I must have missed this article when if first came out over the weekend, but I caught it in the LttE section yesterday.
Apparently, the state run university in north Seattle, otherwise known as the University of Washington, feels that they deserve special consideration when it comes to the placement of halfway houses for sex offenders. Basically, they don’t want any anywhere near their campus.
Hmm, I think that I would like that consideration as well.
Unfortunately for me, I am not a university student or a university employee, but am just an unimportant peon of a citizen and I get no say as to where the state plops a halfway house. Nor will I get any notification that they’re putting one nearby me if they decide to do so.
The joys of watching government employees and taxpayer fund-suckers get preferential treatment.
Having been a student at UW many years ago, and had to walk or bike to campus from off campus housing I can relate to this issue. Now, having three daughters of my own to worry about, I really think that I have an interest in this one. Absolutely the University should object and have some say in this decision process. Combining a young student population with a halfway house like this is an equation for disaster. Not to mention that a large part of the student population does not live on campus but either commutes, or lives is off site housing nearby that is not in any way secure. Bad mojo there.
Halfway houses for sex offenders is just a bad idea all the way around. While I don’t have the statistical studies to back this up, it seems that reform for these guys generally does not seem to happen and placing them in any “half way environment” is a significant risk.
Finally to your real point here, I think the UW is a unique environment and that the university has an obligation to the safety of it’s students to make an objection. However, every citizen in the United States also has that right. Further, that the government should be provide a notification and hearing process prior to the placement of any such facility. Hell, if they change the zoning of a region they are required to do so in many ways the placement of a halfway house of any sort has the potential to impact a neighborhood in a similar fashion as a zoning change.
Thor, you raise a single issue of great importance.
If the University (it could be Washington, Oregon, Portland State, whoever), thinks that they require such close control of their environment, they need to fence their campus and close it to the public.
Any university campus tries to maintain strict control over the public liberties of persons on campus, even to well-known denials of Constitutional rights such as speech and the right to bear arms. Just try giving a “free speech” that students ought to be allowed to drink beer in their private residences on campus. The campus cops will be pounding through your door before you can say “First Amendment”.
Fine, if they want to do that, put a fence around the place and control the entry to campus. I don’t have a problem with that, and it might even open the eyes of the students (the real customers of a University) to just how far the U has to go to run it’s indoctrination games.
I can agree with you on a few points there, Thor, but not on all of them.
I can agree that there should be no such thing as “halfway housesâ€. Likewise, there should be significant community notification of the release of these types. Just this weekend I wrote about a teenage rapist who was released back into the public school system without anyone but the school administration being notified, and when a student found out and attempted to notify his fellow student he was suspended for “harassment†of the teenaged rapist.
However, a neighborhood surrounding a university campus should not be treated any differently than one surrounding any other type of school, which if I remember the RCW correctly, gives the schools a 1000ft barrier.
The campus is its own entity and can restrict access to only those who have business on campus. In the UW’s case, they also have their own police force, not just “campus security†like a high school or junior high school, but actual commissioned police officers. These officers have jurisdiction on campus grounds only, but are given leeway by the SPD for the surrounding neighborhoods for first response duties.
If the university refuses to take the step of restricting access at the entrance points then they have no right to object to the location of halfway houses. That is simply giving them a special privilege that no other entity in the state gets.
A bank doesn’t get to object to a guy being released from prison for bank robbery moving back into the neighborhood. A car dealership can’t object to a car thief being released and moving in two doors down.
I feel for you and your daughters, but as you well know, if they are college students then they are adults and are responsible for their own personal security, no matter who the state tosses out of its prison system or where said individuals land. Relying on the SPD or the UWPD to cover their butts or hoping that some sex offender doesn’t move into the neighborhood without notifying the authorities is akin to pissing in the wind.