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Wednesday, September 02, 2009

Law - "Case Shows Limits of Sex Offender Alert Programs "

The NY Times' Monica Davis reported yesterday, Sept. 1:

In all 50 states, registries of sex offenders have grown sophisticated and accessible in recent years, a response to high-profile attacks on children. People can search their neighborhoods for former convicts on state-run Web sites, sign up for private services that alert them if an offender moves nearby, even download an iPhone application, “Offender Locator.”

But the case of Phillip Garrido, the California man accused of kidnapping a young girl and holding her captive for 18 years, is reigniting a debate about the usefulness of the government-managed lists and whether they might create a false sense of public safety.

Mr. Garrido, who had been convicted of kidnapping and rape in the 1970s, was listed, as required, on California’s sex-offender registry (complete with a description of the surgical scar on his abdomen and his 196-pound weight) and had dutifully checked in with the local authorities each year for the past decade — all while, officials say, his victim and the two children he is accused of fathering with her were living in his backyard.

Sex offender lists have made far more information readily available to the public and the police than before, but experts say little research is available to suggest that the registries have actually discouraged offenders from committing new crimes.

And some experts say that the lists may lead people to presume that anyone registered must also be elaborately monitored, when, in truth, monitoring ranges enormously from place to place and state to state. In some cases, it amounts to little more than an offender mailing a postcard with his address to a police department once a year.

“We’ve come to see these registries as a panacea that is going to resolve all sex offender problems,” said Richard Tewksbury, a professor of justice administration at the University of Louisville who has written extensively about the effects of registries. “That’s just not realistic.”

In some jurisdictions, officials tend to focus much of their attention on the estimated 100,000 former offenders nationally who fail to register, give false addresses or disappear, and less on the hundreds of thousands, like Mr. Garrido, who comply. And while some authorities have extensive contact with their registered offenders (Illinois has special monitors who follow those deemed most dangerous for life, looking for even subtle signs of crimes), those in some other states spend little time with offenders once they have filed an address.

Federal efforts to create a single, consistent registration system have been slowed by states’ concerns about mounting costs, legal challenges and other issues. Deadlines for states complying with a federal plan approved by Congress in 2006 have been delayed a year, until July 2010.

That is only the beginning of this lengthy story.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on September 2, 2009 09:28 AM
Posted to General Law Related