Ten days after leaving prison, Raphael Marquez made an unusual request to a Broward County judge: Put me back behind bars.
Marquez, 38, is a sex offender who was released June 20 after serving seven years of his eight-year sentence for sexual battery on a minor, records show. Two years of house arrest were to follow.
But for Marquez, the hardest part was finding that house, said his attorney, Cheryl Koewing.
"Every place he looked he couldn't afford or had a restriction," she said.
Twenty-four of Broward's 31 cities have adopted laws banning offenders from moving near schools, parks and other places that children frequent. Most used 2,500 feet for the buffer zones, effectively blanketing entire cities.
One of the few remaining legal places Marquez could have moved into was Broadview Park, a small, offender-packed neighborhood in unincorporated Broward at State Road 7 and I-595.
But in April, Broward County officials passed an ordinance making it illegal for more offenders to move into Broadview.
Marquez hopped from one cheap Hollywood motel to another until he ran out of money. At one point, officials found him a rehabilitation home for sex offenders in Pahokee, but Koewing said her client couldn't afford to travel and move there.
Marquez came to believe the only place he had left was under a rat-infested overpass next to Broadview Park.
On June 30, he went before Broward County Judge Marc Gold and asked the judge to revoke his probation.
Gold ordered Marquez to serve six months in the Broward County Jail instead of the two years of house arrest. Marquez will still have to stay under supervision for 20 years and be labeled a sex offender for life.
Opponents of strict residential restrictions throughout Broward point to Marquez's case as a prelude of things to come as Broward County commissioners consider further limits to where offenders can live.
Lori Butts, a Davie-based psychologist who counsels sex offenders, say there is no evidence that residency restrictions stop offenders from committing more sex crimes. Instead, the laws are pushing offenders to become homeless, or fugitives who are more difficult to monitor.
"I am getting more and more clients who want to go back to jail or prison," said Butts. "And it's costing the state and county more money to house them. My concern is that they're going back to prison and they are not getting the treatment they need."
Oakland Park Commissioner Suzanne Boisvenue, a member of a county task force studying the issue, doesn't buy the notion that rules promote homelessness among offenders.
"I think it's a matter of them not wanting to work or pay for a place to live," said Boisvenue. "There are plenty of lawns to mow."
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