Mom plans to picket West Hill halfway house

By Courtney Anderson
Herald Staff Writer

SHARON June 09, 2008 10:55 pm

— 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.
There’s a misconception that Pennsylvania’s Megan’s Law bars sexual offenders from living within so many feet of schools. The law requires their whereabouts be tracked and that the public be notified of their presence in the community, Longietti said.
Part of the problem for Sharon, Longietti said, is that out of about 50 halfway houses across the state, most of them are run by private companies that prohibit sex offenders from living there. That leaves 15 state facilities to deal with all the sexual offenders in Pennsylvania, Longietti said, and one of those is in Sharon.
While it seems prudent to monitor the inmates and try to ease them into society, Longietti said it doesn’t make a lot of sense to house them so near schools.
He said it’s particularly an issue in Sharon, because Sharon school district does not provide busing.
Mrs. Hout asks that people bring their own signs to the rally and encourages folks who can’t stay the whole time to stop even briefly to show their support for the cause.
Mrs. Hout said that police have told her that the group must not block roadways or the entrance to the facility. Anyone who goes onto the center’s property or behaves in a disorderly manner could also be arrested, she said.
“I hope that (state officials) see that the people in Sharon and the surrounding communities aren’t going to stand for being a dumping ground.”
Another thing Mrs. Hout said bothers her is how many of these parolees appear to stay in the area after they get released from the center.
According to the Pennsylvania Megan’s Law Web site, there are currently 53 sex offenders living or working in Sharon.
“How many of them originated from the halfway house?” Mrs. Hout wondered.
None of the sex offenders registered in Sharon now are classified as sexually violent predators, the highest level of offender, Menster said. There are two in the county, both incarcerated at the State Correctional Institution in Findley Township.
Menster also suggested to legislators that sexual offenders should be required to return to the county where they committed their crime after they are released from prison.
The vast majority of Sharon’s sex offenders are from other areas. In September, Menster said two of the 41 sex offenders registered as living in Sharon were originally from the city.
According to “save our children” fliers passed out Monday around the city, the plan is to march from McDonald’s to the halfway house.

Copyright © 1999-2008 cnhi, inc.