A court hearing Tuesday could help answer, for one San Diego area community, a vexing question about the balance between public safety and rehabilitation: Where can sexually violent predators relocate once the state moves to release them?

Residents of a community near San Diego State University are anxiously waiting to find out where Douglas Badger, deemed a high-risk sex offender, will wind up living when he is released from a state mental hospital, possibly in the next few weeks.

The issue has already stirred deep concerns. Hundreds of residents packed a Baptist church last month for a meeting with local officials after they found out that Mr. Badger, 63, was slated to live in a halfway house in their neighborhood, which is also home to the state university and within walking distance of Platt College, a design school.

Badger's release would be the first in San Diego County - and only the fourth in California - of someone classified by the state as an "SVP," a sexually violent predator. That label, prosecutors say, makes him "the worst of the worst," a violent offender with a mental disorder.

The impending release raises issues California and other states have yet to resolve regarding how criminals such as Badger can be brought back into society. Because of the federal 1996 passage of Megan's Law, every state now notifies a community when a dangerous sex offender is being released, and many sex offenders are required to register with law enforcement. Most are not SVPs. Public fears are fueled in part by the record of high recidivism by sex offenders.

The outcry at the public meeting prompted the owner of the halfway house to change his mind about letting Badger live there. So, at a hearing Jan. 31, Judge David Danielsen asked all parties to go back to find a new location for Badger, and report to him at a hearing Tuesday. The community concerns range from panic to hope for rehabilitation.

"There are sex offenders in plenty of neighborhoods, some identified and some not," says Patti Saraniero, a mother of two boys who lives near the halfway house. "I think as a society we are very ambivalent about people who commit crimes. We have a prison system where we punish people but don't rehabilitate them. Here was someone in the process of being rehabilitated and we turned him away. I'm not saying what he did was OK, but he's got to go somewhere."

In the next decade more of the 560 SVPs now in the state's sex offender commitment program will be released; many, like Badger, were convicted before California's "three strikes" laws were enacted in 1994 and were not given life sentences, as they probably would have been. "We are going to have four or five of these guys coming to us over the next several years,"says Ron Roberts, a supervisor with the San Diego County Board of Supervisors. "But where do we put them? We can't put a wall up around San Diego County."

Page: 1 | 2