Last year, 682 felons were released from prison into the Central Area and surrounding neighborhoods (98144 and 98122 Zip code areas). This represented more than 13 percent of all offenders released into King County in 2004.
This level of concentration not only surprised 47-year Leschi resident and longtime community activist Thurston Muskelly, it frustrated him.
"I was not aware that the number was so high," Muskelly said. "I would like to see more notification, more accountability from the system. Nobody here gives us a quota sheet, gives us numbers of how many people are coming here.
"Maybe we can help some of these individuals," he added, "but if you don't know and they're dropping them in randomly, you don't know what resources are needed."
Mechanism needed
Muskelly, who is president of the Leschi Community Council and director of several Central Area community organizations, is also a board trustee for the Central Weed & Seed program and is a community volunteer for the Washington state Department of Corrections (DOC).
From his experience, Muskelly understands that released offenders have particular social and economic needs and, if not attended to, can cause serious harm to a community. While he wants to help them "become whole," he said he also wants to protect the economic growth that has blossomed in the Central Area in recent years.
"It's been a long time waiting on what we've got now," Muskelly said. "If we don't respond now, people will begin moving out."
In response to Muskelly's concerns, and after hearing similar concerns from other residents at a recent public forum in the area, Linda Bonazza, acting DOC correctional manager for the West Central Region (which includes King and Pierce counties), said that monthly projections of how many offenders will be released into certain geographic regions, probably by Zip code, will be made available soon.
Muskelly said that while this information is a good starting point, more needs to be done by all levels of government for this problem to be truly addressed.
"The community's not ready for this many offenders," he said. "We don't have any kind of mechanism to receive them. They're just here. The system is designed to fail."
Possible system failure?
There is considerable statistical evidence to support Muskelly's assertion of system failure, at least in some areas.
For example, according to the DOC, half of all Level 3 sex offenders (those most likely to re-offend) are released from prison without securing housing that has been approved by the department. This supervisory gap has trickled down to local communities.
According to the Seattle Police Department, of the 1,447 sex offenders (of all levels) registered in the city of Seattle, only 20 percent are under DOC supervision.
And according to the department, there are 165 homeless sex offenders, 67 of which are Level 3, residing either downtown or in the East Precinct area.
These sex offenders may receive no more supervision than meeting a weekly requirement to report to authorities, officials say. Only after they fail to report can enforcement action be taken, and then it is often difficult.
"Until these guys have homes," said Detective Bob Shilling, of the Seattle Police Depart-ment's Special Assault Unit, "there's no way for us to find them."
The root of this problem, said DOC community-protection administrator Victoria Roberts, is the difficulty the state has in finding housing for these offenders whom the community will accept. She said that many of these offenders reach the end of their sentence before a satisfactory release plan can be completed, at which time they must, by law, be released.
"We know that stability is a key - especially for sex offenders - to keeping them from re-offending," Roberts said. "But right now the focus is on pushing these people out."[[In-content Ad]]
