Ohio County Acting on Sex Offenders' Residency Restrictions
by Jim Brown
December 8, 2005
(AgapePress) - - The prosecutor's office in Hamilton County, Ohio, has filed 33 lawsuits against convicted sex offenders that live within 1,000 feet of schools. In April, Ohio's law changed to allow prosecutors to take civil legal action against registered sex offenders living near schools. Prior to that, only landlords were able to evict sex offenders from their apartments. Bernie Bouchard, the county's assistant prosecutor, says he was hired one month after the law took effect to remove all offenders living with 1,000 feet of schools. During his brief tenure, he has removed more than a hundred offenders who were in violation of the law.
"When I started, there was 475 back in April -- now there's 373," he says. The majority of those who remain, he says -- more than 300 -- are within the city of Cincinnati. "[T]his filing of 33 cleaned up everything, and now everybody has been addressed in the county outside of the City of Cincinnati."
Bouchard is hopeful the legal action permitted under the law will serve as a deterrent. He says his office is notified within one day if sex offenders, when registering their address with authorities, refuse to move from a restricted zone. That is when his office takes action.
"From [that day] forward, we're going to file lawsuits in five days [requiring them to move] to an address that isn't within a thousand feet of a school," he says. "We're going to file a lawsuit right away to deter these people from moving into the restricted zones."
If the sex offenders will not move voluntarily, and a judge orders them to move, they are required to vacate their premises and find a new one on their own. Bouchard tells the Mansfield News Journal that sex offenders are a "very transient group," and that "most of them move, once you start putting the heat on them."
The American Civil Liberties Union challenged the new law when it took effect, but was not successful. Many states have laws that restrict where sex offenders can live and require notification of neighbors in areas when the offenders move in.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
