I've blogged about homeless sex offenders before, but I hadn't realized how accepting some counties are of returning people to the streets until I read this article from Washington State:

No easy fix to homeless sex offender problem, state corrections chief says
Herald Net, May 4, 2008

Corrections officials across the country confront daily the challenge of sex offenders without an apartment, shelter or motel room to bed down at night.

In Florida, when authorities ran out of places in ­Miami-Dade County in 2007, they set up an encampment for sex offenders under a bridge linking Miami to Miami Beach.

Say what? Aren't encampments usually technically illegal?

Q: I'm not sure if living under the Snohomish bridge is legal. So, if Torrence got arrested for illegal camping, he might have landed back behind bars and might have made the state liable for something.

A: I had not thought about that. I wasn't aware that it was illegal. If he got violated he would be back in custody. That would be an interesting situation. It is my understanding we chose that site in coordination with local law enforcement. It is not atypical of what we've done in other parts of the state.

I was floored by how naive the Secretary of Corrections in Washington, Eldon Vail, was about homelessness and how nonchalant he seemed in his answers. I actually thought that this paper was satire until I found another article from the Seattle times:

A Bridge as a Last Resort
Seattle Times, April 30, 2008

David J. Torrence, who assaulted a 16-year-old girl in 1995, had completed his latest prison term (for failing to register as a sex offender.) He had no place to go. So officials gave him a sleeping bag and a rain poncho, then told him to stay under this bridge, 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., until further notice.

"We're not proud of it," says Mary Rehberg, parole officer for the state Department of Corrections. "We did it because this is what it has come to. Under a bridge is the best of the options we had left."

I trust that the Seattle Times isn't satire. This housing of sex offenders thing is a huge problem and we need to work to resolve it. Granted everyone deserves housing, not just the sex offenders and other ex-cons, but my concern lies with discharge planning from hospitals or foster care as well. How can we expect to have someone in care, often for extended periods of time, then be able to take care of themselves when they leave without support? Think of when the Mental Institutions closed, a lot of people blame homelessness today on that one event. Granted we know that homelessness is more complicated than that but poor discharge planning and case management leads many individuals to be discharged to the streets or unable to sustain themselves in the situations that they are discharged into.

There isn't much that we as individuals can do to help this one, it has to be a nationwide systematic change.