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PROTECT-Kansas organizer questions officials |
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Friday, 11 November 2005 19:00 |
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When Department of Corrections officials in Kansas planned a public meeting on their sex offender halfway house, they were probably hoping they didn't run into Robin Block.
Block is a PROTECT member and organizer in Topeka, who was active in
last year's campaign against Judge Franklin Theis. And Block wasn't
buying it when officials tried to tell area residents that their sex
offenders only re-offended 2.5% of the time! This wild claim was
especially hard to believe, Block says, coming from the same Department
that had placed the convicted child sex predators together in a house directly across the street from a school.
"It's like dangling meat in front of the wolves," said Block. " The
Corrections officials--pressed into service as spin doctors for a truly
bad idea--answered that the sex offenders needed to be managed for
community safety. "We want them managed," said Block. "We just don't
want them managed next door." Monica Brede, another activist in the
Theis campaign, pointed out that the decision to put a house full of
sex offenders across the street from a school in a low-income community
was not only a bad idea, it was a politically callous one as well. "If
this were Washburn Rural [School], would this be next door?" she said.
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