Submitted for consideration as the understatement of the month (or maybe the year):
A sex offender who has just been released from prison, who is considered at high risk to reoffend, and has been ordered to wear an electronic bracelet to monitor his movements, should not be left by state corrections officials to live under a highway bridge.
Yet that’s exactly what happened in the case of David J. Torrence, a 43-year-old level-3 sex offender. Three days after his release, and after being told by the state to sleep under the U.S. bridge in Snohomish, Torrence cut off the monitoring bracelet and took off. As of Monday afternoon, he was still at large.
Corrections officials say they didn’t like leaving the convicted rapist under a bridge, but that state law didn’t leave them a better alternative, which appears to be true. Efforts to find motels or homeless shelters that would take Torrence were fruitless, and the convict refused to move in with relatives. He didn’t qualify to be locked up in the state’s civil commitment center at McNeil Island.
Clearly, state law needs to change, in at least a couple of ways: the state must provide a facility to house homeless sex offenders until permanent housing can be arranged, and the penalty for failing to comply with terms of release (wearing the monitoring bracelet, checking in as required with a parole officer) should be a very long prison sentence.
It’s hard to believe, but homeless sex offenders aren’t a rarity. About 55 of them currently live in Snohomish County, sheriff’s detective Joseph Beard said in a Herald story Saturday. According to the state Department of Corrections, 15 of the 34 level-3 sex offenders released from state prison in the first three months of this year were homeless.
Level-3 offenders are considered to be at the highest risk to reoffend. Releasing them into society without even the minimal stability shelter provides practically invites them to do so.
This is a major breach of public safety, and lawmakers must fix it. A lack of funding is no excuse for inaction. Housing high-level sex offenders and putting them away when they break the rules should move to the top of the state’s priority list.
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