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	Sex Offenders Find Ways to Get around a Feel-Good Registry Law, and Hide Themselves Among an Unsuspecting Public: Editorial Plain Dealer June 20, 2010 http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2010/06/sex_offenders_find_ways_to_get.html Sex-offender registries are a well-intentioned attempt to monitor and alert residents to the presence of convicted rapists and child molesters in their communities. Unfortunately, the registries -- mandated by state and federal laws -- offer too little accountability and too narrow a focus to address the real risks of a recurrence of these complex crimes. As recent articles by Plain Dealer reporters Leila Atassi and Rachel Dissell show, the registries also burden the criminal justice system with impossible tasks while inducing many offenders to hide their whereabouts, taking them completely off the radar of local law enforcement officials. Registries should be limited to pedophiles and dangerous repeat offenders, while the overall approach needs to be rethought, requiring legislative changes and a shift in local priorities. The majority of sexual offenders are people we know -- a relative, a neighbor, a coach, a teacher, a priest. Aggressive public education campaigns should raise that awareness with parents, caregivers and kids. Resources also should be reallocated to improve treatment of sex offenders; figures from the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center show that the rate of convicted sex offenders who reoffend drops from 17 percent to 12 percent with proper therapy. State law requires that sex offenders considered the most serious register their addresses with their county sheriff every 90 days, for life, after release from prison. It's a feel-good law that's simply enforceable. Of the 166 sex offenders registered at a men's homeless shelter at 2100 Lakeside Ave. in Cleveland, more than 100 either have never resided there, or have been AWOL for the last three months, according to reporting by The Plain Dealer's Atassi. Registration fraud is fueled not just by offender deceit, but also by state and local laws that increasingly limit where sexual predators may live, driving them underground -- and often into the very kid-friendly neighborhoods and suburban locations that these laws were enacted to protect. Deputy sheriffs do the best they can. In Cuyahoga County last year, they referred hundreds of fraudulent sex-offender registrations for indictment. But even with 10 deputies assigned to the sexual offender unit, it is a mammoth challenge to keep track of more than 3,300 registered sex offenders. A federally funded study last year concluded that registration and monitoring laws -- which cost taxpayers millions of dollars each year to enforce -- do not reduce the number of new offenses or new victims. Meanwhile, the release of sex offenders from prisons to city streets is a daily occurrence. This community needs a comprehensive policy that provides meaningful accountability to a rightfully fearful public, but that also addresses the realities of sexual violence. The current system is overwhelmed and underfunded. As the city revamps its protocol on the handling of missing-persons and sex-crime cases in the wake of its failures in the case of Anthony Sowell, a convicted sex offender who now stands accused of the murders of 11 women, the county and the state need to join the dialogue and search for the most cost-effective and efficient practices to manage a burgeoning sex-offender population.
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