Committee advances sex offender bill

A prime example of the short-sighted thinking of lawmakers. If registrants must go in to perform whatever, that means they cannot be working and may even lose a job. Now, if a registrant is paid less, due to time off, that means s/he will ultimately pay less in taxes at year end. Even if that only amount to -I don't know exactly- whatever, that amount multiplied by the number of registrants will far exceed the claimed cost of $70,000 dollars to taxpayers. Short-sighted thinking, every thought has consequences, lawmakers ignore consequences of their acts!

1-21-2011 Arkansas:

LITTLE ROCK — The House Judiciary Committee endorsed a bill today that would require sex offenders to verify their registration in person at local law enforcement agencies.

Currently, sex offenders are required to register with local law enforcement by mail every six months.

The sponsor of House Bill 1007, Rep. Justin Harris, R-West Fork, said the measure would save taxpayers at least $70,000 a year in postage because sex offenders are currently notified by mail when it is time for them to renew their registration.

The bill goes to the House.

The committee spent time debating HB 1015 by Rep. Jon Woods, R-Springdale, which would require a judge to impose a $250 fine on anyone the judge orders to register as a sex offender.

Under current law, a judge can opt not to impose the fine if “undue hardship would result,” but HB 1015 would eliminate that option.

Some committee members asked for a written statement of the bill’s financial impact on state prisons, which would have to house sex offenders who did not pay the fine. Woods agreed to pull down the bill and obtain the information.

The Judiciary Committee voted to stream its meetings live on the House website. No “no” votes were heard.

In the House Revenue and Taxation Committee today, Rep. Andrea Lea, R-Russellville, presented HB 1134, which would create a sales tax holiday for disaster-preparedness supplies from Sept. 10-23 every year.

Lea did not have a statement from the Department of Finance and Administration on the financial impact of her bill. She voluntarily pulled the bill down and said she would bring it back with a statement.

“One of the reasons I presented this today without the DF&A (statement) and everything is just to put it in your hopper to be thinking about,” Lea said. ..Source.. by John Lyon, Arkansas News Bureau

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HPD, sheriff's office to share sex offender database

OK, there is a problem here, and it is, that in Texas there -HAVE BEEN- two registries, maybe only in major cities. So, up to this point two jurisdictions were doing the same work, and each getting funding for doing the same job? What a waste of taxpayer money especially in these hard times. And, not to mention the problems such may have had with registrants. Talk about mass confusion. And this is Bush country.

8-10-2010 Texas:

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- The City of Houston and Harris County are combining forces to keep you safe from sex offenders.

On Monday, the police department and sheriff's office announced they were merging their sex offender registration units. Both departments will now use a single database so offenders can register with either office.

Authorities say the previous rules were confusing and allowed offenders to fall through the cracks when they changed addresses.

"We're going to bring in all the other agencies and gradually expand it to the entire region," said Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos. "This increases public safety. This is effectiveness. This is efficiency. This is what government is all about and that's protecting our people."

The merger was made possible by the Texas legislature approving a bill to allow cities and counties to share resources. ..Source.. KTRK-TV/DT

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Tougher Sex-Offender Bills Die in Committee

2-19-2010 Virginia:

Four bills that would have brought tighter restrictions on registered sex offenders died in a House committee this week.

The bills would have prohibited registered sex offenders from living within 500 feet of a child daycare center or school, from entering onto the property of a daycare center at any time and from being within 100 feet of a children’s museum. A fourth bill would have retroactively included offenders convicted before July 1, 2000, in legislation that bans loitering near schools.

Local legislators said that the bills failed because they would have had fiscal impact in a year that allows no room for extra spending.

Del. Chris Peace, R-Mechanicsville, is a member of the Courts of Justice committee, which considered the sex-offender legislation.

“Many of these bills that create new penalties were left in committee this year because of their financial impact,” Peace said. “Simply because of budget reasons we can’t afford to do these things.”

Del. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond, said the chairman of the Courts of Justice committee announced on the first day of session that any bill having fiscal impact would not be heard.

“Unless you could get rid of their fiscal impact, they were dead,” McClellan said.

In the past, the General Assembly has supported tough legislation in dealing with sex offenders. In 2006, former Gov. Timothy M. Kaine signed a bundle of bills that increased punishment and monitoring for convicted sex offenders.

Peace said that keeping the children of Virginia safe was a high priority.

“The prevailing wisdom of this legislature has been one to crack down on sexually violent predators and to make sure that they are not repeat offenders,” Peace said. “I think I would say that generally speaking, these bills have been seen in a favorable light if they lead to keeping our community safer.”

But some convicted sex offenders may not be dangerous predators.

"The truth is, there are sex offenders living in communities all across Virginia,” Peace said, “and they’re doing so peacefully and they’re abiding by the laws.”
Liane Rozzell, executive director of Families and Allies of Virginia’s Youth, said juvenile sex offenders differ from adult sex offenders.

“We have to remember that the definition of a sex offense is very broad,” she said.

Rozzell said research shows that juvenile sex offenders are very unlikely to commit a second sex crime. To Rozzell, registering nonviolent youths as sex offenders could severely impair their futures.

“There are quite a few horror stories that we've heard where an act that somebody commits as a young person ends up causing them to have to be on the registry for the rest of their life.” Rozzell said. “It hinders their ability to get employment, hinders where they can live, hinders their access to adult additional schooling and so forth.

Juveniles should be treated in a way that enables them to reintegrate into society and to have the best opportunity possible to go on and be productive citizens.”

Del. Rob Bell, R-Charlottesville, the patron of the bill that would have banned registered sex offenders from being near a children’s museum, said it was only the budget that killed the bills and that he would propose his again next year.

“I'm hopeful that when the budget situation improves, we can look at them again,” Bell said. ..Source.. Ali Eaves and Julia Pepe, Capital News Service

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San Bernardino sheriff's unit tracks registered sex offenders

I find it amazing that because of the Garrido case (who was properly registered while committing crimes, and monitored by many agents from different jurisdictions) that law enforcement still wants folks to believe that, knowing where registrants sleep -a few hours of the day- is MOST IMPORTANT to preventing new sex crimes.

The amount of time, money and resources that go into keeping a list of places where former offenders sleep -a few hours of the day- and ZIP into REAL PREVENTION proves this efforts real purpose is JOB SECURITY and nothing more; a stimulus program for employment of law enforcement officers.

All the justifications mentioned are nothing more than -sounds good pretexts- and will not prevent new sex offenses. In fact, non sex offenders released from prison commit 6 new sex crimes to every one committed by a previously convicted sex offender in the same time period following release. Non sex offenders released from prison are NOT MONITORED by law enforcement like sex offenders are. Source: Department of Justice. Lawmakers IGNORE this truth which proves PREVENTION is not their goal!

11-28-2009 California:

Not long ago, more than a quarter of San Bernardino County's sex offenders weren't meeting the terms of their registration.

Whether an offender's listed address was simply out of date, or he had gone completely underground, officials often lacked the time or resources to keep up.

Then came Jim Black.

Almost two years ago, the Sheriff's Department created a position for the retired San Bernardino police officer that focuses only on ensuring the area's offenders are in full compliance with their registration.

Since then, the county has trimmed its out-of-compliance registrants -- those off authorities' radar -- to well under 10 percent. That beats the state average and equals the success of Riverside County, which has an entire task force devoted to the issue.

"It's a never-ending battle," Black said. "It can be difficult to find these guys."

An up-to-date registry is important because law enforcement often makes the list one of its first stops when investigating child abductions and sexual assaults.

Working with deputies in the sheriff's Crimes Against Children detail, Black searches state and federal databases daily and coordinates collaborative sweeps and random home visits to stay ahead of a historically transient population.

The roughly 6 percent rate of sex offenders now out of compliance at any given time in either Inland county is less than half of the state average and a small fraction of those who have eluded officials in Los Angeles and Orange counties.

"They know they cannot rest on their haunches," said Ron Garcia, director of Riverside County's multi-agency Sexual Assault Felony Enforcement team. "We will show up at their houses to make sure they're residing where they're supposed to."

Creative adaptations

While Riverside County's team continues to be aggressive in its compliance efforts, Black and San Bernardino County's staff have adopted creative ways to bolster their effectiveness.

On days when state courts are closed because of furloughs, bailiffs have been asked to conduct sex offender checks. Black has posted fliers of the most wanted out-of-compliance sex offenders on the sheriff's Web site.

And next month, the department is expected to unveil a more detailed database for tracking the population.

Soon, Black hopes to be able to coordinate multi-agency operations that can identify sex offenders who slip through the cracks in smaller jurisdictions, such as Redlands, where detectives responsible for monitoring have many other duties.

"That way, we can make 100 or more checks at once and not have a Jaycee Dugard living in someone's backyard," Black said.

The case of Dugard, kidnapped when she was 11 and forced to live in captivity with a convicted rapist for almost 20 years, has heightened attention on the ways registered sex offenders are tracked once they are released from prison.

California's version of Jessica's Law, passed in 2006, allows local jurisdictions to enact ordinances greatly limiting where a sex offender can reside, restricting areas near parks, schools, day-care centers and bus stops.

Long-Term EFFECT

Last week, Black went over the issue with a class of deputies and officers from other departments, noting the many ways that offenders can violate their registration terms.

They include not listing every address where property is owned or not checking in every 30 days if an offender's address is listed as "transient."

The state-appointed Sex Offender Management Board issued a report last year stating the number of registrants listed as transients increased 60 percent from June 2007 to August 2008.

Jay Adams, a psychotherapist and advocate for more mental health treatment for sex offenders, said that the increased residency restrictions can result in more homelessness among offenders, and feared it would lead to increased recidivism.

"If you destroy all their contact with the community, their family relationships and their ability to get work, you're actually making them more dangerous," said Adams, a former Patton State Hospital therapist and contributor to the California Coalition on Sexual Offending.

Black, however, said that his unit has not seen any negative effects in the communities that have passed ordinances based on Jessica's Law.

"They still find places to live," he said. "I haven't seen a drastic increase in transient registrations in our county."

No Harassment

Black said that when he teaches deputies how to conduct compliance checks, and counsels citizens on how to deal with the public information available about sex offenders, he stresses that harassment is not part of the equation.

"If a sex offender gets harassed, threatened or terrorized, they're going to go underground and we're not going to know where they're at," he said. "And knowing where they're at is paramount."

Most San Bernardino County sex offenders found to be out of compliance have simply moved out of the area without notifying authorities, although some are found to have recently died.

Only a small fraction of the less than 10 percent not accounted for have disappeared.

When that occurs, prosecutors will issue felony arrest warrants that typically lead to more prison time. Black said he doesn't understand why anyone would take the risk.

"It's filling out a piece of paper, and it's a crime not to do so," he said. "It doesn't make sense to me." ..Source.. PAUL LAROCCO, The Press-Enterprise

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ND- N.D. nets federal funds to deal with sex offenders

Fact: Parents for Megans Law reports that ND has 1,277 registrants in 2008. Therefore, this grant awards ND some 414.00 per registrant to track them. Within the grant is ZERO dollars allocated in PREVENTION money. Accordingly, are they all about PREVENTING crimes, OR, FOLLOWING registrants after they commit crimes?

9-12-2009 North Dakota:

Almost $500,000 in federal money has been set aside to help North Dakota track sex offenders and alert the public to changes in their addresses, the state’s congressional delegation announced Thursday.

Almost $500,000 in federal money has been set aside to help North Dakota track sex offenders and alert the public to changes in their addresses, the state’s congressional delegation announced Thursday.

The North Dakota attorney general’s office will get $300,000 to plan and design electronic sex-offender registration and notification programs. The Spirit Lake Tribe will receive $196,677 to establish a registration and notification program.

The U.S. Department of Justice is distributing the funds that were allocated by Congress. ..Source.. by Archie Ingersoll, Grand Forks Herald

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OH- Sex Offender Tracking Consumes Time, Money, Authorities Say

7-18-2009 Ohio:

LANCASTER, Ohio — A law designed to help law enforcement track convicted sex offenders was passed last year, but some authorities said Friday that the law is taking up more time and costing more money.

Fairfield County Sheriff's Deputy John Baumgardt said keeping the paper trail on the county's sex offenders has been a full-time job since Senate Bill 10 went into effect.

"I've had as many as nine, I think, in one day," he said.

The law reclassified tens of thousands of sex offenders, and required many to register more often and for longer periods of time, 10TV's Andy Hirsch reported.

Fairfield County Sheriff Dave Phalen said the changes have increased his office's workload, among other things.

"They want to know where these offenders live, and it's a good tool," Phalen said. "But, like everything else, it is labor intensive and it costs money."

Since passage of the law, the number of times sex offenders walk into the Fairfield County Sheriff's Office for registration purposes have more than doubled, Hirsch reported.

The bill has been the subject of legal disputes throughout the state. Critics claim the law's registration requirements are retroactive punishment on thousands of offenders, Hirsch reported.

The Attorney General's Office has disagreed, saying the law provides a way to keep the public informed.

The Ohio Supreme Court is set to hear the dispute later this year. ..Source.. by WBNS 10TV.com

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The Fleecing of America: Are States Using Sex Offender Registries for Profiteering?

This is a post of one of my commentary from 2005 in my old system.

11-27-2005 National:

"Ghosts in the Machine" by James Carlson is an absolutely wonderful article of how the State of Florida is misleading the public about their "Sex Offender Registry" by including in their totals many groups of former offenders who should not be included. Mr. Carlson is to be commended for his article.

Today we are going to add value to that article by expanding on a few points which escaped Mr. Carlson which is why we have titled our commentary "The Fleecing of America: Using Sex Offender Registries for Profiteering?" Yes, it gets better because it goes way beyond Florida and it appears most all states are following the same tactics.

Referring to our chart below, whether or not these 16,781 "Ghost Offenders" are shown on the "Public Registry" or not, is not important, important is they are included in the totals which Florida reports to the Federal Government and which Florida receives federal funding for.

Each year Florida reports their numbers and gets their funding. Why the double, triple accounting? Notice the number who have "moved out of state," well they are also being reported by the state they moved to, and that state is also receiving funding for them.

Florida claims that they remove "dead offenders" only when they "receive a death certificate," (Clovis Claxton committed suicide and is still listed). It appears Florida says one thing and does another. Why is it that Florida, fully aware of the problem, cannot enact legislation that, when a death certificate is issued for a registered offender (or the state registry should be checked when any death certificate is issued) that a copy is sent to the appropriate agency to correct the registry records?

Could income be a possible reason? Florida, like most states, charges registered offenders a fee to maintain the registry or for making changes. Florida also requires registered offenders to renew their driver's license annually (with associated costs) when other residents do so once every five years. A "Windfall," albeit illegal but who will be the Whistelblower?

As to the 8,260 in jail or prison (a much higher number in other states) why bother putting them into the registry while they are incarcerated? When they are released from jail or prison, part of the release process, could be to register them. Could income be a possible reason, and income every year of incarceration until release?

Recently, in Michigan, the state police ran "Operation Verify" to see that RSOs lived where they were registered. A few Michigan police agencies reported: "Many times, offenders who haven’t updated are in prison or in the hospital." "12 had moved out of Michigan without notifying state police but were in compliance with their new state's laws and seven were in a county jail. [snip] ... one was located in prison and one was deceased." Even more amazing is, the Michigan State Police always blame the offenders for registry errors even when the state auditor blames police!

What is most interesting about what local police found is, the lists they were given included offenders who were dead, moved out of state, and in jails and prisons. So what we have is local police agencies are wasting their time trying to verify people who should not be in the registry in the first place. Additional wasted funds, but at the local level. True there was no mention of "deported offenders," but we know they exist.

See:"85% of Child Predators Captured Are Criminal Immigrants" by Jim Kouri (25 October 2005) "Top officials at the Department of Homeland Security recently revealed that arrests for child sex crimes during the first two years of Operation Predator have exceeded 6,000 and 85 percent of them are criminal immigrants. [snip] Since Operation Predator began on July 9, 2003, the initiative has resulted in 6,085 child predator arrests throughout the country -- an average of roughly 250 arrests per month and eight arrests per day. While arrests have been made in every state, the most have occurred in these states: Arizona (207), California (1,578), Florida (255), Illinois (282), Michigan (153), Minnesota (190), New Jersey (423), New York (367), Oregon (148) and Texas (545)."

When offenders move out of state, is it possible they may move from state to state, causing them to be included in several state registry numbers? Certainly, and then a few states are deriving income from that offender. Maybe all offenders should move from state to state to state to state to state, at what point will it break the bank?

In April of 2005 Parents for Megan's Law surveyed all states and found out how many offenders are included in each state registry. Reportedly there are 551,987 offenders nationwide. PML web site further states "Our results indicate that approximately 24% of the nation's sex offenders are failing to comply with state registration requirements." Their number for Florida shows 33,990 (4-2005) and they rate it A+. It appears that the number given to PML by Florida officials includes dead, deported, moved out of state and those still in jails and prisons, or are those "Ghost Numbers" considered missing by PML?

In closing, it appears Florida is getting federal funding far in excess of what it should be getting. Is this profiteering? What about the other states?


..Source.. by eAdvocate (Copyright 2005 - All Rights Reserved)

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FL- GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE: Are dead sex offenders really dangerous?

Recovered, because original is no longer on Internet.

11-27-2005 Florida:

According to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Curtis Talley, 83, is a sex offender living in Seminole county. If you go to the FDLE’s sex-offender registry and type in Talley’s name, you’ll find his listing and photo. You’ll see that he committed sexual battery. You’ll see that his crime was against a minor. You could study his yellowed eyes and note that his last known address is in Altamonte Springs. You might wonder why men like Talley are out on the streets, but if you live in Altamonte Springs you’ll likely be thankful that the FDLE has alerted you to this menace. Now you can be vigilant, right?

No need. Talley won’t be bothering you. He’s been dead for three years. He’s one of hundreds of “ghosts” on the FDLE’s website who, for one reason or another, are never taken off, even though they’ve shuffled off this mortal coil. The only thing Talley’s record – and the hundreds like it – does these days is inflate the number of sex offenders users of FDLE’s website believe are loose on the streets of Florida.

And there are a lot of living people on the FDLE site who are no threat to you either. Offenders who live outside Florida, are in prison or who have been deported are all listed among the 36,037 sex criminals registered with the FDLE. All told, nearly half of that number are not here, in one way or another. Which means two things: The FDLE’s website is exaggerating the threat posed by sex offenders, and you aren’t getting a clear picture of who is and isn’t in your neighborhood.


DAWN OF THE DEAD

As of Nov. 16, there were 541 dead or reported dead on the state rolls. It’s FDLE’s policy that offenders’ names will remain on the rolls for one year after their death.

“If the public is checking regularly, they can be informed that an offender living nearby is no longer alive,” says FDLE spokeswoman Kristen Perezluha.

That’s a ridiculous policy in and of itself, says Jim Freeman. “What possible threat can a dead person pose to the public?”

Freeman is co-founder and legal affairs director for Sohopeful International, a group whose mission is to challenge overzealous and ineffective sex-offender laws. He thinks the policy of not immediately removing the dead from the rolls only contributes to an atmosphere of fear and hysteria. It’s an arguable point. But often enough the FDLE isn’t even following its own rules. Orlando Weekly found that of Central Florida’s 57 dead or reported dead offenders, at least 23 died more than a year ago. (Most deaths were confirmed by counties, but nine were confirmed by www.rootsweb.com, a site recommended by an employee in vital statistics.)

Preston Lane Huff is registered as a sex offender in Volusia County, but he’s been dead since 2001. Ernest G. Martinez is still listed even though he’s been dead since 2000. And Allen P. Hubbard, who is registered in Seminole County, has been dead since August 1997, more than eight years ago. Hubbard, according to the FDLE’s site, is “reported deceased.” His last known address, a post office box, was posted on the FDLE site in 2001, four years after his death.

The FDLE says the reason for dead offenders populating the rolls is that it hasn’t received confirmation of death. The responsibility of maintaining the website doesn’t fall on any one person at FDLE. Instead, many state agencies, such as the Department of Highway Safety and the Department of Corrections, that might receive new information on an offender have the ability to update the FDLE’s registry.

Perezluha says there are FDLE analysts who remove dead offenders from the site, but the system for reporting dead offenders is virtually nonexistent. There’s no agreement between counties and the state to send death certificates to the FDLE. If the FDLE hears from law enforcement that one of its offenders might be dead, it’s the department’s responsibility to get verification, which often doesn’t happen for more than a year, if at all.

This haphazard approach to updating the website is why dead people like Hubbard and Talley live on in virtual reality.

Besides the dead, there are thousands of other offenders still on the site who pose little or no threat to the public. For instance, 807 offenders have been deported, and 7,173 have moved out of state. (The high number of out-of-state offenders is likely due to Florida’s requirement that sex offenders must register within 48 hours of entering the state, meaning many on the list might just be passing through.)

But the largest chunk of listed offenders who don’t currently pose a threat is the incarcerated; 8,260 on Florida’s rolls are in custody at the local, state or national level.

Why list people behind bars? As a precautionary measure for when they’re released, says the FDLE. “A lot of offenders will stay in Florida once they get out,” Perezluha says. “We’re just making sure the public is informed.”

If you’re going to track people in prison, you’d better be diligent about it; many aren’t getting out for years, and some, like Calvin J. Austin, 29, a sex offender registered in Volusia County, are in for life.

“I ask again, what purpose does it serve to list people who are in jail or aren’t even in this state?” says Freeman. “They can’t harm anyone while they’re in custody.”

FEAR AND HYSTERIA

When Megan’s Law passed in 1996, it was intended to “require the release of relevant information to protect the public from sexually violent offenders.” The FDLE’s website is the highest-profile means of releasing that information. It’s where people go when they want to know if they need to be a little extra cautious around the neighbors. According to a 2001 Department of Justice summary of sex offender registries, the FDLE’s website draws about five million hits per month.

The default search settings on the site do filter out the deceased, the deported, the out-of-state and the incarcerated (except for offenders locked up in county jails).

But when you ask the state of Florida how many sex offenders it has, all of the above are included in the figure.

Besides portraying Florida as crawling with offenders, the overall figure can help determine how much money Florida gets to comply with registry laws. Under the Jacob Wetterling Act, one of the first sex-offender registry laws, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Sex Offender Management Assistance Program offers grants to states to aid in compliance with registry requirements. The law states, “In allocating funds under this subsection, the director may consider the annual number of sex offenders registered in each eligible state’s monitoring and notification programs.”

More sex offenders equals more money. And Florida will need it, if a bill introduced by Sen. Bill Nelson makes it into law. Nelson has proposed the Sexual Predator Effective Monitoring Act of 2005, which would require tracking ankle bracelets for offenders. In the first year, the law would disperse $10 million to the states to help implement the tracking program. The proposed law states that a “share of the funding under this Act [will be] based on the total number of eligible states and the population of sex offenders to be monitored with global positioning systems in those states.” Dan McLaughlin, a spokesman for Nelson, says the initial $10 million will go to the states that request and show a need for the money. If all of the states’ requests add up to more than $10 million, then the allocations would be based on the number of offenders in each state. Florida, with its reported 36,037 offenders, is near the top of the list nationally.

Nelson’s bill to crack down on sex offenders is one of at least five introduced at the federal level this year. To illustrate the need, Nelson remarked to his fellow senators, “In our state alone, we have over 30,000 registered sex offenders.” Soon that number had shown up on CBS news and in the Christian Science Monitor, and in the months following it would be repeated on CNN and other broadcast news outlets. Two months after Nelson introduced his bill, Florida Rep. Alcee Hastings introduced the House version and again threw out the 30,000-plus figure to prove the need for the legislation.

It’s a big, scary number, to be sure. If all the state’s sex offenders, as reported by the FDLE, were grouped together, they’d fill the TD Waterhouse Centre to capacity. Twice. Unfortunately, the number has no relation to the reality of the problem.

Freeman, of Sohopeful, thinks the bloated figure is a danger in and of itself, as it makes it hard for people to separate the truly dangerous from the rest of the pack. “All this adds up to is fear and hysteria,” he says. “That doesn’t help keep people safe. But it can help politicians pass laws. It can help make them look better.”

..News Source.. by James Carlson

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VT- Sex law changes to be revealed today

11-12-2008 Vermont:

BENNINGTON — Vermont state senators will reveal recommended changes to the state's sex offender laws today, but five issues discussed over the months-long process will not be included in a 34-point plan, according to the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, announced several weeks ago that the committee would seek a new charge — aggravated sexual assault on a child under 16 — that would allow prosecutors to seek a mandatory 25-year minimum sentence at their discretion.

34 recommendations

The new law, and 33 other recommendations, are included in a 34-page document the Judiciary Committee will hand over to Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin, D-Windham, in Montpelier today. The document also contains a scathing account of Michael Jacques' 23-year criminal history in Vermont.

Jacques, 42, is charged in the June rape and killing of 12-year-old Brooke Bennett. Police say the young girl from Braintree was sexually assaulted and killed by Jacques, her uncle. He has been indicted by a federal grand jury and could face the death penalty.

Many Vermonters, including Gov. James Douglas and Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie, clamored for the Legislature to pass additional measures to protect children from sexual predators following Bennett's death.

The subsequent calls for stronger laws triggered Shumlin to task the Senate Judiciary Committee with reviewing existing laws and offering possible revisions. Lawmakers resisted calls from Douglas to meet immediately in a special legislative session to approve some measures.

In fact, Sears said from the outset that the committee would not spend time looking into two ideas backed by Douglas — civil confinement and the death penalty. Civil confinement would allow the state to hold certain sex offenders in prison beyond their sentences. Neither idea is included in the document.

Three other ideas have also been excluded from the Judiciary Committee's recommendations, including "judicial accountability," the federal Adam Walsh Act of 2005, and the idea of allowing a defendant's prior bad acts to be accessible to law enforcement and admissible in court, Sears said.

Not all members of the committee supported an enhanced judicial accountability measure that would allow the General Assembly to vote by roll call when voting to retain judges, Sears said. Retention votes are now done by secret ballot. Sears said he personally supports the idea, and will likely introduce the idea as separate legislation.

The Adam Walsh Act requires state sex offender registries to meet federal requirements. States not in compliance face losses in federal funding. But Sears said the cost of retooling the registry will cost about $1 million, while the loss in federal funding will amount to about $37,000. Sears said he supports the idea of the federal act, but the state will need to address the issue in separate legislation at another time.

-Note: Compare to the Justice Policy Institute estimates.

According to Sears, several states have tried to comply, only to have their revised registries rejected. He said Nevada's plan was thrown out by the state's Supreme Court as unconstitutional.

"The evidence is that, thus far, no state has been able to comply," Sears said.

Sears said he will ask the Douglas administration to allocate $30,000 to $50,000 in funding in the annual budget adjustment to begin upgrading the sex offender registry (Note: That is to upgrade registry, not maintain it).

Attorney General William Sorrell and most counties' state's attorneys across the state said they would like greater access for prosecutors and police to the records of prior convictions committed by people charged with sex crimes. However, the idea was not unanimously approved by the committee.

"The committee wasn't convinced that that was a good idea," Sears said.

The idea is also likely to be introduced as separate legislation, Sears said.

The Judiciary Committee is set to meet again on Dec. 18 to begin working on the final legislation. The package will be introduced during the first full week of the new legislative session in January, and will likely be the first bill taken up on the Senate floor, Sears said. ..News Source.. by NEAL P. GOSWAMI, Staff Writer

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Amazing Fact About Sex Offender Registries

Look at the cost to maintain the registry in this county in Georgia ($34,100.00). If we were to assume that the costs are reasonable then using that number calculate what is being spent "nationally" it comes to $107,108,100.00 per year. (Note: there are 3,141 counties in the US US Census Bureau) Its hard to believe that, for an address book which is all the registry is, that the public would spend that kind of money.

11-29-2008 Georgia:

Mandates cost A-C $1.8 million
Locals pay for state, federal government decisions

Athens-Clarke County will spend more than $1.8 million this year on programs the state and federal governments refuse to fund.

The expenses range from $500 to pay the state to certify police officers to use radar guns to $1.3 million for storm drainage infrastructure to comply with federal environmental law, according to a partial list of unfunded mandates prepared by Athens-Clarke officials.

And the list doesn't include $2 million in local tax revenue for libraries and public health, areas where state funding has been stagnant or declining in recent years, Athens-Clarke Mayor Heidi Davison said.

"A lot of the expenses we incur are a result of state and federal decisions that are pushed down to the local governments," Davison said.

State Rep. Bob Smith, R-Watkinsville, told county commissioners at a May meeting that he did not believe the state was forcing Athens-Clarke County to spend local taxes on state-mandated programs. To prove Smith wrong, Davison handed out the list to the county's five state lawmakers at a similar meeting earlier this month.

Smith took issue with some of the items on the list, including $31,200 to hire a clerk for a second Athens-Clarke State Court judge the legislature approved last year. The legislature passed a bill creating the judgeship exactly as Athens-Clarke officials wrote it.

Athens-Clarke officials also shouldn't complain about spending $5,200 to mail second notices to drivers caught by red-light cameras because the county raked in a net $569,000 from fines levied based on the cameras, he said.

As for federal unfunded mandates, like the stormwater infrastructure, locals should take it up with President-elect Barack Obama, Smith said.

"I'm sick and tired, like many voters in Georgia, of these onerous environmental regulations all over the place," he said.

The 17 unfunded mandates Athens-Clarke officials identified also include:

► $500,000 over three years to retrofit diesel engines in county vehicles to comply with the Clean Air Act.

► $500,000 over five years to replace 17,000 street signs to comply with new state standards.

► $34,100 annually to maintain a registry of sex offenders.

► $32,000 annually to respond to open-records requests.

State funding and local taxes have caused tension between legislators and local elected officials in recent years.

Last year, some House Republicans tried to outlaw the property taxes that fund local government services and schools and replace them with sales taxes collected and distributed by the state. Mayors and county commissioners across the state fought the proposal, and it went down in flames.

This year, state lawmakers will consider capping property assessments at 3 percent per year, a bill Smith said he supports.

"A message has got to be sent," he said. "People want government to be streamlined. You can't stop (governments) until you starve them."

Davison, though, contends that the state should help local governments keep taxes low by providing a larger share of the funding for essential services like public health and education, not by trying to control what local elected officials spend.

"They keep telling us we're wasting money, but they won't help us, and we're picking up the slack," she said. ..News Source.. by BLAKE AUED

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FL- FDLE May Have to Cut Sex Offender Registry

11-15-2008 Florida:

JACKSONVILLE, FL -- Deena Trent does everything she can to keep her four-year-old, Elizabeth, safe.

One thing Trent does that is with a regular check of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's sex offender registry.

"I check it at least two times a year. I'm a mother of five. So, I want to know who is around me and what they've done," says Trent.

That resource could be gone soon. It is on the potential budget cut chopping block for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

"We're to the point where we have to cut services," says Assistant Special Agent in Charge Steve Donaway.

$8 million were cut from FDLE's budget in 2007. In 2008, it was about $12 million.

Now, the state has alerted agencies 10% of their budgets may have to go in 2009. That means $18 million would have to be cut from FDLE.

Besides the sex offender registry, FDLE is also considering getting rid of the state's Amber Alert as another way to save some money.

"I think its ridiculous. I think that in these tough economic times, taking away things that are vital to our community is not a good thing," says Trent.

FDLE says it wants to keep the resources around, but three years of budget cuts means it's time something important will have to go. Donaway says 200 jobs could be gone.

"We've always ebb and flowed, but we've never laid anyone off."

Donaway says the layoffs are now a reality in the budget crunch.

Trent just hopes those they let go do not effect how she keeps her kids safe.

"These services are important and they should stay." ..News Source.. by Jackelyn Barnard

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ME- PRIVACY, SAFETY BALANCE AT ISSUE

10-5-2008 Maine:

As information on sex offenders becomes more public, state officials are seeking ways to find common ground


AUGUSTA -- Managing sex offenders in an age of ubiquitous Internet access and intense citizen scrutiny proves challenging for most states, but it's far from a new issue.

Maine officials sought guidance last week from experts across the United States on keeping society safe while protecting sex offenders' rights.

"Sex offenders have always lived in our community," said Detective Bob Shilling of the Seattle Police Department in Washington.

The difference today is that community notification and Internet posting of convicted sex offenders can increase worry among neighbors and make offenders targets of harassment.

Shilling, who works in the department's sexual assault and child abuse unit, came to Maine to share his expertise in managing sex offenders with a legislative committee working to improve Maine's system, which had 3,736 active registrants as of last month.

Maine policymakers brought in the Department of Justice's Center for Sex Offender Management for aid in dealing with snags with its own policies, partly because having sex offenders' information on the Internet-- including those convicted a decade before the registry began -- raises their profile and can bring more problems.

In an article in the Winter 2008 "Washburn Law Journal," Lara Geer Farley framed the challenge for lawmakers: "At a time when national polls indicate that Americans fear sex offenders more than terrorists, legislators will have to show they have the intelligence and courage to create a society that is safe yet still protects the human rights of everyone."

Shilling described what can go wrong.

When a 35-year-old convicted child rapist was scheduled to get out of prison in Washington state in 1993 and move to Lynnwood, a community north of Seattle, police, under the state's Community Protection Act of 1990, sent a bulletin alerting residents.

The notice said Joseph Gallardo had refused treatment, had "sadistic and deviant sexual tendencies" and was likely to reoffend.

It also provided the street address of his intended residence.

Neighbors held an impromptu meeting and on the morning Gallardo was to be released, the home burned to the ground.

Television clips from the incident show women rejoicing, claiming the vigilante arson would keep the neighborhood safe.

Authorities in Washington state learned from the Gallardo incident, Shilling said, and responded by saying they will not tolerate harassment or intimidation of sex offenders.

"You can't do community notification without doing community education," Shilling said. "To do so is like smoking a cigarette while standing in a pool of gasoline."

He noted a tragic parallel between the two states on opposite sides of the country: Washington state, like Maine, has seen two sex offenders shot and killed by men who learned their whereabouts through information posted by authorities on a sex offender Web site.

-This article fails to mention over 100 other persons (RSOs and Persons Accused of Sex Offenses that have been murdered).

Over the years, the Washington state notification system has been refined so a committee does a risk assessment of each inmate before release, and the exact address is provided only to police who verify it in person.

Maine state Sen. William Diamond, D-Windham, chairman of the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee, described a delicate balance between community safety and sex offender rights.

"We need to distinguish the high risk from the low risk within our sex offender registry for the public's interest in particular," he said. "Our immediate task is to make a recommendation to the next Legislature on how a tier system can be implemented which includes developing a system for assigning risk levels to each (person) on the sex offender registry."

"I am convinced we need to have an end-of-sentence review board," said Rep. Gary Plummer, R-Windham, another committee member.

Shilling said community-based education offers citizens the whole picture, educates them about all sex offenders and "helps them understand their vested interest in offender success."

Maine State Sen. Earle L. McCormick, R-West Gardiner, a committee member, asked Shilling about sex offenders registered in Washington who become victims of harassment at home and at work.

Shilling said police investigate to determine if there's a crime, but that community education has helped there as well.

"There not been a single act of vigilantism in Seattle since 1993," Shilling said.

-Vigilantism is very subtle very hard to find if you don't look for it or believe it is not happening: Here are cases in the state of Washington and here are hundreds of others nationwide:

McCormick said he sees problems arising from Internet posting of sex offense convictions from as far back as 26 years ago, even though the person has lived a law-abiding life since the conviction.

"We hear some horror stories," he said. "They have established their lives and they're really traumatized. They haven't reoffended."

He said he had been contacted by a man who moved to Gardiner recently and received a letter saying he was required to register as a sex offender because of a conviction some 20 years ago.

"What recourse does he have?" McCormick asked.

More than two dozen men in Maine have filed lawsuits challenging the backdating provision of the state registry.

"We are expecting the Maine Supreme Court to rule on one of those cases early next year, which may tell us that our sex offender registry is at least partially unconstitutional," Diamond said after the conference. "We learned that some other states avoided this problem by not requiring registration during the times before they had a registry."

Walter McKee, a past president of the Maine Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said he would like to see a repeal of the provision that back-dates registerable offenses to include convictions between 1982 and 1992.

"They're the least fair of all," he said. "I think that repealing the retroactivity would be appropriate and fair."

Going forward, McKee said he wants to trim the list of registerable offenses.

"Take off some of the lower-end offenses that do not have any higher degree of recidivism than any other crime," he said. "I think everyone agrees that there are a number of sex offenses that we don't need people to register for."

Court challenges to the retroactive provisions of Maine's Sex Offender Registration & Notification Act have counterparts in other states as well.

Ohio officials decided to conform early to the federal Adam Walsh Act and passed enabling legislation that carries retroactive registration requirements.

So far, the Ohio Attorney General's Office has received more than 4,000 challenges to the state statute, said Erin Rosen, general counsel of the Ohio Law Enforcement Gateway, in the Attorney General's Office.

Rulings in some of those cases favor the challengers: One found sex-offender residency restrictions punitive and said they violate constitutional protections. The Supreme Court of Ohio has said it will decide the issue.

McKee also objects to Maine complying with the Adam Walsh Act. He said the penalty for noncompliance is an estimated $40,000 loss in federal grant money while the compliance cost is estimated to exceed $1.5 million.

..News Source.. by Betty Adams -- 621-5631 badams@centralmaine.com

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ME- STATEHOUSE Testimony targets sex offenders

9-30-2008 Maine:

AUGUSTA -- Victims of sex crimes and the offenders often live in the same home, where the crimes also occur.
That was part of the message brought by Kurt Bumby, senior manager of the Center for Sex Offender Management, to a committee of legislators wrestling with the problem of how to manage sex offenders and increase public safety.

"Being grabbed in an alleyway sometimes happens, but those are the exceptions," Bumby said. "Strangers tend to be the exception."

The Committee on Criminal Justice & Public Safety met Monday at the Department of Public Safety offices in Augusta for a briefing on Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act.

In the second of three informational meetings, the panel heard from Bumby as well as from officials in four other states where policymakers have grappled with similar issues.

"We either reinvent the wheel or take a day and bring in the experts," Sen. Bill Diamond, D-Windham, said. "This should enhance the effectiveness of what we're trying to do."

Diamond, Senate chairman of the committee, said the committee is dealing with three issues:

* legal challenges of Maine's retroactive registration requirement filed by sex offenders;

* the federal Adam Walsh Act, which is aimed at expanding the national sex offender registry and keeping track of sex offenders no matter which state they live in, while increasing penalties for crimes against children; and

* a tiered system to classify offenders based on offense or risk to reoffend or both.

"We have our hands full," Diamond said.

Sen. Earle McCormick, R-West Gardiner, said he was looking for information on how the state's sex offender registry can be more effectively administered.

"If we have a three-tier system, how do we figure who are the high risks?" McCormick said.

Bumby told committee members that sex offenses are a small percentage of all crimes committed, but get a disproportionate amount of publicity.

He also said offenders are a diverse group.

"Research is clear that sex offenders don't all look the same, and those variations have important implications for management strategies," Bumby said. "One-size-fits-all strategies are not likely to get us the results we want."

He said research shows that those more likely to reoffend are those who rape adult women and those who victimize boys outside the family.

"Depending on whom they target, recidivism rates vary," Bumby said. "Sex offenders are not all alike. Do we want policies to treat them alike? Will that serve the public?"

He recommended concentrating on higher risk offenders to lower the recidivism rate.

"It seems we do better to increase public safety when we focused on higher-risk offenders," Bumby said.

Bumby also said a federal study showed that longer sentences do not result in much variation in the rate of committing another sexual offense.

He also said that despite a sharp increase in restrictions on where convicted sex offenders live, there's no evidence those restrictions affect the recidivism rate.

Later, Roger Werholtz, secretary of the Kansas Department of Corrections, said the state legislature there imposed a permanent moratorium to prevent municipalities from restricting where sex offenders can live.

Werholtz said the restrictions tended to force sex offenders into enclaves in rural areas which had less supervision and few opportunities for treatment.

"Ninety-five to 98 percent of people who go to prison in Kansas are going to come back out," Werholtz said. "We want them to succeed, not reoffend."

..News Source.. by BETTY ADAMS, Staff Writer

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Crime Registries Under Fire

9-24-2008 National:

Adam Walsh Act mandates sex offender lists, but some say it’s unconstitutional

Their names are sadly familiar: Jacob Wetterling, Megan Kanka, Jessica Luns­ford, Adam Walsh.

They were children who fell victim to pred­­ators, and over the years their names have been given to a succession of statutes requiring convicted sex offenders to register in their home states.

The laws incrementally strengthened those requirements, beginning in 1994 when Congress passed the Jacob Wetterling Act, which promoted the adoption of state registration. In 1996, Megan’s Law conditioned federal funding for state law enforcement on the creation of such programs.

Two years ago, Congress passed the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, named for the son of John Walsh, whose advocacy for victims’ rights and crime prevention helped lead to the formation of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. In July 1981, 6-year-old Adam was abducted from a Hollywood, Fla., mall. Two weeks later his remains were discovered in a canal more than 100 miles from his home. No one was ever tried for the crime.

Included in the Walsh Act is the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, which establishes a national sex offender registry and creates three clas­sifications of sex offenders. The most serious group is required to register within three days after moving to a new state or face up to 10 years’ imprisonment. The law also makes it mandatory for states to maintain an online registry accessible to the public.

1990s CASES LOOM LARGE
Most federal courts—spurning critics who contend that Congress exceeded its authority by encroaching on state and local control—have upheld SORNA.

But at least two courts this year have sided with the critics and invalidated some or all of the registry law. In both rulings, the courts referred back to a line of U.S. Supreme Court cases from the 1990s that limited the federal government’s reach into state law.

Meanwhile, a third federal court temporarily halted the new law until it had a chance to hear arguments on the issue.

More is at stake than just the sex offender registries, observers say. Americans have become accustomed to national crime registries, and courts could throw them into doubt.

“Not surprisingly, given our increasing sense of informational entitlement and disdain for criminal offenders, we are seeing registration and notification laws spread to other subgroups, such as domestic abusers,” says Florida State University law professor Wayne A. Logan, author of the forthcoming book Knowledge as Power: A History of Criminal Registration Laws in America.

Also up for grabs is the future of the U.S. Supreme Court’s line of federalism cases, a darling of the court under former Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist. The court trimmed back its press for state rights toward the end of Rehnquist’s tenure—he died in 2005. However, under his successor, John G. Roberts Jr., the court could get its chance to renew those federalism issues, this time with high-profile sex offender registration and notification laws.

“The issue will go to the U.S. Supreme Court, par­ticularly with the composition of the court changing in recent years,” with the addition of Roberts and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., says John L. Badalamenti, appellate attorney for the federal public defender’s office in Tampa, Fla.

Both the decided cases hinge on federalism. In United States v. Powers, issued in April, U.S. District Judge Gregory Presnell in Tampa acknowledged that Con­gress passed the law to further a “commendable goal—to protect the public from sex offenders.” How­ever, he said, “a worthy cause is not enough to transform a state concern (sex offender registration) into a federal crime.” The government has appealed to the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The case involves Robert Powers, who has an IQ of 68 and a second-grade reading ability, according to the opinion. In 1995, he was convicted in South Carolina of sex crimes, and was required to register there as a sex offender. He moved to Florida in 2007 and was arrested after he failed to register in that state.

PARTIAL INVALIDATION
In the second decided case, United States v. Waybright, issued in June, a federal court in Montana invalidated only part of the law requiring all sex offenders to register, even if they don’t travel to another state. Ber­nard Waybright was convicted of misdemeanor sexual abuse in West Virginia and was later indicted for failing to register in that state. Both sides have appealed to the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Both cases recalled two of the Supreme Court’s major federalism cases that struck down federal criminal laws: a 1995 case, United States v. Lopez, which invalidated the 1990 Gun-Free Schools Zone Act; and United States v. Morrison, a 2000 ruling that struck down a provision in the 1994 Violence Against Women Act. In both, the court ruled that there must be a substantial connection to interstate commerce for the law to be constitutional, and that Congress lacked the authority under the commerce clause to regulate issues of state or local control.

“The mere fact that the individual has, at some point, traveled in interstate commerce does not establish that ... subsequent failure to register substantially affects interstate commerce,” Presnell wrote in Powers.

“The biggest problem with the Adam Walsh Act is there seems to be a tiny nexus to interstate commerce in that it merely requires that the person who had been previously convicted of a sex offense just travel to another state,” says Badalamenti.

“If that person travels to another state and fails to register within three days, he or she is facing up to 10 years in federal prison,” Badalamenti adds. “I think the nexus to interstate commerce is so minimal that you wonder how it is going to pass constitutional muster.”

Meanwhile, in July a federal court in Nevada barred that state’s version of SORNA from going into effect until constitutional challenges there are resolved. Ac­cording to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, arguments were scheduled for the end of August.

Backers of the law stress the inconsistency among state laws in the post-release follow-up of convicted sex offenders, says Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. “The act recognizes that many convicted sex offenders engage in interstate travel and present a high degree of risk and danger to children.”

Allen calls Powers “an outlier and an aberration” and says he hopes it will be reversed by the 11th Circuit. “There have been at least five federal district court decisions in which the courts have held the Adam Walsh Act constitutional,” he says.

Indeed, other opinions this year turned away commerce clause challenges to the Walsh Act and SORNA. A federal district court in Indiana ruled in United States v. Akers that “SORNA focuses on sex offenders who travel between states and does not purport to reach offenders who remain within a single state, thus pro­viding the jurisdictional basis and interstate nexus essential to bring SORNA within congressional authority. ... SORNA relates to the travel of sex offenders across state lines and so is a proper exercise of congressional authority under the commerce clause.”

REGISTRATION CHALLENGES GROWING
In May, a federal district court in Rhode Island came to a similar conclusion in United States v. Ditomasso, writing that SORNA “prevents sex offenders from being lost in the cracks between state regulations, a matter which is beyond the power of any one state to comprehensively address.”

Says Florida State’s Logan, “From the 1930s until the mid-1990s, we saw few constitutional challenges to registration laws. Starting in the 1990s, however, as registration laws grew in number and were augmented for the first time by community notification, the challenges deluged courts.”

But the Walsh Act is the most far-reaching and may present the perfect opportunity for the Supreme Court to sink its teeth into such laws, Logan says.

The act “represents a ze­nith in federal demands on states with re­spect to registration and community notification,” he says. “Among other things, the law significantly expands the scope of registration eligibility and requires, for the first time, use of in-person verification and a conviction-based registration classification scheme. The states are expected to make major changes to their regimes, at significant trouble and cost.”

Badalamenti says, “I do not understand Congress’ intent on regulating a purely state issue. When Mr. Pow­ers came into Florida, he, at most, committed a Florida crime in failing to register, and the decision to prosecute him should rest entirely with the Florida state government. But it shouldn’t be a federal crime.”

And when it to gets the Supreme Court, as Badala­menti predicts, “I really do see the court revisiting the federalism issue as it did in Lopez and Morrison.” ..Source.. by ABA Journal September 2008 Issue | David L. Hudson Jr.

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IL- Change in process for notification of sex offenders

This article shows the moronic costs that are attached to "Community Notification" of sex offenders when they register -or- move. Now, due to the effects of the registry, evictions and moving is a regular occurrence.

Study the system that was developed to notify community agencies who the law says need to be notified when a RSO moves into their area. Then ask, WHY? Why all the hand mailings which are now to be replaced by a e-mail system (which also requires maintenance), no wonder it costs $40-50 each time a RSO moves.

Why does't the central registry computer program simply generate, daily, a online "Movement by Zip Code" listing which community agencies could access and review daily? Allow law enforcement to do law enforcement work not administrative functions. What a waste of taxpayers money.

5-16-08 Illinois:

MT. VERNON — Due to new laws that will be in effect June 1, and in an effort to expedite notification of registered sex offenders, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Depart-ment has announced that such notices will now be sent electronically through e-mail.

Effective June 1, all registered sex offender community notifications that the JCSO will be doing in compliance with the Sex Offender Community Notification Law, 730 ILCS 152, will be done by electronic mail, according to information from Sheriff Roger Mulch.

Notices cost the JCSO “between $40-$50,” each quarter they are mailed, Mulch explained, with about 60 to 70 agencies or organizations on the mailing list. And with electronic information the “wave” of current communication, he said information can be sent out much more quickly. “It’s more timely, efficient and easier in the long run for us to do,” he said.

Organizations in the following categories located within Jefferson County are considered a qualified recipient and organization and must contact the JCSO to be put on a listing of persons notified:

— Boards of institutions of higher education

— School boards of public school districts

— Principals of nonpublic schools

— Child care facilities sponsored by Illinois Department of Children and Family Services

— Public libraries

— Public housing agencies

— Illinois Department of Children and Family Services

— Social service agencies providing services to minors

— Volunteer organizations providing services to minors.

Organizations should send an e-mail to RSO@jeffil.us and in the subject line type “Community Notification.” In the body of the e-mail list name or the agency or organization, mailing address, telephone number, and contact person. You will receive an e-mail response as confirmation that you have been added to the electronic notification listing.

If entities do not have e-mail capability, they should contact the JCSO at 244-8004 to make arrangements to receive notifications. ..more.. by KANDACE MCCOY

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