to tell their story and begin the road to recovery. We provide all necessary services onsite – at one location – to help traumatized children feel like happy children once again.
Provided services include:
* Utilization of video and audio recording technology during fact gathering law enforcement interviews, therefore greatly reducing the sessions required for case investigation and prosecution.
* Warm, comfortable and state-of-the-art medical examination rooms.
* Medical Diagnosis, Evaluation and Nursing Assessment provided by the University of Florida Child Protection Team – noted field experts.
* Crisis intervention counseling to help child victims overcome physical and emotional damage.
* Therapeutic services and victim advocacy for children and non-offending caregivers.
* Referrals to partner agencies for long-term counseling needs
Man Mark Haleigh Cummings case has me so scared. I pray she comes home. You know Jessie' is in my heart,etch there and I hope to meet her someday . I know NO ONE can understand what that family is going through better than you-- and if it eats me up to hear their tears and see their faces i know it hits home to you. Thinking of you and yours as i do with her birthday in Oct. and this month i know has to be hard for you--- Praying Haleigh's safe return anyone who reads this.
I really appreciate your support and helping spread the word - as a group we can really make a difference! Hope you are doing well and you have a great week!
Help support our troops by visiting the Military Troops Calendar Myspace page (on my top friends), www. militarytroopscalendar. com or my Myspace page and click the Paypal button. Proceeds go to the Fisher House, Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund and allow us to send the calendars to the troops serving overseas free of charge to thank them for their service to our country. Our goal is to send 17,000 overseas within the next couple weeks. Thank you for your support!
mark - i was thinking about you today and wanted to stop by and let you know that. Keep on fighting the good fight - you are making huge strides. brightest blessings! ~starr
Hi there! I'm a counseling student at St.Petersburg college and was just wondering who was the most helpful to you during the tragedy that you and your family went through.
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