About 560 Texas prison parolees in Houston’s Harris County were ordered to remain at their residences throughout the Thanksgiving weekend – from 5 p.m. Nov. 24 until time to go to work Nov. 29 – under a “sex offender lockdown,” said Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials, the Houston Chronicle says. Attorney Bill Habern, who specializes in parole matters, said some of those confined to their homes over the extended Thanksgiving weekend have no sex crimes on their records.
Policies that include confining sex offenders to their homes on certain holidays dramatically reduce the number of rearrests of parolees, said Bryan Collier of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. He said 3,910 people classified as sex offenders are under parole supervision in Texas. Of that number, he estimated that “probably less than 100” do not have sex offense convictions. In such cases, he said, the parole board notices “something in their criminal background that looks funny” and requires a sex offender evaluation as a condition of parole.
Link: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2931325