For Some Prisoners, Finishing Their Sentences Doesn’t Mean They Get Out
The special problem of being a sex offender.
By Christie Thompson Filed 05.24.2016 – 2:33 p.m.
For Some Prisoners, Finishing Their Sentences Doesn’t Mean They Get Out
After serving a year and two months for a probation violation, Landreaux Yantz should have been able to walk out of a New York state prison on June 26, 2015. But officials would not let him leave.
“When I laid in my bed every night I was thinking, ‘I’m free. Why the hell am I still here?’”
Yantz had nowhere to go. In 2011, he was convicted of rape in the third degree for having sex at age 26 with a 14-year-old and was sentenced to six months in jail. His sex offender status now meant he could not live within 1,000 feet of a school — which, in his home of New York City, ruled out almost everywhere.
Yantz was moved to a different prison with fewer restrictions. He would get out only when a bed freed up in one of the few halfway houses or homeless shelters that were eligible to take him.
Unlike anyone else convicted of a crime, some sex offenders across the country are being forced to stay in prison even after serving their time. In Utah, it is because there are too few spots in a treatment program required for parole. In Illinois, it is because of strict parole requirements (no computers, no smartphones, no children at any time) and residency restrictions that few families can accommodate. In Kentucky, it is because nursing homes and assisted living facilities won’t take them. And in New York, it is because the 1,000-foot school zones encompass almost entire urban centers such as New York City.