VT - Sex offender registry under fire again

Original Article

07/18/2014

By Jennifer Reading

MONTPELIER - It's another black mark for the Vermont Sex Offender Registry.

"There are errors. And they should not have been there," said Doug Hoffer, D-Vt. Auditor.

Hoffer says the system needs work. A performance audit by his office found critical errors in 253 offender records. That's 11 percent of the total registry.

"The Legislature has said very clearly that they wanted information to be available to the general public, as is the case in other states," Hoffer said. "And we all have a right for the information to be accurate. Not only for the people in the community, but for the offenders."

The registry is a tool for law enforcement and the public to keep track of sexual predators living in the community. That's something Chelsea Merrill, 21, couldn't do for a while. Her abuser, _____, was convicted of lewd and lascivious conduct. He targeted her for five years while she was a child. Yet his photo wasn't on the public registry until recently. And she worried he'd find more victims.

"That he will offend again," she said. "That he will get close to another child and feel comfortable with them. And this will happen again."
- So are you saying that if his/her photo is online then they won't re-offend?  The problem is, most do not re-offend in the first place!

An audit conducted in 2010 found the system was rife with errors. Hoffer says four years later, the Legislature tasked his office with a follow-up examination.

His team uncovered:

• 11 registration errors where offenders were either incorrectly added, omitted or still online after their deaths.
• 179 errors related to how long an offender should stay on the registry.
• 71 mistakes regarding which offenders' information should be posted online.

Hoffer says these mistakes undermine the credibility of the registry. It's managed by two people within the Department of Public Safety's Vermont Crime Information Center or VCIC. But the auditor says state courts and corrections also play a role.

"They have not worked together as well as they could," Hoffer said.

"The program is still a work in progress," said Jeffrey Wallin who heads the VCIC.

Wallin says since the audit's conclusion in mid-May, almost all the mistakes have been fixed.

Many of them were a result of human error from manual data entry, a problem the center has been working to streamline. Last February, VCIC unveiled new software called OffenderWatch to help automate data entry. Despite a few technology glitches, Wallin says it's improved the accuracy of the registry.
- It doesn't matter how expensive or nice the program is, as long as you have humans entering data, then there is always potential for human errors.

"Right now the public can be fairly confident in the registry," Wallin said. "We are always looking to improve. Provide better information, better service and better response to the community, but also to the individuals listed."

Moving forward Hoffer has recommended the courts, corrections and VCIC reconvene a working group to hash out their communication breakdown. It's a suggestion the auditor's office also made after the 2010 audit.

"And they did. And then they kind of let it go," Hoffer said. "So they certainly need more coordination between them."

And victims like Merrill say fixing these mistakes should remain a top priority.

"If it was one of their kids, would they want to know if their neighbor was a sex offender or had done such a crime with a child? Would they want their kid walking to school past their neighbor's house every day knowing that they live there?" Merrill said.
- So why don't you walk to the bus stop with your child?  You know, be a parent!

In 2009, Vermont lawmakers approved a measure to post sex offenders' addresses to the online registry. The move was contingent on a favorable audit. Problems discovered in 2010 prevented that from happening. This audit was a second chance. But more errors likely mean the addresses of sexual predators will remain under wraps.

Audit Reports:

• Click here to read the 2014 audit
• Click here to read the 2010 audit

MD - Is the sex offender registry providing incorrect info?

Original Article

Of course it is, the data is entered by humans who are prone to making mistakes. But, it only shows you where they sleep for a couple hours per night and doesn't prevent crime or really protect anybody, it only opens people up to vigilantism.

10/22/2013

By Joce Sterman

ABC2 INVESTIGATORS UNCOVER A FLAW IN HOW THE STATE'S SEX OFFENDER REGISTRY TRACKS INMATES IN CUSTODY. THE MISTAKES WE'VE UNCOVERED SHOW NOT ONLY IS THE STATE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR NOTIFYING WHEN OFFENDERS ARE RELEASED FROM LOCAL JAILS, BUT THAT THE FAILURES TO UPDATE THE REGISTRY PUT PEOPLE AT RISK.

In September people looking for convicted sex offender _____ wouldn't think they’d have to look hard to find him. The Maryland Sex Offender Registry said he was in jail. But ABC2 Investigators discovered the registry you rely on was wrong .

_____ himself helped us confirm the registry was incorrect. During a visit to his house in Glen Burnie, _____ told us, “I’ve been home. I haven't been locked up."

_____ had been living at home since records show he was released from the Anne Arundel County Detention Center on May 21. But that jail is exactly where the Maryland Sex Offender Registry said he was still living three and a half months later.

_____ is one of many sex offenders found on the streets and undetected on the registry. The news was disappointing to Anne Arundel’s Pat Parrish. She says she checks the state registry twice a week, looking for potential offenders in her neighborhood.

Paranoid person

"You've got to keep your eye on them, know where they're at," Parrish said.

The retiree is so familiar with the registry that over the summer she used it to identify and turn in a sex offender she saw taking a boy into the woods by her home. As Parrish scrolls through the pictures, she says she only takes comfort when she spots one word next to an offender: incarcerated.

"That person is in jail, so we don't have to worry about them," Parrish said.

But ABC2 Investigators found reason to worry, finding dozens of sex offenders whose registry pages were wrong about where they lived. Some of the offenders were listed as behind bars although they had actually been out of jail for weeks or months.

_____ is one example. He was convicted of a third-degree sex offense and was listed as living at the Prince George’s County Detention Center. But multiple records show he was actually free.

The profile for _____ was also incorrect. _____ a convicted rapist who will be on the registry for life, was listed in the Baltimore County Detention Center as of early September. But we found he’d been on the street since his release in July.

_____ is a lost inmate who still hasn't been found. The registry shows there’s now a warrant for his arrest. He’s been labeled as an absconder.

We took our findings from cases like _____ and _____ to Lisae Jordan, the Executive Director of the Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault.
- So why them and not the police?

“With the registry, the errors you've uncovered here, we're grateful that you found them because that's really a problem," Jordan said.

It’s a systematic problem ABC2 News discovered by putting a sampling of Maryland's 1,500 incarcerated offenders through various government databases. The state's registry may have listed them as being in jail, but we used the Maryland Inmate Locator, Maryland Judiciary Case Search, the victim notification service VINE and even individual phone calls to detention centers to determine offenders we believed were no longer in custody were in fact out on the street.


"When we tell the public here's information about where these sex offenders are, that information should be correct and it's really appalling that it's not," Jordan said.

Russell Butler, the Executive Director of the Maryland Crime Victims’ Resource Center, says he was disturbed by our findings. He believes the failure to give victims, and the public, current and correct information about offenders could put people at risk.

“If this is a person who has harmed you, they may want retribution," he said. "They may want to re-victimize you, so you need to know they are out on the street."

Jordan also expressed confusion as to why it was so difficult to keep track of offenders, telling ABC2, "I don't understand why this is happening. These are people who are in state custody. We should know where they are."

In the sample group we supplied to the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, 20 percent of the inmates we found were actually on the street had been in state facilities, so there should have been little problem updating the registry.

Read the rest of the article

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