Tracking Homeless Sex Offenders Is Hard

The Widget:

Court: SJC
Judge: Ireland
Topic: Homeless sex offenders
Tone: Clinical
Importance: 4.0

If you’ve ever wondered how we keep track of sex offenders who are homeless, the SJC resolves an issue related to that in Commonwealth v. Rosado, No. SJC 9982. A frustrating aspect of this case is that it could have been avoided had the Sex Offender Registry Board complied with the legislature’s directives on registration of homeless offenders. But getting the bureaucracy moving in the Commonwealth can be a challenge.

It’s reasonable to expect that there will be a disproportionately large number of homeless sex offenders. Landlords and employers running background checks are going to get skittish, which might bother some extremists and abnormally forgiving people, but ought not surprise anybody.