Inspector General: "Public can not rely on sex offender registries"

Notice the finger pointing in the OIG report. Also, this system can never work because there is a -Grand Canyon- between, what lawmakers want -AND- what can be achived in reality, and it has nothing to do with those required to register. It is likened to counting stars, where some die every minute and others are born every minute, then there are those in-process and states are updating registries using human beings. No phone book is ever perfect, in life we must accept that some tasks are impossible.

And, we must remember that it was Congress -or the select members chosen to create the Adam Walsh Act behind closed doors- that REMOVED (or failed to include) section 106 of Senate Bill 1086. That section required states to COUNT and ACCOUNT for every record in their registry. At the time my guess is, they did not want the public to know the truth of how many registered sex offenders really existed, we know they current claim of over 600,000 is INCORRECT and BLOATED. see Double/Triple/Quadruple Counting of the number Registered Sex Offenders Nationally . See end of news article for more on the OIG Report:

12-9-2008 National:

The FBI is responding to a report filed by the Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) that states the FBI's National Sex Offender Registry (NSOR) and state registries are inaccurate and incomplete. The report states neither law enforcement officials nor the public can rely on the registries for identifying registered sex offenders.

The report specifically points out that states across the country have not entered records on roughly 22 percent of their individual sex offenders and have not identified those who did not maintain their registration in the NSOR. The OIG says that they also found states do not enter sex offender information such as Social Security Numbers, driver's license numbers and Vehicle Identification Numbers.

The OIG found several causes for the missing and incomplete records.Prior to the Adam Walsh Act, states were not required to enter information on their registered sex offenders into NSOR. Further, some records that states attempted to enter were rejected because they lacked information required by NCIC. Also, some state registries are not fully compatible with NCIC, causing records to be lost when those states attempt to update NSOR records.

The OIG also says it found the state sex offender records accessed through OJP's NSOPR portal are inconsistent and incomplete, and they do not provide reliable information to identify non-compliant sex offenders. Due to these weaknesses, federal, state, and local law enforcement officers who use the NSOPR portal to query the public state registries during investigations may not obtain accurate information on a suspect's registration or fugitive status. In addition, the public cannot use the state information available through the NSOPR portal as a reliable tool to identify all registered and non-compliant sex offenders in their communities.

Quick Facts of the Report
--The OIG says the National Sex Offender Registry maintained by the FBI is incomplete; 22 percent of sex offenders nationally are not registered

--The FBI acknowledges the NSOR is incomplete

--The FBI says while they maintain the registry, it is up to the states to make sure sex offenders are put in the registry and tracked

Included in the report are three recommendations made to the FBI as to how to solve the problems listed above. OIG believes that the Department and its components should provide additional assistance to jurisdictions to ensure that information on registered, non-compliant and fugitive sex offenders is included in the national registries. Specifically, OIG makes the following recommendations to the Department's components:

1.The FBI should ensure NSOR has more complete and accurate information by designing and implementing a new audit of jurisdiction registries' compliance with FBI NSOR procedures and with the SORNA guidelines.

2.The FBI should implement the Advisory Policy Board-approved changes to NSOR that specifically provide information regarding fugitive status.

3.The USMS should obtain NSOR and the NCIC Wanted Persons File data downloads from the FBI and use that information to manage and conduct fugitive sex offender investigations.

The FBI responded to the report by stating the agency concurs with all three of the recommendations made by the OIG. The FBI also noted that the sex offender information maintained by the FBI is sourced through individual states and territories, additionally, that is the responsibility of the states to populate the NSOR. ..News Source.. by KHQ Local News


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Quoted from the actual report
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INTRODUCTION
This report examines the Department of Justice’s (Department) implementation of Title I of the Adam Walsh Act, the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), which sets forth specific responsibilities for the Department in identifying, arresting, and prosecuting sex offenders who have failed to register or update a registration.1 Sex offenders who do not register or update registrations are considered non-compliant and are subject to prosecution under SORNA when federal jurisdiction can be established. When a warrant is issued for a non-compliant sex offender, the subject is referred to as a fugitive sex offender. Records on convicted, non-compliant, and fugitive sex offenders are maintained within the national sex offender registration system.

The national sex offender registration system is composed of two registries operated by different Department components. One is the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) National Sex Offender Registry (NSOR), which is part of the National Crime Information Center (NCIC). NCIC is an information system that provides law enforcement agencies with around-the-clock access to federal, state, and local crime data, including criminal record histories and wanted and missing person records. The other is the Office of Justice Programs’ (OJP) Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Registry Website (NSOPR), which is an online portal linked to all states’ sex offender public registries. Using NSOPR, members of the public can access information on sex offenders in any of the states’ public registries. The information in both the FBI’s NSOR and OJP’s NSOPR portal is provided by the states, territories, federally recognized Indian tribes, and the District of Columbia (collectively referred to in this report as “jurisdictions”). The inclusion, accuracy, and integrity of the data are ultimately the responsibility of those jurisdictions.

At the state level, sex offender registration requirements and penalties for failing to register vary by jurisdiction, and the requirements for maintaining a registration are based on the nature of an offender’s crime and on state law. At the federal level, records of three categories of sex offenders are included in the FBI’s NSOR: individuals convicted of criminal offenses against minors, individuals convicted of sexually violent offenses, and individuals who are designated as sexually violent predators.

SORNA requires convicted state and federal sex offenders to register within 3 business days in the states in which they will live, work, and attend school after being released from incarceration or, in cases in which there is no term of incarceration, within 3 days of being sentenced. Once registered, convicted sex offenders are required to verify their registration information periodically with jurisdiction authorities. The jurisdiction registration authorities are also required to alert the FBI when they receive new or updated registration information.

Absent an extension, state, territorial, and tribal jurisdictions must implement SORNA requirements by July 27, 2009 – 3 years after the date of SORNA’s enactment. The Department’s only mechanism for enforcing state and territorial compliance with SORNA requirements is to reduce the grant funding the Department provides by 10 percent. The sanction for a tribe is that the authority and responsibility for implementing SORNA are transferred from the tribe to the state in which the reservation is located.

At the federal level, the responsibility for implementing various elements of SORNA is assigned to several Department components. Two units within OJP, the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) and the Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking (SMART Office), are responsible for implementing the required changes to the NSOPR portal and assisting jurisdictions with required enhancements to their registries. The FBI is responsible for maintaining the National Sex Offender Registry. The U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) has been designated by the Department as the lead federal agency for investigating non-compliant and fugitive sex offenders and for assisting states in enforcing their registration requirements. U.S. Attorneys’ Offices can pursue charges against sex offenders who are not in compliance with registration requirements resulting from prior federal convictions. They can also pursue charges against sex offenders who are not in compliance with registration requirements resulting from state convictions if those offenders travel in interstate or foreign commerce. The Department’s Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section assists federal attorneys with prosecutions of fugitive sex offenders.

The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) conducted this review to assess the Department’s efforts to implement SORNA requirements and to assess whether those efforts have increased the number of fugitive sex offenders investigated, arrested, and prosecuted by the Department. In this review, we analyzed law enforcement and sex offender registration data from January through March 2008. We also examined trends in fugitive sex offender investigations, arrests, and prosecutions during fiscal year (FY) 2004 through FY 2007, and conducted interviews at the Department components involved with implementation of SORNA.

RESULTS IN BRIEF
Our report examines three aspects of the Department’s implementation of SORNA. First, although the Department did not issue guidance to the components on implementing specific SORNA requirements, we found that the components have begun to address each of the requirements but have yet to fully implement all of them. For example, the Department is still working to track sex offenders entering and leaving the country and to enhance the Department’s Project Safe Childhood initiative to combat the proliferation of crimes against children, including Internet-based crimes. Based on the progress to date, we believe the Department components are on track to complete the specific tasks they are assigned under SORNA by July 2009. But despite the Department’s assistance to state, territorial, and tribal jurisdictions in implementing SORNA, we believe the jurisdictions will not fulfill their SORNA requirements by July 2009.

Second, we found that information in the national sex offender registries is incomplete and inaccurate and therefore the registries are not reliable tools for law enforcement and the public. For example, we found that registries were missing records, did not always identify known fugitives, and did not always contain sufficient information to enable law enforcement and the public to accurately identify sex offenders.

Third, although implementation of SORNA is not yet complete, we found that the USMS has increased federal investigations and arrests of fugitive sex offenders and has increased assistance to state agencies with fugitive sex offender investigations and arrests.

The following sections of this Executive Digest describe our findings in the above three areas in more detail.

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