UT- Walsh: Too many details, or too few?

12-16-2008 Utah:

OK. I admit it: I'm judgemental.

It's more than my job; it's a perspective on life. I'm working on it.

People like me are the reason the Utah Supreme Court chipped away at the State Sex Offender Registry last week.

In the case of convicted pedophile Stephen Briggs, the justices agreed with Briggs' legal defenders that Utah's registry went too far when it included "target information" with each offender's criminal history, tattoos and scars.

Listing "juvenile female," next to an offender's picture "is troubling in that it implies that the offender is presently focused on repeating past crimes with similar victims," the court ruled. "It intimates that the offenders will commit some kind of crime in the future."

And they're right. For worried mothers, the target information is the heart of the registry -- a hint at a perceived threat, a possible clue to an abuser's motivation. To fix it, lawmakers might simply list details about a victim, rather than a type.

I never looked at the registry until this year, when my son turned five and started kindergarten. His world and the people in it expanded exponentially. I started wondering about the people who might live in my Salt Lake City neighborhood. Seven registered sex offenders live within a 1-mile radius of my house, 12 within two. All men. And all preyed on girls or women.

I took some comfort in those details. They tamped down the rising hysteria, any lingering impulse to find a pitchfork or, more likely, race off to Kinko's with a flier to staple on all the telephone poles. But I e-mailed my sister-in-law, mother of a 5-year-old girl, who lived close to one of the men. Just in case.

I'm not proud of it. My baser, mama-bear instincts undermine my training and education -- reason even.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics tracked 9,700 male sex offenders released in 15 states in 1994. The study, published in 2003, found that sex predators were less likely to be reconvicted in the first three years out of prison than all other prisoners -- 24 percent compared to 47 percent. Just 3.5 percent were convicted of a sex crime in the follow-up period.

My brain knows this. I'm all for second chances and due process. There's a difference between a teenage boy sending nude pictures on a cell phone and a guy who trolls neighborhoods in a van when school lets out.

Lumping all sex offenders together is unfair and actually makes it harder for parents to sort out who could be dangerous and who is not, says Karen McCreary, director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah.

"We don't do this with any other criminals who are supposedly dangerous," she says.

I double-checked the registry Monday. By noon, the target information was gone. ..News Source.. by Rebecca Walsh,
The Salt Lake Tribune