The location of a state-run inmate halfway house near several churches and elementary schools on the West Hill in Sharon has at least one city mother up in arms.

Penny Hout, a mother of three children ages three months to 15 years, has organized a rally from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, in the City Centre parking lot.

The goal is to draw attention to Sharon Community Corrections Center, which is a last stop before inmates are paroled from prison. The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections oversees the center, which aims to reintegrate men — including sex offenders — into the community.

“We’re the guinea pigs to see if they’re going to mess up again,” Mrs. Hout said. “I’m very angry about that.”

She noted that there’s no sign outside the center at 300 W. State St. and people may know it’s here, but there’s been no community education.

“Kids have to walk past the halfway house on their way to and from school,” said Sharon police Chief Mike Menster. “It’s a bad idea. It’s the worst possible place you can house sex offenders.”

And the house’s residents are out and about. They’re at the laundromat, they’re at the library, “they’re at McDonald’s, where our kids are,” Mrs. Hout said.

“If this rally does nothing else, I want to make people more aware that they are housing sex offenders, that this needs to stop and we need to be more aware of the fact that we have parolees running around downtown,” Mrs. Hout said.

The men at the center are allowed out during the day for work, job searching and community service, center Director Seaborn White said. They collectively do 800 to 900 hours of community service a month, he said.

As of Friday the center had 33 men living there, 12 of whom are registered sex offenders, White said.

“We do our best to monitor these guys,” White said, adding that every man in the program has been approved by the state parole board to be there. And they would soon be put out into the community through this or another program, he said.

“I can understand the community’s concern,” White said.

Menster last fall took that concern to members of the state Public Health and Violence Prevention Taskforce. At a hearing in Hermitage, he asked legislators to consider making restrictions on locating halfway house-type facilities that house sexual offenders near schools, churches and playgrounds.

(See the graphic accompanying this story for the location of Sharon’s halfway house and nearby churches and schools.)

State Rep. Mark Longietti, D-7th District, Hermitage, took that advice to heart and said a bill is in the works that would prohibit the Department of Corrections from housing sex offenders in close proximity to schools.