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Duwe et al. / RESIDENTIAL PROXIMITY & SEX OFFENSE RECIDIVISM 489 Supervision System (SSS), the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) offender registry, and the Correctional Operations Management System (COMS), the data- base maintained by the Minnesota Department of Corrections. These sources were reviewed for each of the 224 recidivists, and data were recorded for each of the following items: 3 offender’s address at the time of the reoffense, the address of the location where the new offense occurred, the location or address where the offender first established contact with the victim, the type of location where the offense took place (e.g., offender’s residence, victim’s residence, public building, etc.), the type of location where the offender first estab- lished contact with the victim (e.g., offender’s residence, victim’s residence, bar/nightclub, etc.), the relationship between the offender and victim (e.g., stranger, girlfriend’s daughter, babysitter, etc.), the amount of force used (e.g., no force, force with injury, etc.), and the presence of alcohol and/or drug use by the offender and/or the victim around the time of the offense. Of the 22 states that have enacted residency restriction legislation, most have applied restrictions for all sex offenders regardless of their offending history or perceived risk of reoffense (Nieto & Jung, 2006). It is possible, however, that residency restrictions may be a more effective deterrent for some offenders than for others. In an effort to identify the types of sex offenders for whom residency restrictions might be more effective, we collected and analyzed additional offender and victim data from the COMS database. The appendix lists the variables derived from COMS and describes how they were created. ANALYSIS Once all data were collected, the physical distances between the offender’s residence and both the offense and first contact locations were calculated, using Google Earth. For example, using the “Directions” feature, the offender’s address was entered in the first address loca- tion (i.e., “From”), whereas the offense or first contact location was entered in the second address location (i.e., “To”). The “Ruler” feature in Google Earth was then used to deter- mine the Euclidian, or straight-line, distance (in both feet and miles) between the first and second address locations. Four criteria were used to determine whether residency restrictions might have prevented a sex crime from occurring. As noted above, housing restrictions are geared primarily toward deterring sex offenders—namely, child molesters—from initiating contact with potential victims by prohibiting them from living within a certain distance of a school, park, daycare center, or other area where children might be present. The first criterion, then, con- cerns the means by which the offenders established contact with their victims. Therefore, our analyses focused on direct-contact offenders, who typically initiated contact with their victims by approaching them on the street, meeting them in a bar, or breaking into the victim’s home. In addition, our analyses also assessed offenders who gained access through indirect means (e.g., girlfriend’s daughter, babysitter, friend’s son or daughter, etc.) to provide a more complete picture of the patterns of sexual reoffending. The second criterion concerns the distance between an offender’s residence and where he (all 224 offenders were male) first established contact with the victim. There is no clear consensus on the distance requirement across jurisdictions that have implemented housing restrictions; statutes range from 500 to 2,500 feet. The distances in most states, however, are often between 1,000 and 2,500 feet (Levenson & Cotter, 2005). This study, therefore, determined residential proximity on the basis of a 1,000-foot zone (0.2 miles) as well as a at University of British Columbia Library on April 27, 2010 http://cjb.sagepub.comDownloaded from