Not In My Town

Though he has paid his legal debt to society, Lawrence Singleton spends his days in a vortex of unmade restitution. A convicted rapist who hacked off the forearms of his 15-year-old hitchhiker victim, Singleton, 59, was paroled from a California jail last month after serving nearly eight years of a 14-year four-month sentence. But Singleton, a model prisoner who maintains his innocence, immediately found himself to be a pariah, staying in a string of motels as authorities tried in vain in California, Florida and Nevada to find a welcoming town.

The state department of corrections announced last week that it had finally found a home for Singleton. His new address: Richmond (pop. 78,000), a blue collar Contra Costa suburb of San Francisco. State officials were unclear about whether Singleton would stay permanently in the area, but his neighbors certainly acted as if he was there for good. Some 200 protesters rallied at Richmond's city hall, chanting "He must go!" and listening to local politicians denounce Singleton. Said Mayor George Livingston: "My suggestion would be to put him on the barge where that garbage is and let him float away from here," referring to the hapless Long Island vessel that has been searching for a dump site up and down the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.

But for now it appears as if Richmond is going to have to live with Singleton, and vice versa. The California Supreme Court last week turned down the county's appeal to override the corrections department and place Singleton elsewhere.

Authorities sympathize with the public's anger, yet contend that they have little choice. According to state policy, parolees are frequently housed in the county where they lived before they were convicted, and in Singleton's case that is Contra Costa. "When we make a decision to place someone, we make it on the department's experience and on legal grounds, not on emotion," explains Department Spokesman Robert Gore. Says Jerome Skolnick, a professor at the law school of the University of California, Berkeley: "If ((communities)) could reject notorious felons, no one would want them and where would they go?"

Only a handful of California's more than 58,000 parolees between 1984 and 1986 were controversial enough to be placed in counties other than their own. Gore said Singleton would be moved "if the need arises," a condition to be determined by Singleton's parole agents, who guard him around the clock. Meanwhile, local officials are trying a last-ditch legal maneuver to send him packing. Says County Supervisor Tom Powers: "My wife and I were out walking the other night, and she points to some guy and says, 'Doesn't that person look like Singleton?' " A retired merchant seaman, Singleton could not be blamed if he felt he was on a never ending voyage.