Sex Offenders: The Math and the Money

There are 83,000 sex offenders on the streets of California. The average parole officer has a caseload of 70 parolees. The average sentence for your run-of-the-mill sex offender is 2-8 years in state prison.

In distinct contrast, there are an estimated 5,000 nonviolent people locked up for 25 years-to-life under California’s notorious Three Strikes law at a cost of $49,000 a year per prisoner—just over half the salary of a tenured teacher.

The list of nonviolent (and violent) celebrities and other elite in free society extends itself daily, yet Americans seem okay with that. These miss the vengeful eye of the victims’ rights focus so often directed at the poor.

Three Strikes was enacted in response to paroled sex offender Richard Allen Davis, who kidnapped and murdered our young, promising Polly Klaas.

In 2004, an amendment to Three Strikes was placed on the ballot, increasing the penalties for sex offenders and relaxing that retroactive, mandatory life sentence for petty thieves and trespassers. The prison guards’ union and the Schwarzenegger administration defeated the measure.

Instead, toothless laws named after still more innocent child victims were passed: Megan’s Law, creating a federal, mandatory sex offender registry, and Jessica’s Law, localizing the same tenets, including school zone restrictions in California.

Still, the Phillip Garridos and John Gardners stand accused of carrying on their sexual deviations at the cost of our most vulnerable with little hindrance.

Meanwhile, with the media machine’s sensational focus on the nonviolent and their inevitable releases, we’re all made aiders and abettors to this sick, backward, and deadly madness. With California budgets suffering, we can’t look up those we’re merely mad at and those we have true reason to fear. Can I get an amen?

March 2010

Sources:

California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/)

Families to Amend California’s Three Strikes Law (http://www.facts1.com/)

Fox 11 News, March 4, 2010, “John Gardner Believed Killer of Second Girl”

KABC-7 Eye Witness News, March 24, 2010, “California Law Makers Grill CDCR Officials for Failure to Protect Public from Paroled Sex Offender John Gardner”

NBC’s Today Show, March 3, 2010, “83,000 Sex Offenders in California”