Is the sex offender registry providing incorrect info?

Given registries merely provide where registrants sleep for a few hours of the night is missing a few really a major problem that the media claims? Carefully think about what the registry provides the public, you may change your thinking of it!

10-28-2013 Maryland:

ABC2 INVESTIGATORS UNCOVER A FLAW IN HOW THE STATE'S SEX OFFENDER REGISTRY TRACKS INMATES IN CUSTODY. THE MISTAKES WE'VE UNCOVERED SHOW NOT ONLY IS THE STATE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR NOTIFYING WHEN OFFENDERS ARE RELEASED FROM LOCAL JAILS, BUT THAT THE FAILURES TO UPDATE THE REGISTRY PUT PEOPLE AT RISK.

In September people looking for convicted sex offender Jonathan Bower wouldn't think they’d have to look hard to find him. The Maryland Sex Offender Registry said he was in jail. But ABC2 Investigators discovered the registry you rely on was wrong .

Bower himself helped us confirm the registry was incorrect. During a visit to his house in Glen Burnie, Bower told us, “I’ve been home. I haven't been locked up."

Bower had been living at home since records show he was released from the Anne Arundel County Detention Center on May 21. But that jail is exactly where the Maryland Sex Offender Registry said he was still living three and a half months later.

Bower is one of many sex offenders found on the streets and undetected on the registry. The news was disappointing to Anne Arundel’s Pat Parrish. She says she checks the state registry twice a week, looking for potential offenders in her neighborhood.

"You've got to keep your eye on them, know where they're at," Parrish said.

The retiree is so familiar with the registry that over the summer she used it to identify and turn in a sex offender she saw taking a boy into the woods by her home. As Parrish scrolls through the pictures, she says she only takes comfort when she spots one word next to an offender: incarcerated.

"That person is in jail, so we don't have to worry about them," Parrish said.

But ABC2 Investigators found reason to worry, finding dozens of sex offenders whose registry pages were wrong about where they lived. Some of the offenders were listed as behind bars although they had actually been out of jail for weeks or months. ..Continue.. by Joce Sterman