Missouri Lost Track of More Than 1,200 Registered Sex Offenders, State Audit Finds

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/02/us/missouri-sex-offender-registry.html

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Law enforcement officials in Missouri don’t know the whereabouts of more than 1,200 registered sex offenders — nearly 8 percent of those required to register there — according to a state audit that highlights the difficulties of maintaining such lists.

“Local officials need to do more to hold these predators accountable for not following the law,” State Auditor Nicole Galloway said in an interview on Tuesday, adding that the inaccurate records represented “a public safety issue.”

“Right now it is providing a false sense of security,” said Ms. Galloway, who oversaw the audit. “The public assumes information in the sex offender registry is correct, when in fact it is not.”

The audit, which was released Monday, found that more than 60 percent of the offenders who were unaccounted for were categorized as Tier III, the most serious classification. That includes those convicted of crimes like rape, sodomy and molestation of a child younger than 14. Under Missouri law, Tier III offenders are required to register with a local law enforcement official every 90 days for the rest of their lives.

All convicted sex offenders, regardless of their tier, must register their name and address with law enforcement officials, typically the county sheriff, and verify that information regularly. If they don’t, officials are supposed to follow up, and issue a warrant if the offender cannot be found.

According to the audit, about 91 percent of noncompliant sex offenders did not have warrants outstanding for their arrest.

It was unclear whether some people were missing from the registry entirely, or whether the total number of sex offenders who are unaccounted for was in fact 1,259, the number identified in the audit.

“We believe that this could be a conservative figure because we were unable to get complete information from the courts,” Ms. Galloway said.

The Missouri Sheriffs’ Association did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.

“What we heard from law enforcement is that other priorities were put ahead of tracking these sex offenders,” Ms. Galloway said, adding that there were “limited resources at the local level.”

The audit called for law enforcement officials to follow up on sex offender registration requirements and asked that the Missouri State Highway Patrol, which maintains the public registry data, do more to ensure the accuracy of the database that it is maintaining. The acting superintendent of the Highway Patrol responded to the critique in a lengthy letter that said “the identified accuracy issues” would be addressed in “future training sessions.”

The audit also called for a revision in Missouri law that would require background checks for school volunteers to ensure those volunteers were not in the registry.

Although the registry can become a tool for local law enforcement officials when a new offense happens, “the larger the registry, the less often it’s going to be useful for those purposes,” said Franklin Zimring, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who has written about criminal violence, imprisonment and capital punishment.

Federal law requires states to register sex offenders and to notify the public when a convicted sex offender moves into a community. But despite the law’s good intentions, it has been criticized for invading the privacy of those who have already been punished, then continuing to punish them. Those who remain on the sex offender registry often have difficulty finding work or a place to live.

In addition, the registry is limited in how it can help. In many cases the victims of sex crimes know the offenders. Often, and especially when it comes to child sexual abuse, perpetrators are friends and family. According to the Department of Justice, only about 10 percent of perpetrators of child sexual abuse are strangers to the child.

Studies have shown low recidivism rates among sexual offenders. The Bureau of Justice Statistics released a study in 2003 that showed an estimated 3.3 percent of the 4,300 child molesters released in 1994 were rearrested for another sex crime against a child within three years.

“Most sex offenses are committed by people who are never going to be on the registry when they commit them because they’ve never been on the sex offender registry before,” said Ira Ellman, a retired law professor who now serves as a scholar at the Center for the Study of Law and Society at the University of California, Berkeley.

Maintaining a sex offender registry that is available to both law enforcement officials and employers makes sense, said Mr. Ellman, but he questioned whether a public database was needed.

“If we’re trying to allocate resources in public safety to figure out the best bang for our buck to reduce offending,” he said, “the registry is unlikely to be a good investment.”