Legislation to expand sex offender registry Adults convicted since 1982 will report to police

AUGUSTA – Beginning this fall, adults convicted of a sex offense since Jan. 1, 1982, will be on the state’s list of sex offenders that anyone can access on the Department of Public Safety Web site. Currently, only those convicted since Jan. 1, 1992 are listed.

“I cannot speak to how many more additional numbers of people will be on the list,” Public Safety Commissioner Michael Cantara said last week. “Obviously, there will be more. What this does is to expand the universe of information that the public will have available.”

As of Friday, 1,619 sex offenders were identified on the Web site. From 1982 to 1992, nearly 4,000 sex offenses were committed in Maine, according to state crime reports.

The expansion also requires sex offenders to meet the requirements of the registration law and register with local police agencies.

“Until we do the actual review, we don’t know how many from that time will be already on the list and how many will be new to the list,” Cantara said.

Members of the Legislature’s Criminal Justice Committee said the legislation is part of a broader effort to improve the state’s sex offender registry and public access to the information.

“We will be looking at this over the summer, and I am sure we will be making further recommendations,” Sen. Bill Diamond, D-Windham, said last week. “This looking back another ten years is an important step, but we need to do a lot more in this area.”

Expansion of the registry, Cantara said, is being provided with existing department resources. He cautioned it could take longer to get all new names on the registry if the number proves greater than expected.

“If we only get three more on the list, then it is worth it to me,” Diamond said. “Of course, I think we will get a lot more than that.”

Rep. Pat Blanchette, D-Bangor, co-chairwoman of the committee, agreed, saying the committee plans to take a broad look at how the state deals with all types of sex offenders during the summer and fall.

“It’s not going to be easy,” she said. “We need to look at all sex offenders and how we deal with them, including the juveniles.”

The concerns are bipartisan. Sen. Dean Clukey, R-Houlton, a retired state police detective, said the nature of sex offenses make some lawmakers shy from the issues.

“I am concerned with all sex offenders,” he said. “I think we have to look at all and get at those that can’t be changed.”

Dr. Susan Righthand, a consultant to the Maine Corrections Department and principal author of a report to the Legislature earlier this year on sexual assaults, says the state needs to address adult offenders and juveniles differently. She said the chances of intervening with a juvenile and preventing other offenses are far better than with adults.

“These are formative years when kids are learning and developing,” she said. “Because a kid has committed one offense at, say, 16, does not mean he will be a repeat offender.”

Righthand said research has shown relatively few juvenile sex offenders continue to offend as older teens and young adults. That is in sharp contrast to adult sex offenders.

“Certainly adults are more set in their ways, but they vary, too,” she said. “We have adults who have one offense, and we have adults with thousands of victims.”

Righthand said that she and others in the field have been struggling for years to develop accurate assessment tools to sort out which offenders need to be closely supervised after release from jail.

Cantara, who served several years as York County District Attorney, welcomes the Legislature’s focus on the issue. He said he prosecuted cases where the offender is on the registry, but he’s not sure he needs to be.

“Like the case of an 18-year-old that had consensual sex with his 13-year-old girlfriend,” he said. “I am not sure he is that much at risk to offend again, where the older person with several convictions, say, of child sex abuse … they should be where we can do what we can to make sure they don’t commit another crime.”

Diamond said increasing the information and background provided on the Web site could help Mainers decide for themselves how much concern they have about an individual.

“Right now, if someone wants to get the person’s entire criminal history, they have to pay for that,” he said. “Maybe we should look at that and see if there is a way to provide that information about sex offenders on the Web site.”

The panel has not set its first summer meeting.