Worst molesters unsupervised

BOISE – Idaho’s sex offender law has a major gap – it methodically identifies the worst, most violent offenders who are most likely to reoffend, but then allows them to live unsupervised in the community.

Designated “violent sexual predators” are deemed the most dangerous – there are only 31, out of the 2,562 registered sex offenders in Idaho.

But that designation merely means they have to check in and update their addresses every three months, rather than once a year, and their pictures are published in the local newspaper when they move.

“We’ve seen some fairly bad people come across our desk,” said Thomas Hearn, chairman of Idaho’s Sex Offender Classification Board. “These men are not being actively supervised. … That, I think, is a huge gap and a significant problem as far as community protection.”

In Washington, the same group of offenders – designated there as “sexually violent predators” – is subject to indefinite civil commitment. Washington has locked up 220 offenders at its special facility at McNeil Island since its commitment law passed in 1990, at a cost of more than $100,000 a year for each offender.

Sixteen other states followed Washington in enacting civil commitment laws. Idaho’s Legislature rejected the idea in 1998, in part because of its high cost. The idea also raised constitutional questions, but the U.S. Supreme Court has since upheld commitment laws.

The case of Joseph E. Duncan III, a sex offender who was convicted in Washington, has brought heightened attention to sex offender laws. Duncan is a suspect in the killings of four members of the Groene household in Kootenai County and the kidnapping and molestation of two children, and was finally caught with the only survivor, 8-year-old Shasta Groene. Many states and even Congress are re-examining existing laws in the wake of isolated, horrific sex crimes against children in the past year.

“It affects the rest of the nation when people look at (the Groene) case, and they want to do something about it,” said Charles Onley, a research associate at the Center for Sex Offender Management in Silver Spring, Md.

“Certainly, the state could go back and look at civil commitment if it chooses,” said Deputy Idaho Attorney General Bill von Tagen, who led the task force that developed Idaho’s current sex offender laws in 1997. Other options, he noted, include other forms of lifetime supervision for certain offenders, from longer sentences to lifetime parole to GPS-based electronic monitoring.

“There are a lot of things that the state can do,” von Tagen said. “A lot of them have a cost attached.”

Sen. John Goedde, R-Coeur d’Alene, said, “We put collars on wolves, and we seem to be able to track them. … I think that needs to be looked at.”

“The golf carts at the Circling Raven golf course have GPS on them, and if you get close to an environmentally sensitive area, an alarm goes off,” Goedde said. “So the technology is there to make someone conscious that they’re not where they’re supposed to be. And I can’t believe that the same thing could not be done with a GPS monitoring system.”

In fact, Florida this year passed a law requiring lifetime GPS-based electronic monitoring of certain child molesters when they’re released from prison. The law, dubbed the Jessica Lunsford Act, came in the wake of the 9-year-old girl’s rape and murder at the hands of a registered sex offender, who had moved without notifying the state and was staying near her home.

Other states are following suit. Half a dozen are considering legislation, and last week, Alabama’s attorney general, Troy King, was fitted with an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet and vowed to wear it until his state Legislature passes his bill to require released child sex offenders to be on GPS monitoring for at least 10 years after their release from prison. The Alabama Legislature was just beginning a special session on that and other topics.

States have increasingly been using GPS-based electronic monitoring to track sex offenders’ movements, but most of that has involved offenders who are on probation or parole. Post-release electronic tracking is a relatively new idea, though it’s been used to some extent in Texas, which has outpatient civil commitment, and in California, Onley said.

Roxanne Lieb, a researcher with the Washington State Institute for Public Policy, said, “The thing about GPS monitoring, there’s nothing really magic about it. You have to set the conditions and then you have to have people who work for the state who monitor it and then go out and take action and investigate. It’s more than just the cost of the instrument.”

Alabama’s proposed law caps expenditures for the monitors at $15 a day; that’s a little more than $5,000 a year. Florida’s new law includes $11 million in new spending, including $3.9 million for the cost of the monitors.

Although many states are contemplating tougher laws, a patchwork of varying approaches can allow some predators to move freely about with little, if any, detection. Duncan, for example, was convicted in Washington state, living in North Dakota and awaiting trial on a molestation charge in Minnesota. All three states have differing laws on how sex offenders are monitored.

Pro Tech Monitoring, a Florida-based company that’s the major vendor of GPS tracking systems for offenders, advertises on its Web site that, “For just a fraction of the cost of incarceration, you can reach your ultimate goal of public safety, of people feeling comfortable and secure in their communities.”

Steve Chapin, CEO of Pro Tech, said his firm’s active GPS tracking system costs about $10 a day for each offender, or $3,650 a year. That’s not counting wages for state employees to monitor and follow up on the GPS reports. In Idaho, the average cost to house a prisoner for a year is about $18,000.

Chapin acknowledged that offenders can cut the devices off, but he said authorities are alerted immediately. When three Florida offenders cut off their monitors and tried to escape, “their probation officers were notified within one minute and took proper action. They were all apprehended within 48 hours.”

He added, “There’s no such thing as something that is permanently affixed to somebody. So what we do is we have very sophisticated tamper detection.”

Idaho’s initial sex offender registry law, enacted in 1993, kept information on sex offenders only for law enforcement use. In 1998, following the recommendations of a task force convened by then-Attorney General Al Lance, the Legislature enacted the current law, which allows full public access to the registry posted on the Internet at www.isp.state.id.us. There, people can search all registered sex offenders by name, ZIP code or other criteria.

In 2003, Idaho amended its law in the wake of the rape and murder of 14-year-old Carissa Benway of Post Falls by a registered sex offender. The change said that whenever “violent sexual predators” move, their photos, crimes and new addresses must be published in the local newspapers once a week for three weeks. The offenders pay part of the cost.

Benway’s mother, Bonnie Heilander, told state lawmakers that she had no reason to suspect that her next-door neighbor was a violent sex offender, though he had registered as required. Had she known, she said, she wouldn’t have allowed her daughter near the man and she might still be alive.

Onley, of the Center for Sex Offender Management, said Idaho’s law is fairly typical, though most states lack the newspaper publication requirement, and Idaho is one of only a few states with a juvenile sex offender registry. Washington long has been among the most active in its notification programs, he noted, requiring that neighbors are notified when sex offenders move nearby.

But Onley, whose center is funded by the U.S. Department of Justice to provide research, training and technical assistance to states on sex offender management, said, “A lot of times when people are looking at registries, they think that implies some form of supervision or accountability. … That doesn’t happen.”

Idaho’s registry law doesn’t promise that the offenders are being supervised. Instead, it says that “public access (to the registry) assists the community in being observant of convicted sexual offenders in order to prevent them from recommitting sexual crimes.”

Idaho’s sex offender registry has two classifications: violent sexual predators and everyone else. The latter group includes a range of offenders, from low-risk statutory rape and incest offenders to those just short of the predator designation. All registered offenders must check in with law enforcement annually to verify their whereabouts; predators must check in every three months.

“The limited resources we have available in Idaho need to be focused on the higher-risk guys,” said Hearn, of the state’s Sex Offender Classification Board. “I think that just makes sense, that we identify who those people are and we pay attention to them.”

But, he said, “In the everybody else group there are lots of people that are dangerous guys. … In that mix … there are some real low-risk guys and some real high-risk guys.”

Sen. Goedde wants to add more classifications to Idaho’s law, possibly following Washington’s three-tier system. That way, he said, restrictions could be graduated by classification.

Under the three-tier system, Level 1 offenders are considered the lowest possible risk to the community; they have not shown predatory behavior and most have successfully participated in treatment programs. Level 2 offenders present a moderate risk and have a higher likelihood of reoffending. Level 3 offenders pose a high risk to the community and are a threat to reoffend if provided the opportunity.

Hearn said a classification system is probably a good idea: “Some sex offenders are very dangerous, very predatory, likely to reoffend, need to be kept off the street or watched closely. Other guys are very low risk, and they don’t need to be watched as closely.”

Robert Marsh, a Boise State University professor of criminal justice, said, “Really, what this state needs to face is that it needs to quit spending money to incarcerate relatively nonviolent offenders and spend its resources on offenders that threaten society. Registration was an idea that may be a good idea to inform the public but provides no guarantee these crimes will not occur.”

Idaho allows offenders who are deemed not to be a risk to society to petition to be removed from the registry after they’ve been on it 10 years. That happens, though it’s rare. Hearn, who treats sex offenders in his private practice in Coeur d’Alene, said he knows of only two in Kootenai County, one who was removed about three years ago and one who’s seeking removal now. Both are low-risk incest offenders; the one who was removed from the list had touched his victim once and kept a clean record during his 10 years on the registry.

Goedde also is working on legislation to restrict where all registered sex offenders can live, possibly keeping them a certain distance from schools, churches and other places where children are likely to be.

Von Tagen, Idaho’s deputy attorney general, said he worked with another legislator a couple of years ago who wanted to keep sex offenders 1,000 feet away from day-care centers. That was problematic because it’s not always apparent where a day care is, von Tagen said. In its final form, the legislation prohibited sex offenders from working in or volunteering in day-care centers or being on their premises, and it passed into law.

Hearn said that he thinks sex offenders shouldn’t be anyplace where children congregate and that a law simply saying that might best address the issue.

But no matter how restrictive laws are, experts warned that no law can completely eliminate risk.

In the Groene case, sex offender Joseph Duncan was released from prison in Washington – a state that has civil commitment. He was reviewed for possible civil commitment but not selected for it. He then moved to Fargo, N.D., and later jumped bail on a new charge in Minnesota and traveled to Idaho. Duncan is being held in Kootenai County Jail, facing murder and kidnapping charges.

Von Tagen said, “No matter what system we put in place, police, prosecutors, parents, everyone that’s concerned with the welfare of kids or law enforcement needs to use it. Because if the system isn’t being used properly, if people aren’t convicted of the right offenses, if people are let out of jail on insufficient bail or something like that, the system’s going to break down.”