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Megan's law expands to the Net

Parents search for sex offenders online, but not without controversy.
Written by Julia Sommerfeld, Contributor
Renee Kelleher has memorized the mugshot displayed on her computer screen. Listed beneath the man's photograph are his crimes -- two counts of lewd or lascivious acts upon a child -- and his address, only a couple of blocks from the Tampa, Fla., home of Renee, her husband, James, and their 3-year-old daughter, Francis.

About once a month, Kelleher clicks on the Web site of the state Department of Law Enforcement and scrolls through the list of sex offenders in her zip code.

She's not alone.

Around 20,000 people monthly visit Florida's online sexual predator and offender registry.

While the Internet has developed a reputation as a bastion for sexual predators, pedophiles and pornographers, law enforcement agencies are trying to make it a tool to combat them. Fifteen states, numerous counties and cities, and several freelance individuals have posted the identities and whereabouts of sex offenders on the Internet.

If your state or city doesn't have such a site yet, it might soon. Four more states have recently passed bills to enact online sex offender registries. It is part of a national push to notify the public about registered sex offenders. And millions of parents have visited such sites, relying on the logic: If you know who the sex offenders in your area are, you will be better equipped to protect your family from them.

Law enforcement agencies running such Web sites say the registries arm parents with a powerful tool -- information -- and parents are grateful.

"Overall, reactions have been very positive," says Mary Coffee, at Florida's Sex Offender and Predator Unit. "There has not been a single negative call from a parent that I know of. People are really surprised and appreciative to have this information available to them. The only negative responses have been from the offenders themselves."

'A political solution'
But online registries are not without their critics. Some say they can cause more damage than they prevent by accidentally revealing the names of victims, creating instant mailing lists for child pornographers and subjecting people who have completed their time in prison to further punishment.

"It's a political solution that looks good but likely does more harm than good because it undermines the stability of offenders," says Deborah Jacobs, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri.

Kelleher disagrees. She says she doesn't see what harm could come from informing parents about sex offenders living in their areas. She began checking Florida's online registry about six months ago after hearing about it on a local news station.

"I was just curious the first time to see if there was anybody in my neighborhood," she says. "I was really not expecting to find anybody, and I was very surprised when I found quite a few."

In fact, Kelleher found 18 offenders in her zip code, including a man a couple of blocks from her home. The experience has made her more cautious.

"It's made me more aware and I think that's true for my friends also," Kelleher says. "We live in a pretty affluent neighborhood, and I think most of us had the idea this kind of thing didn't go around here and now we see that it's true -- it does. We have to be extra careful with our children no matter where we live and we have to talk to our kids about it."

Florida was one of the first states to go online with this information, in 1996. It has one of the most comprehensive sex offender registries on the Web. It includes the offenders' names, addresses, photographs, aliases, crimes and physical descriptions, and it can be searched by zip code, city or offender's name.

Public demand
Public demand has pushed 14 other states to follow Florida's lead. By 1998, Alabama, Alaska, North Carolina, Indiana, Utah, West Virginia, Kansas, Georgia and South Carolina had posted sex offender registries online. Five more -- Connecticut, Delaware, Michigan, Texas and Virginia -- posted sites this year. And Arizona, Iowa, Maryland and Wyoming have all passed legislation and will have their sites public by the end of the year.

The online registries are a cheaper and more efficient way for states to meet their own community notification obligations and the federal Megan's Law requirements, says Scott Matson at the Center for Sex Offender Management.

"The point of putting the information on the Internet is that it costs less than buying space in the media, and we can update it as soon as we get new information," says Coffee at Florida's Sex Offender and Predator Unit. "And it's more accessible. Everyone has access to the Internet either through a friend, neighbor or the public library."

But the easy accessibility of the registries made possible by the Web is exactly what disturbs some. "With registries available at a police department, it takes some initiative to go down and look at it, but with the online lists it just takes a click of a mouse button," says Jacobs with the ACLU of Eastern Missouri. "It is an important difference to recognize."

Because people are intimidated by the prospect of visiting a police station, making the information accessible on the Internet, some contend, is a valuable public service. And where states are not offering this service, counties, cities and individuals are posting the information on their own sites.

In California, which does not have an online registry, sex offender information is stored in a CD-ROM database at police stations. The public can look at it, but only for 15 minutes, and only after signing forms and handing over a driver's license. So, Ken LaCorte, a Glendale, Calif., father and a group of volunteers, hand-copied certain information from the CD-ROMs and released it on an Internet site -- www.sexoffenders.net.

And in Washington State, where legislation to post a state sex offender registry on the Internet failed, several city police departments and sheriff's offices created their own registries on the Web.

No standardization
The standards set forth by Megan's Law -- the federal statute named after a 7-year-old New Jersey girl who was brutally raped and murdered in 1994 by a convicted sex offender living in her neighborhood -- are vague so states have leeway in choosing a method of community notification. States can offer the information through a toll-free phone number, fliers or the media. But many are hurrying online to meet the requirements of Megan's Law, which mandates that states must release relevant information about child molesters and violent sex offenders to the public.

States must have a plan for compliance with the law by September or risk losing 10 percent of their federal anti-crime funding.

And there are major differences between the states that do publish registries online. Some state sites, such as Alaska's, are searchable by zip code or city, while others, such as Texas, are more restrictive and require one to search for a specific offender's name.

And the recent launch of the national sex offender registry is not likely to bring the states into alignment, as it is accessible only to law enforcement. However, the Department of Justice is examining the feasibility of making the information available to the public, possibly on the Internet or through a toll number.

Kelleher, for one, thinks that is a great idea. She argues that everyone should have access to the kind of information she gets from Florida's site.

But Beth Saymon at the FBI, the agency that administers the national registry, says she has concerns about putting the registry up on the Net because states with laws against broadly disseminating such information would not participate in the registry, making it a less effective law enforcement tool. And, she adds, since states are not standardized as far as what is considered a sex offense, someone who urinated in a street might end up on a national list of sex offenders.




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