Laserfiche WebLink
Sex offenders and victims • 27 <br />overlapped one another. Also in this buffered area was a child sex offender who <br />lived immediately adjacent to a day care. A more explicit example of child sex <br />offenders living in close proximity to potential targets is the area just to the right. <br />Four day cares and a school were all buffered together. There were also four <br />child sex offenders living within this buffered area, and four more who lived just <br />outside the buffered area. <br />As a part of this analysis, sex offenders in the data set who had children as <br />victims were mapped against sex offenders in the data set who did not have <br />children as victims to determine if there were differences in their residence pat- <br />terns. As discussed above, 48% of all child sex offenders lived within the buffer <br />zones. In comparison, 26% (19) of non-child sex offenders lived in these buffer <br />zones. This lends support to the argument that child sex offenders are choosing <br />to live in areas where there are concentrations of potential victims. At the very <br />least, this finding is troubling for the criminal justice system and families alike: <br />that there is a larger percentage and number of sex offenders who had children as <br />victims living in close proximity to concentrations of children than there are sex <br />offenders who did not have children as victims. <br />The analysis of 1,000-foot buffers around potential targets provides some <br />quantification for the argument that child sex offenders are choosing to live in <br />areas where they have access to potential victims. In this analysis, almost half of <br />all child sex offenders lived within 1,000 feet of a day care, school, or park, and <br />a substantially higher percentage of child sex offenders were living in these areas <br />than offenders who did not have children as their victims. Certainly some of the <br />variation can be attributed to the distribution of residential areas within the county. <br />This is not a total explanation, however, and the assumption must be made that <br />some of the child sex offenders were choosing to live in areas where they had <br />access to potential victims. This relationship was further explored in the final <br />analysis of this research, which examined the spatial density of child sex offend- <br />ers and targets. <br />Spatial Relationships <br />In the third and final analysis, Spatial Analyst was used to examine the rela- <br />tionship between each of the target types and where the offenders lived. Although <br />this is a qualitative measure, it does provide additional evidence that can be used <br />to evaluate the assumptions of this research. <br />As shown in Figure 5, there was a substantial relationship between where <br />the child sex offenders lived and the locations of schools. The light area through- <br />out this graph indicates a high co-location, with at least one sex offender living <br />within one mile of at least one potential target throughout the area. There were <br />a few areas with a lesser amount of overlap between the two, as indicated by the