Florida Sex Offenders Soon to Be Homeless Once Again

Months after Miami-Dade County cleared out a camp of sex offenders living under a freeway, some of the former squatters are once again homeless, and many of the others are on the verge of being out on the streets again, according to a story in the Miami Herald.

“It feels like moving us from that bridge was just a publicity stunt,'” said Homer Barkley, 44, who served time after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl. His six-month lease will expire Sunday. “How do they expect me to find a place to live? I’m not a millionaire.”

Most of the former offenders are unemployed and unable to continue to pay the rent once the money provided by officials to help in the search for housing runs out. The inevitable result, some say, is that a sex-offender camp could emerge in a new location any day now.

“If they can’t afford rent, we may be back to square one,” said Jill Levenson, a professor at Lynn University in Boca Raton who is studying the impact of residency restrictions. “The problem with this solution is that it was only temporary, a band-aid.”

Levenson also noted there are great risks in keeping sex offenders in squalor. Research has identified which factors might compel a criminal, such as a sex offender, to reoffend. The three biggest are lack of social support, unemployment and housing instability.

The old bridge dwellers are now crammed into a few neighborhoods because of residency restrictions designed to keep them 2,500 feet away from where children gather. When the camp was torn down, officials promised to find housing for the 92 men and women and to pay six months’ rent—a $1 million project. Now that time’s almost up.

To read the article, click here.

For more information about how sex offenders are treated inside and out of the criminal justice system, visit Justice Fellowship’s Sex Offenders in Society resource page.