TheAgitator.com
Under the Bridge Downtown
Wednesday, July 16th, 2008Details writer Ian Daily visits the underside of the Miami bridge that’s home to a community of exiled sex offenders:
Fourteen men, ranging in age from 30 to 83, call this place home. Some sleep in cars among the pilings, others in grimy Wal-Mart tents wedged beneath the bridge. Martin, who spent two years in jail after being convicted of exposing himself to a 16-year-old girl when he was 19 or 20 (a crime he says he didn’t commit), no longer has to wear the black GPS monitoring device that many of his neighbors do. He finished his five-year probation in 2006, but he can’t find a place to live that complies with the county’s residency laws. So Martin is forced to live here—in a colony under an overpass where the amenities include a generator, a composting toilet, and a workout area with a bench and free weights—indefinitely, because he and the other men were ordered here by law-enforcement authorities.
"Take a picture if you want," says Martin, showing off his driver’s license. The address next to his photo reads UNDER THE JULIA TUTTLE CAUSEWAY.
It may be better than living in a van down by the river.
I have to say, this is one of those fuzzy areas for me. Yes there are arbitrary sex laws, such that a 19 year old with a 16 year old girlfriend can be considered a felon. And the omnipresent state has knee-jerk “protect the children” legislation, so that one is forever marked as a menace to society.
On the other hand, there are true predators out there, with the mental wiring driving them to target prepubescent children. They cannot be rehabilitated, no more than the church can make someone no longer gay (and no, I’m not equating the evils of pedophilia with homosexuality). In the absence of the state monopoly on force and justice, these sorts of people would still find themselves permanently ostracized from society (if they are lucky). So they are not like victims of state-created crimes, like drug use.
This is just stupid. For every person under the Julia Tuttle Causeway how many more simply disappear and move back into society at large with no way of tracking them or seeking help for their problem. While I think these kinds of crimes and criminals are of the worst sort, this kind of treatment is idiotic. If anything it may actually make children less safe. Put the GPS system on them, keep track of them (don’t publish their whereabouts as that can open its own messy can of worms) and so forth, but this is not helpful.
I also feel kinda sorry for the late Julia Tuttle.
As a parent, I have mixed feelings regarding sex offenders. On one hand, I know how I would respond if it were my child. But on the other hand I feel some sympathy for these people. Especially the ones who have to register for something as simple as mooning someone. At least with murder, you don’t have to have your address out in the public view. Sex offenders on the outside are probably subject to threats of violence, vandalism, and it’s just a matter of time before someone elects themselves as judge, jury and executioner. As detestable as the crimes are, there really should be more protections in place. These people are still US Citizens.
The grouping together of all “sex offenses” is a big part of the problem. Rape is one thing rapists certainly deserve some harsh punishment. But many of the other things called sex crimes, such as indecent exposure, public urination, public consensual sex and many cases of statutory rape really don’t belong.
Even if it were limited to actual rapists who were a threat to people, this is absurd. If they are so dangerous, they should still be in prison. If not, they should be allowed to get on with their lives.
when I read about this, I remember back one generation. My mother was 15 when she became pregnent from my 18 yo dad. This was in 1975, so they had to get married and stuff, but in this day and age, my dad would have been arested and made a sex offender for life. There are alot of people out there that this could have happened to, and they have gone behond it, makeing something of their life. I think we may want to step back, and think about what we are doing first.
I believe this has already happened, but get this the guy living at the address published by the government….wasn’t the right guy. Some schmuck killed an innocent person because the government forgot to update their website.
HAND Eric.
Do people who think this kind of exile or banishment is helpful realize that these guys are not chained to these locations? They can take their van to whichever playground they want, hang out in whichever alley they like. How does making them live under a bridge do anything except make unthinking people feel better about not having a ‘registered sex offender’ living down the street? Not exactly what I’d call a worthy pursuit, but I guess for some people, out of sight = out of mind.
I’m also wondering if midieval deviants being forced to live under bridges is how the fables of trolls (e.g. Three Billy Goats Gruff) got started.
I remember how upset my classmates were when reading The Scarlet Letter about Hester Prynne’s requirement to wear the adulterer’s mark ad infinitum. We even debated about that in “modern” times how that would not be acceptable. I guess now it is.
Sexual crimes, for some reason lost to me, require lifetime badges of shame and humility. I could kill a person, get convicted, serve time and probabtion, and be hundreds of times better off than these cats. You don’t have to register as a murderer, but god forbid you get a “sex crime” attached…why no death penalty then, or are we getting there?
The US is just too interested in sex I guess.
They are working on it. The last bill like this was struck down. Probably just a matter of time.
but then lawmakers enact laws that charge 12, 13, 14 , 15 & 16 year olds as adults, house them in adult jails where statistics show that within 48 hours are raped. I guess children need to be protected unless they are accused of a crime, then they are an adult overnight and deserve to be abused and raped by adults sex offenders. It’s all hypocritical to me. Some children need to be protected, others don’t.
I don’t know if you guys have read the comments section on the linked article, but those guys are ruthless. I am of the belief that if they are such a danger to society, laws need to be ammended so that they remain in custody. To continue to punish them in this manner is very wrong.
There is an episode of the old TV show “Dragnet” called “The Big Crime”. It aired in 1954. It dealt with the topic of child molesters in a way that I thought was surprisingly blunt for 1954.
In the late 1930s, early 1940s, my Mom lived in Raleigh, NC (medium sized city) and walked through a wooded area to school. She remembers being warned of a man stalking kids in the area. The solution? They walked in groups.
In the 1960s and 1970s I also walked to school through a (different) wooded area, and we also kept safe by traveling in groups.
So, (1) why is this not-new problem getting so much attention, and (2) why are such drastic measures needed when simpler solutions worked in the past? (3) Why is “exposure” (when nothing else happens) such a dreadful crime? No, I’m not an exhibitionist, just tired of over-reactions.
*nod to CRNewsom*
It’s a pretty simple equation.
If you’re actually a bad person you go to, and stay in, jail.
Not a bad person, complete your sentence and go home.
The pandering to instinct is the same here as it is for the warmongers seething with bloodlust and the frightened fools that give up the fourth amendment because sandals and a tan have been made an idol to terrorism.
We’re free or we are not. There’s not much gray area, just smoke and mirrors.
“do it for the children’ is the rallying cry of those who wish to infringe upon the liberties of others.
the truth is, nobody wants to poon your kid in the face.
I’m definitely in the “if they pose an ongoing threat to society, they shouldn’t be released camp”. As I perceive it, there’s two problems – the broad interpretation of “sexual offense” that makes even juevenile pranks or consensual sex a sexual offense and the rate of recidivism among molesters, rapists and pedophiles.
The fix is a common sense one, which means it will probably never occur to the politicians making the laws. The definition of sexual offender should apply only to molesters, rapists and pedophiles. Offenders that fall into that category, if they’re determined to be an ongoing threat to society, shouldn’t be released from prison, period.
Jet, the problem is that lumping even those three categories together means there will be misidentifications. And remedies targeted toward one group (such as pedophiles) are not helpful, and just unthinkingly punitive toward another group (adult rapists). Say, something like people on that list can’t have residences near schools. And I do wonder if the recidivism rate is anywhere near analogous for different groups like that.
Aside, it’s annoying to have to defend scumbags in discussions about the law, but it’s something that has to be done to protect freedoms for all.
Most, if not all, of the justification for sex offender registries is pulled directly out of someone’s ass. They destroy people’s lives and don’t protect anyone.
CRNewsom hit the nail on the head. If sex criminals were really that much more likely than other criminals to repeat their crimes, then a bill should be drafted to address, by law, the need to keep those people incarcerated. It would be nice if such legislation was actually based on comparative recidivism rates rather than public hysteria and self-serving political grandstanding, but that would transcend the boundaries of wishful thinking and cross into the realm of delusional insanity.
“If sex criminals were really that much more likely than other criminals to repeat their crimes, then a bill should be drafted to address, by law, the need to keep those people incarcerated.”
IF? Don’t really keep up on this do you. While the expanding of who is considered a sex criminal is annoying, wrong and destroys people’s lives, there is a core group of molesters that will not stop. The reason there is no law locking them up for life is not for lack of trying.
Highway, I absolutely agree and wasn’t clear in my previous comment that remedies for rapists, pedophiles and molesters should not be uniform. Uniform, across the board remedies almost always create more problems or new problems that have to be addressed. That’s why individual sentencing within guidelines (you know, the way it USED to be done) is the correct approach. And if a rapist, pedophile, or molester is too great a threat to society to have living within 100 yards of a church, school, bus stop, massage parlor or convenience store (last two locations mentioned with tongue firmly in cheek), that individual should be sentenced to life without parole, at the very least.
I’ll leave the death penalty discussion for another day.
That sums it up nicely.
Americans are consumed with sex and raised on hypocrisy. They are very generous in their application of the terms deviant, pervert, slut, etc.
For persecution to occur, all you need is a large majority of the public willing to declare certain people to be subhuman (negro, homosexual, witch, deviant, pervert, etc). That makes them fair game. This is simply history repeating itself. And now, as in the past, everyone says, “but this is different”.
Opposition to sex registries is almost universally based on the following: their ineffectiveness, the false premises used to establish them, their broad application, and their unworkability. Of course, these defects are inconsequential to anyone using them as a means to torture criminals in order to show how tough they are on crime.
Even if you put the entire population in chains, very small children are still going to be raped by evil people. There are times when it’s NOT worth it even if it saves only one life.
I have several big issues with how these guys are treated here (I’d like to add that this is coming from a Southern Baptist who is somewhere between libertarian and right-wing).
First, most of these laws were created so that parents could FEEL like their children are safe. For every sex offender out there that was caught and is on a list, I’d wager there is another out there that is too crafty to get caught. Knowing where all the ones too stupid to keep from being caught live doesn’t make your children that much safer. What makes them safe is paying attention to what they do, and where they are.
Second, as mentioned before, it’s ridiculous how low the bar is to get on these lists. When you have people listed as sex offenders because they had sex with a teenager when they were teenagers themselves, or 18/19 sleeping with their 17 year old girlfriend, it has gone completely overboard. Hell, some states make you a sex offender because you were drunk and took a leak in an alley.
Third, if the state is going to trample on them this badly, they need to make real housing for them. I honestly think most of the population is far too stupid for a realistic and fair solution to be implimented for these people. But they can at least have exceptions to the distance thing if they live in boarding homes made specifically for them, or just make sex offender halfway houses that they stay in indefinitely. Eventually, you can get the laws to recognize that not all sex offenders are equal, and scale the requirements based on that.
The ideal solution would be getting the rest of our country to not look to the government to fix every single problem. A large part of why there are so many laws is that our “peers” keep looking for a new law for everything that bothers them.