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Open hurricane shelters to all

The hysteria is off the charts when officials want to deny sex offenders refuge in a hurricane shelter. In a coastal Florida community like Hillsborough County, where officials are crafting such a policy, the move could endanger the lives of offenders, their families and emergency workers.

Commissioners directed their staff this month to bar sex offenders from shelters now that the hurricane season has arrived. The move came after Sheriff David Gee said the jail lacked adequate space to house sex offenders separately. Gee said security at the shelters was inadequate to monitor the movement of sex offenders bunking there. Sex offenders are legally banned from school campuses, which double as shelters in an emergency. Offenders are required to notify the sheriff when they relocate, meaning it could be hard for law enforcement to track offenders during a storm. Offenders who identify themselves might also become targets, worsening security in shelters where anxieties already run high.

Gee is right that offenders on probation have limits on their freedom, but hurricanes are deadly forces of nature that disrupt the lives of millions of people every year. Emergencies, by their nature, call for all sorts of reasonable accommodation and common sense. Closing the shelter could discourage some from complying with mandatory evacuation orders - Hillsborough has 1,200 registered sex offenders - increasing the chance that emergency workers would be called for help as the storm nears and intensifies.

There are other problems. The policy could split an offender's family or force them all on the street. Then there is the fairness issue of allowing, for example, a paroled killer in but barring someone designated as a sex offender because he had consensual sex with an underaged lover. Can't the matter be handled more sensibly, by increasing security at the shelters - deputizing a corps of trained private citizens if need be - and by trusting parents, family members and friends to watch over each other for a day or two? There is safety in numbers. The county should reverse this decision.

[Last modified July 9, 2005, 01:01:15]