IL- Cops have tough time tracking homeless sex offenders

2-25-2009 Illinois:

MURPHYSBORO - Sex offenders in Illinois are supposed to register their whereabouts, but police have a hard time keeping track of the homeless ones.

Recently, one sex offender in Murphysboro had registered his address with the Jackson County Sheriff's Department as a bridge over Illinois 13.

The man was arrested after exposing himself to walkers on Lake Murphysboro Road. For now, he is residing in the Jackson County Jail in Murphysboro.

"We can't really keep good track of them," said Sgt. Dave Nichols with the sheriff's department. "This guy was under a bridge and then in a restroom at a park. We then had reports he was in the woods. If they are wandering around from place to place, we can't keep track of them very well."

Nichols said the reason for having sex offenders register their address is to keep closer tabs on their whereabouts for public safety purposes.

Having offenders living in public places, he noted, makes keeping the public safe and keeping offenders tracked all the more difficult.

In 1986, a law was passed that stated only a person who had been convicted more than once of a sex crime could be considered a sex offender. That law was amended in 1993 to include anyone convicted of a sexual crime.

Several other amendments were made to the law before 1997, when provisions were added to spell out the process for proper sex offender registration. Those procedures include the requirement for sex offenders to register their current address within 10 days of release from law enforcement custody.

In July 1999, the law was amended again to require offenders to continue registration of current addresses for the remainder of their lives.

Nichols said the problem comes with sex offenders who are required to register but no do have a permanent address or are homeless.

The law requires offenders who have no fixed address to register every 7 days for each location they have stayed. In many cases, police said these locations include public parks, wooded areas, and bridge underpasses.

Out of about fifteen Southern Illinois counties surveyed, only three showed sex offenders registered as homeless.

Six offenders in Jackson County are tagged as homeless, one in Saline County, and one in Jefferson County. Jefferson County Sheriff Roger Mulch said he hasn't experienced any problems with homeless offenders providing public locations as residency.

He sees a greater problem in dealing with transient offenders who don't re-register.

"We have issues with people who are transient and try and list this area as their home address and it is not," he said. "As a matter of fact, we've followed the sex offenders to Florida and Texas and put those authorities on alert and been successful in making arrests." ..News Source.. by Tara Fasol, The Southern