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Dr.
John Graham’s mini Autobiography
Editor:
Note these words by John Graham[1]: “She walked faithfully beside me on
this journey from the construction business in Texas, to a seminary in
Indiana, to pastoring three small and oftentimes difficult, churches in
Ohio. Then when I grew disillusioned with the traditional pastorate,
she encouraged me to move into the street where the needs of the people
we met were overwhelming most of the time. Yet through it all, she
stuck with me amidst all of the criticism, financial emergencies,
disappointment and setback, and even the legal battles that always
accompany radical ministry.”
Note the words that are reflective of the doom and gloom brought upon
our city as a result of his current “radical ministry” (difficult
churches, disillusioned with traditional pastorates, criticism, legal
battles). Do the ministers and the religious members of our community
truly support a contract that will not provide appropriate support
systems such as mental health therapists, psychiatrists, parole
officers and law enforcement? If not, then how can they possibly give
lip-service to Graham’s contract that cannot even begin to provide the
mental health, substance abuse services, and law enforcement
supervision that sex offenders require? Are the ministers
prepared to provide for the future victims of recidivism that is known
to occur[2] when sex offenders are clustered in an environment bereft
of the very services they need. At the June 2010 Conference of
the National Institute of Justice, Alisa Klein, MS, Public Policy
Consultant, Association for the Treatment of Sex Abusers, Beaverton,
Ore. stated, “These kinds of stressors (i.e. the lack of mental health
and substance abuse services, jobs etc) on sex offenders’ lives are
shown to actually raise their risk for recidivating”.[3]
We must hold the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections
(that neither rehabilitates nor corrects) accountable for the
consequences of irresponsible dumping of sex offenders in large numbers
into communities lacking psychiatric and law enforcement professionals
necessary to deal with their superimposed drug addictions and
psychoses.
Rebecca A. Reier
[1] Citizen Circle: A mentoring model for rehabilitating ex-felons in
Darke County Ohio John Graham March 9,2009
[2] SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION AND REGISTERED SEX OFFENDERS: AN EXPLORATORY
SPATIAL ANALYSIS
Geetha Suresh University of Louisville Elizabeth Ehrhardt
Mustaine University of Central Florida Richard Tewksbury University of
Louisville George E. Higgins University of Louisville 2010
As socially disorganized neighborhoods (those with high poverty, low
income, high unemployment, and more vacant housing) receive increasing
numbers of RSOs it is likely that the social capital and overall
desirability of such neighborhoods will only continue to deteriorate.
This suggests that when RSOs are relegated in high concentrations in
socially disorganized neighborhoods these neighborhoods are likely to
remain or become yet more socially undesirable to residents, and
increasingly house only those who are there not by choice but only by
forced circumstance. Such communities can be expected to continue to
physically deteriorate, and subsequently attract or tolerate increasing
crime rates and social pariahs (Gault and Silver, 2008; O’Shea, 2006;
Sampson and Radenbush, 1999; Wilson and Kelling, 1982). This suggests
that social processes which have the effect of relegating RSOs to
disadvantaged and undesirable communities will only serve to drive
those neighborhoods deeper into social problems.
[3] Panel discussion: June 2010 Conference for the National
Institute of Justice. “We know that sex offenders returning to
communities who are publicly notified upon suffer from loss of jobs and
unemployment, employment instability. They suffer often from harassment
and physical assault. They have chronic difficulties finding places to
live, finding jobs, and they are frequently forced to the outskirts of
communities into increasingly rural areas where they're not going to be
able t o access the kind of specialized supervision and services that
they may need to not re-offend. These kinds of stressors on sex
offenders’' lives are shown to actually raise their risk for
recidivating. We know from the general criminogenic literature and we
know from the sex offender-specific research that when sex offenders
have stable jobs, housing, social bonds to the community in which they
live and they are able to continue their family relationships, they are
going to be less likely to re-offend. So, certainly for policymakers,
we need to be thinking about those kinds of questions, you know, what
are the unintended consequences, what are the collateral consequences
of the decisions we're making, especially when they're not based
on the research that we're seeing.”
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