From the sun-baked center of the tiny desert town of Jacumba, it’s fewer than 2,000 feet to the Mexican border — or about as far south as you can go in California and still be in the United States.
It’s here, in this corner of San Diego County with a population of about 900, where the state of California has placed more sex offenders through a costly conditional release program than any other community in the state.
Jacumba has been the unwilling host to 12 sex offenders since 2007, all of whom have been officially designated with a term that might be the most alarming in the state law — sexually violent predator.
The number of SVPs in Jacumba is just part of a remarkable overall picture in the county.
Of the 60 men who have been released under the Forensic Conditional Release Program, or CONREP, statewide over the past two decades, 21 have been housed in San Diego, according to the Department of State Hospitals, which runs the CONREP program.
That is one of every three CONREP releases in the state ending up somewhere in San Diego. Nearly all have been assigned to live in communities across the rural backcountry, from Borrego Springs to Campo and, mostly, Jacumba.
And more are on the way.
A state audit released in the spring showed four more SVPs were awaiting “placement” somewhere in San Diego — more than any other county in the state, including giant Los Angeles County.
Read more at inewssource.org.
