National sex offender registration struggles to take hold

8-1-2010 National:

Earlier this month, the state of North Dakota received another extension from the federal government, putting off for another year compliance with a 2006 law setting national standards for sex offender registration.

Earlier this month, the state of North Dakota received another extension from the federal government, putting off for another year compliance with a 2006 law setting national standards for sex offender registration.

It’s the last extension allowed by the feds and, the thing is, the state may never comply with the law the way it’s written.

The law is better known around here for creating the Dru Sjodin national sex offender website, named after the UND student who was kidnapped and killed nearly seven years ago.

Unlike several of the states and American Indian nations that haven’t complied with the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, also known as the Adam Walsh act — only three states and two nations have — North Dakota doesn’t have funding problems. It has a difference of opinion.

“We’re in full compliance except for a couple of areas, and those areas are where I have policy disputes with the one-size-fits-all federal approach,” said North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem. The state, he said, is “99 percent” in compliance.

One of those areas of differences is how sex offenders are assessed for risk. The federal law says risk should be based on the statute the offender was convicted of. North Dakota has a committee that evaluates not just the crime, but factors that could increase the risk of reoffending.

Stenehjem’s not alone. Some law enforcement experts feel the same way and have told Congress so.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., who wrote the part of the law creating the Dru Sjodin website, said he understands many states feel they have a better way to deal with sex offenders, but that can be addressed after they’ve come into compliance.

“The reason the Adam Walsh act, and the Dru Sjodin part of it, exists is because hasn’t been anything on the national level that works,” he said. If 47 states won’t comply, he said, there still won’t be national system that works.

At some point folks will realize just what a disaster the Adam Walsh Act is, as it permits Federal Administrative employees (SMART Office) to OVERRIDE state judges, state legislatures and constitutional rights of citizens of the states. One day they will wake up, North Dakota is blinking its eye already!

Deadline 2011

SORNA, as the law is called in the federal jargon, consolidated a patchwork of national standards for registering sex offenders and extended them to American Indian reservations.

The law memorializes two well-known victims, UND student Dru Sjodin and Adam Walsh, the son of John Walsh, host of “America’s Most Wanted.” The son’s 1981 murder inspired the father to become an anti-crime activist, eventually landing on TV.

Starting July 27, 2006, states, U.S. territories and reservations around the nation had three years to comply, and may seek two, one-year extensions, meaning the drop-dead deadline for compliance is July 27, 2011. Reservations may choose to have the states they’re in take the lead.Jurisdictions that that don’t comply risk losing 10 percent of their annual allotment of the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant, a major source of federal grants to state and local law enforcement agencies.

For some states, such as California, the cost of compliance far outweighs the loss of funding. The state’s Sex Offender Management Board said in early 2009 that compliance would cost $31.3 million a year, not including $6.8 million in one-time costs. Noncompliance, on the other hand, would risk just $2.1 million a year.

For North Dakota, which is already mostly compliant, the loss of funding would amount to $78,000 in fiscal year 2010. Stenehjem said it’s just not worth it to make the state, in his opinion, less safe.

Approaches to risk

What SORNA does is expand the kinds of offenses that require registration — for example, some juveniles who aren’t tried as adults must still register — and it requires offenders to provide more information about themselves and update that information, including their whereabouts, more frequently.

By and large, Stenehjem said he considers SORNA a good law. Sex offenders aren’t required to stay in one place and a national law will do a better job tracking them, he said.

Even within North Dakota, he said, it’ll help the state work better with tribal governments. Reservations don’t have the same kind of registration and tracking requirements as the rest of the state and, sometimes, sex offenders will head for reservations and disappear from the radar, he said.

But Stenehjem has a real problem with SORNA when it requires the state to base the risk level of sex offenders on the offenses they’re convicted of. This is the so-called “offense-based” approach, which contrasts with the “actuarial” approach of some 20 states, North Dakota among them.

The actuarial approach bases the risk level not only on offenses committed, but also factors such as the person going through sex offender treatment and holding steady jobs. States argue that this is a more accurate method of assessing risk, allowing authorities to focus finite police resources only on the sex offenders that are truly likely to reoffend.

In North Dakota, Stenehjem said, the state’s Sex Offender Risk Assessment Committee is made up of psychologists, law enforcement officials and victims’ advocates who go through every sex offender’s case to determine the risk level.

He faulted the offense-based approach because a conviction alone can give a false impression of a sex offender. For example, if the sex offender managed, through plea bargaining, to attain a conviction on a lesser charge, his risk level drops simply because it was negotiated that way between prosecutors and the defending attorney.

Plea bargaining is extremely common in the U.S. justice system with most cases never going to court.

The state committee considers the circumstances of the offense, Stenehjem and Assistant Attorney General Jon Byers said, for example, the age of the victim, the offender’s criminal history, what police said happened along with the evidence gathered compared with what the victim and the offender said. The committee also looks at other factors that raises or lowers risks, they said, for example, going through sex offender treatment or drug abuse treatment lowers the risk, as is having a steady job and a consistent place to live.

Crude instrument

There is disagreement among law enforcement experts about which approach is appropriate at the national level. In early 2009, that disagreement came before Congress again when the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security held a hearing to find out why so few states had complied with SORNA.

On one side are those that, like Stenehjem, think offense-based risk assessment is too crude an instrument to be effective.

“One of the fundamental problems in our field is that we tend to paint all sex offenders with the same brush,” Madeline M. Carter, director of the Center for Sex Offender Management in Silver Spring, Md., told the subcommittee. “Professionals have long recognized key differences among them. These differences relate to the types of crimes they commit, to the victims they target, to their risk for re-offense, and to the types of interventions that will most likely reduce their risk.”

SORNA may even impede states from effective management of their sex offender populations.

In Washington state, authorities may raise the risk-level of a sex offender if there were indications that he was engaging in risky behavior, said Bob Shilling, a detective in the Seattle Police Department. “This helps put precious public safety resources where they are needed the most, monitoring the highest-risk offenders.”

SORNA, he said, would not allow this.

National approach

On the other side are those that think the actuarial approach is too subjective and varies too much from state to state to work at the national level. How could there be a national system if a sex offender might be a moderate risk in one state and a high risk in another?

“Individuals who do not have a national perspective do not understand the significance of the jurisdiction-specific modifications they seek,” Laura L. Rogers, the former director of the Justice Department office charged with implementing SORNA, told the House subcommittee in a statement. The law already has flexibility for different jurisdictions, she said, and changes to make it more so would only create problems.

“There is little consistency to these various programs,” complained Rep. Louis B. Gohmert Jr., R-Texas, the subcommittee’s ranking member and a former judge. “They are not uniform in the criteria they apply or in who performs the assessments. This creates discrepancies over which sex offenders should be tracked nationwide.”

Nevertheless, states do want SORNA modified and North Dakota is among them.

Stenehjem said he’s contacted the Justice Department, which says its hands are tied by the language of the law, and congressional leaders who “listened politely” but have yet to take action.

Dorgan’s office said the only correspondence with the attorney general is a copy of a letter requesting this year’s extension.

The senator said he’s sympathetic. If states think they have a better approach, he said, Congress may address that, but the first priority is to establish a consistent national system. ..Source.. by Tu-Uyen Tran, Grand Forks Herald