Shelter foes say homeless more likely to be sex offenders. Expert says that’s ‘a stretch’
Members of the Veterans Park Neighborhood Association made a lot of arguments at a hearing this week against the placement of an Interfaith Sanctuary homeless shelter in the former Salvation Army building on State Street.
But it was hard to miss the series of speakers alleging there was a high risk of homeless sex offenders moving into the area.
At Monday’s Planning and Zoning Commission meeting, the association presented multiple slide shows around this claim, even showing photos of children in a nearby park, in an attempt to illustrate the potential danger.
Many of the association’s arguments were based on the controversial claim that people experiencing homelessness are more likely to be registered sex offenders.
That claim, though, is not supported by data, said Laura King, an associate professor of criminal justice at Boise State University, who has studied public attitudes toward sex offenders. King told the Statesman that she’s unaware of any data that back up the neighborhood association’s claims.
Neighborhood activists have frequently attempted to paint homeless people as potential sex offenders since plans to construct a new shelter were first announced in April. Dozens of written comments submitted to the commission included references to “sexual deviants.”
King said it’s true that restrictions on where sex offenders can live make it more likely for them to become homeless. In Idaho, they’re not allowed to live within 500 feet of a school or day care providers.
But that doesn’t make it more likely for person experiencing homelessness to be a registered sex offender.
“I think that (claim is) a stretch,” King said by phone. “They could be making some potential jumps that are really not supported by the data.”
Sex offenses committed by people experiencing homelessness are statistically rare, King said. Nearly 90% of sexual assault victims know their attackers, according to the National Institute of Justice.
Interfaith Sanctuary has said it doesn’t allow sex offenders to stay as guests and screens new residents against the sex offender registry. Any sex offenders the Sanctuary finds are referred to the Boise Rescue Mission, which has a program specifically for that population.
Interfaith Executive Director Jodi Peterson-Stigers said these claims are often born from fear of a population that some in the general population don’t understand.
“It’s just another one of the accusations being made … based on what they’re willing to say to defend their position,” Peterson-Stigers said.
Katy Decker, the neighborhood association’s president, defended the claim by pointing to a statistic that 6% of California’s homeless population consists of registered sex offenders, higher than the 0.23% of all Americans who are sex offenders.
“That [the] higher incidence of any specific demographic losing housing leads to over-representation of that demographic in the homeless population isn’t controversial … it’s just math,” Decker said by email.
King, though, said such math can be misleading. She said there’s a big difference between a percentage and a rate. Percentages don’t account for huge differences in the sizes of populations being compared, such as between all Americans and all homeless people in the U.S. Rates can equalize wildly different population sizes to provide fairer comparisons. Such a comparison might measure sex offenses “per 100,000 residents” instead of relying on a percentage.
“I wouldn’t make that comparison, because you’re talking about very different populations,” she said. “They’re making some generalizations that you can’t really do without actually calculating a rate and considering the entire population.”
Making claims without the proper data can have an adverse effect on the lives of those experiencing homelessness, King said.
“If it’s not supported by actual concrete data, that’s an irresponsible conclusion to make,” she said.
This story was originally published December 9, 2021 at 1:02 PM.
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