NS-2832 - Amending Chapter 10, Article XII of Santa Ana Municipal Code Pertaining to Proximity of Registered Sex Offenders to Children's Facilities

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cases in which the data were available, but treated both in the tables and in the text as though it were based on the total population. For example, "24 %" is the statistic that appears in all tables and text that give the percent recon- victed; and since 24% of 9,691 is 2,326, the text says that "2,326 of the 9,691 were reconvicted," despite the fact that the "24 %" was actually ob- tained by dividing 2,180 by 9,085. The text could have been written to say "2,180 of the 9,085 were reconvicted," but that wasn't done because introduc- ing a new denominator (9,085) into the text would have created confusion for the reader. Missing data on out -of -State rearrests Because of missing information, the study was unable to determine how many inmates released from New York prisons were rearrested outside of New York. The study was able to document how many prisoners released in the other 14 States were rearrested outside the State that released them. Because of incomplete New York data, the report's recidivism rates are somewhat deflated. Missing data on rearrest for a sex crime According to arrest records compiled in the study, 4,163 of the 9,691 released sex offenders were rearrested for a new crime of some kind. It was not always possible to determine from these records whether the new crime was a sex crime. For 202 rearrested prisoners, the arrest record did not identify the type of crime. For the rest the record did identify the type but the offense label was not always specific enough to distinguish sex crimes from other crimes. For example, if the label said "contributing to the delinquency of a minor," "indeceny," "morals offense," "family offense," or "child abuse," the offense was coded as a non -sex crime even though, in some unknown number of cases, it was actually a sex crime. According to arrest records, 5.3% of the 9,691 (517 out of 9,691) released sex offenders were rearrested for another sex crime. For the two reasons described immediately above, 5.3% was probably an undercount of how many were rearrested for a sex crime. How much of an undercount could not be firmly determined from the data assembled for the study. However, a conservative measure of the size of the undercount was obtained from the data. The study database included 121 rearrested sex offenders whose arrest record did not indicate they were rearrested for a sex crime (the rearrest was either for a non -sex crime or for an unknown type of crime) but whose court record did indicate they were charged with a sex crime. When the study calculated the percentage rearrested for a sex crime, the 121 were not included among the 517 with a rearrest for a sex crime. Had the 121 been included in the calculation of the rearrest rate, the total number rearrested for a sex crime would have been 638 rather than 517, and the percentage rearrested for a sex crime would have been 6.6% rather than 5.3 %. This suggests an undercount of about 1 percentage point. Texas prisoners classified as "other type of release" Texas released 692 male sex offend- ers in 1994, of which 129 were classi- fied as release category "17, defined as "other type of release." Numerous data quality checks were run on the 129 and the 64 of them who were rearrested. The rearrest rate for the 129 was about average for Texas releases. But numerous anomalies were found for the 64 who were rearrested: 1. The rearrest offense for the 64 was always missing from their arrest record 2. The date of rearrest for the 64 was always the same as their release date 3. Virtually all 64 were reconvicted for a sex crime 4. The sentence length imposed for their new sex crime was identical to the 38 Recidivism of Sex Offenders Released from Prison in 1994 sentence they were serving when released in 1994. Because of these anomalies, the 129 were excluded from the calculation of "percent reconvicted for a sex crime." Counting rules In this report, rearrest was measured by counting the number of different persons who were rearrested at least once. A released prisoner who was rearrested several times or had multi- ple rearrest charges filed against him was counted as only one rearrested person. The same counting rule applied to reconviction and the other recidivism measures. If a released prisoner was rearrested several times, his earliest rearrest was used to calculate his time -to- rearrest. The same counting rule applied to reconviction and recidivism defined as a new prison sentence. If a released prisoner had both in -State and out -of -State rearrests, he was counted as having an out -of -State rearrest regardless of whether the out -of -State rearrest was his earliest rearrest. The same rule applied in cases where the released prisoner had both felony and misdemeanor rearrests, or both sex crime and non -sex crime rearrests. The person was counted as having a felony rearrest or a sex crime rearrest regard- less of temporal sequence. The aim of these rules was to count people, not events. The only tables in the report that do not follow the rule are tables 41 and 42. First release All 15 States had first releases, but they could not be identified in 1 State (Ohio). They could be identified in Michigan, but Michigan data on sentence length did not fit the study's definition. Since sentence length was critical to several statistics calculated