Michigan has one of the highest rates of registered sex offenders in the country.
Independent statistical programs, such as StatisticBrain.com, have ranked Michigan as having the 4th highest in the nation. According to Michigan State Police records, there are more than 500 registered sex offenders in Washtenaw County and 350 living in Ypsilanti.
The Ypsilanti Police Department had no answer as to why the sex offender rate is so high.
“They just choose to live here,” department clerk Deborah Vance said.
Michigan law concerning sex offender registry operates on a three-tier system. The crimes that fall under the first tier are put on a non-public registry for 15 years, while crimes in the second or third tier are considered a greater potential threat and placed on a public registry for 25 years and for life, respectively.
The Michigan Department of Corrections said in addition to being registered, second- and third-tier offenders are subject to being “sentenced to a lifetime of electronic monitoring.” While being registered only documents a person’s residence and place of employment, electronic monitoring would track the travels of that individual throughout each day.
When asked if the amount of sex offenders in the area affected the feeling of safety while living in the area, Eastern Michigan University junior Jade Hood said it affects her feeling of safety a little.
“But it feels safer knowing that the sex offenders are being recorded,” she said.
When the question of the public’s safety is posed, one conception is that sexually based criminals “will immediately commit this crime again at least 90 percent of the time,” California Assemblyman Bill Hoge told The New York Times.
And while the sex offender registry was put in place to deter such actions, there are some studies that suggest the registry itself may cause a repeat in crimes.
Karen J. Terry, a criminologist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, believes these methods can be counterproductive, “[It] drives them out of their community, and leads to a lack of stability,” which “are some of the underlying conditions that caused them to abuse in the first place,” she wrote.
