Dear Friends,
I decided to look into the true facts regarding the offender, because there were a lot of wrongful criticisms of the Corrections Department on northside Facebook pages and elsewhere. In actuality, the Corrections Department should be thanked for keeping the offender away from the public as long as they could legally do so. The offender was sentenced to a certain length of time by a judge (the Corrections Department did not determine that length). Normally, the prisoner is released from incarceration after two-thirds of their sentence is served. However, in this case, the Department protected the public as long as they could by keeping the offender in prison for his entire sentence, rather than releasing him for the last third of it. Once he had served his entire sentence, neither the Department of Corrections or Hennepin County had any right to restrict where he lived and could not supervise him. He went to live with his mother, I believe. Neither the community group or anyone else asked for a neighborhood notification meeting, to the best of my knowledge. (I live one block outside of the three block radius they use for notifications, so they would not have had to notify me.)
Allegations were made that the Department placed him on the northside. WRONG: his sentenced had expired so they had no control over him. Allegations were made that this proved their research is wrong in showing that ex-offenders have a very low recidivism record while under supervision. WRONG: he was not under supervision because he can't be supervised once his sentence has ended. Allegations were made that this incident showed ex-offenders commit additional sex crimes in the neighborhood in which they live. WRONG: the offender committed this crime several miles away from his home, thus substantiating the many studies that show that if the commit another sex crime they will not do it right around where they are living.
While I often have disagreements with the way the Department of Corrections is doing something, people should get their facts straight before criticizing them, especially in a case like this where the Department did as much as legally possible to protect the public. At the same time, I will continue to try to find ways to deconcentrate the offenders on the northside.
Sincerely,
Joe