Northfield Doesn't 'Ban' Level III Sex Offenders, But Doesn't Have Any

Northfield doesn't have an ordinance restricting where Level III sex offenders can live—but there aren't any such offenders living in the city anyway.

Eight cities in Minnesota have "essentially banned" Level III sex offenders from taking up residence, according to the Star Tribune.

Those cities have restrictive local ordinances that work against a Minnesota law intended to spread out the state's population of Level III sex offenders. Instead, the offenders are concentrated in a few areas, such as north Minneapolis, the newspaper reported: 

Nearly 300 of Minnesota’s most dangerous sex offenders now live outside confinement, and more than half of them are residing in only a few neighborhoods in Minneapolis and St. Paul, a Star Tribune analysis of state records shows.

That saturation is occurring despite a state law that requires authorities who supervise newly released sex offenders to avoid concentrating them in any community. ... In both Minneapolis and St. Paul, frustrated leaders are calling for tougher laws that would result in wider dispersal of the riskiest sex offenders.

Read the full article at startribune.com.

Where Offenders Are
Three men living in Faribault in the 55021 zip code are the nearest Level III sex offenders to Northfield, according to the map. There were 289 in Minnesota as of last week, the newspaper reported.

The Minnesota Department of Corrections maintains a public online database on Level III Sex Offenders that allows searches by location.