Although the Justice Department’s decision to establish a nationwide database for sex offenders has been heralded as an important step toward keeping children safe, many potential users already have begun to criticize the as-yet-unpublished list.
The biggest complaint maintains the list, which proposes to connect state databases to make it easier to locate sex offenders who cross state lines, does not address the problem that many sex offenders fail to register at all.
Many officials are up in arms over the system’s reliance upon the honesty of convicted offenders. In a story published in The Washington Post on Thursday, Virginia State Commission Chairman Sen. Kenneth W. Stolle (R-Virginia Beach) said, “What has alarmed me is that the compliance rates seem to be getting worse instead of better. The central registry is not performing at the level we would like.”
Stolle’s comments seem to be validated by an April story in the Richmond Times-Dispatch that reported that, out of 218 sex offenders registered near downtown Richmond, 41 could not be located because their addresses were invalid. (Virginia only requires sex offenders to update their personal information once a year.) Many other states, including Indiana and Florida, report that offenders often use false addresses.
Florida, in particular, has had its share of negative publicity related to sex offenders in recent months, as both John Couey (the man who assaulted and killed 9-year-old Homosassa resident Jessica Lunsford) and David Onstott (who was charged last month with killing 13-year-old Michelle Lunde in Ruskin) hail from the so-called “Sunshine State,” which is home to 35,000 registered sex offenders. A disclaimer on the state’s Web site contends “[The Florida Department of Law Enforcement] merely compiles and provides this information for public access, and does not independently confirm the accuracy of the information compiled and provided.”
Perhaps hoping to quell a bit of the bad press, the state recently recruited newly-traded Miami Heat basketball star Shaquille O’Neal to serve on its online sex offender team after O’Neal contacted Miami Beach police about becoming a reserve officer. O’Neal is said to be training currently to learn the techniques and software employed by authorities to locate child predators.
Of course, recruiting a sports hero is not likely to solve the problems inherent in the new database, and U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales isn’t likely to react well to the list’s faults. As Ohio ACLU Legal Director Jeff Gamso told the Toledo Blade, “Compounding errors doesn’t strike me as a terribly good idea.”
