Door County Looking at Creating Housing for Sexual Offenders

The three sites at the Justice Center property, shown above, are being engineered for possible placement of two housing units for sexual offenders who have served time and have been approved for supervised release. Source: Door County government

Door County is in the engineering stage of siting and designing building pads for two single-wide homes at the Justice Center in Sturgeon Bay to house sexually violent offenders who have served time and been approved for supervised release back into their communities.

In December, the Door County Board of Supervisors authorized the transfer of $15,000 in unbudgeted funds to hire an engineering firm to develop plans at three possible sites on the Justice Center property at 1201 S. Duluth Ave. to site the two homes. 

The topic arose again during the board’s January meeting, with county officials elaborating as to why the housing is needed. 

State law requires that counties provide a housing option for individuals who have served their prison terms and been deemed eligible by a judge for supervised release.

“From the point in time this is entered, the county has 120 days to find an appropriate residential option for that person,” said Grant Thomas, corporation counsel.

Judges issued orders in mid-December 2020 and mid-January 2021 for the supervised release of two individuals.

“So by mid-April, we need to have a location identified, and also by May 15 for the second individual,” Thomas said.

The county will be responsible in the near future for placing about six individuals, Thomas said. Those on supervised release are generally under house arrest and could end up in placement for years, though the term varies by the person.

The court-approved placement plans must, by statute, meet the treatment needs of the individual as well as the safety needs of the community. The safety needs of the community restrict where the person can live: not within 1,500 feet of a school, child care facility, public park, place of worship or youth center, according to the statute. If the person committed a sexually violent offense against an adult or elder adult at risk, the list is extended to nursing homes and assisted-living facilities. If the person is a serious child sex offender, the list is extended to any property where a child’s primary residence exists. 

These restrictions have always created placement challenges, Thomas said, but it’s now “significantly different” for counties after legislation changed the rules in March 2018. Before that, a person could be placed within any county in the state. 

“What happened is 72 counties doing a version of ‘Not in my backyard,’ and the state got sick of that,” Thomas said. 

Since the legislative change, counties may no longer fight placements. Sex offenders must now be placed where the judgment of conviction came from, and that’s usually the individual’s county of residence, Thomas said.

Currently, Wisconsin’s Sexual Offender Registry lists 95 sexual offenders already living somewhere within Door County (96, but one of those lives in Algoma). The majority of those live in Sturgeon Bay, but a few live elsewhere: one in Fish Creek, one on Washington Island, two in Egg Harbor, two in Ellison Bay, three in Baileys Harbor, four in Brussels and four in Forestville. One man is listed as homeless with a Sturgeon Bay zip code.