RE-THINKING REGISTRATION

The Easter morning killing of two registered sex offenders should prompt lawmakers and other officials to reconsider aspects of the state’s online sex offender registry. A key question is whether information about those convicted of lesser crimes should be as readily available as that for the worst offenders.

Congress passed a law in 1996 requiring states to make information about sex offenders more available to the public. Since then, all but four states have created on-line registries, which include more than 500,000 sex offenders nationwide. Maine is among the 31 states that include offenders’ photographs and addresses on the Web site, although accessing a registered offender’s address in Maine requires the user to provide his or her name and address.

Maine lists all registered sex offenders on its registry. Such information was already available to the public through court records, but the rationale was that putting it on-line made it easier for community members to find out if sex offenders live nearby, even though statistics show the majority of sex crimes are committed by family members.

The state this week saw the rare, but tragic, consequences of making such information readily available. A Canadian man allegedly shot and killed 57-year-old Joseph Gray at his home in Milo before going to Corinth and shooting 24-year-old William Elliott. Twenty-year-old Stephen Marshall of North Sydney, Nova Scotia, shot himself in the head when police boarded the bus he was riding in Boston.

Both victims were included in the state’s online sex offender registry. According to the Maine Department of Public Safety, Mr. Marshall accessed information on the men and 32 other offenders in the registry from his laptop computer.

Mr. Elliott was listed in the registry because of a 2002 conviction for having sex with a minor when he was 19. According to his mother, his girlfriend at the time was two weeks shy of her 16th birthday – the age of consent in Maine. Lawmakers should consider whether this offense was enough to include Mr. Elliott in the on-line registry along with offenders who had committed much worse crimes.

Massachusetts includes on its Web site only information about those convicted of a felony. Getting information about misdemeanor offenders requires a written request. This may be a good model.

Overshadowing this debate is the unknown value of the registries. Despite their prevalence there has been no study of their effectiveness. The U.S. Department of Justice notes that while the registries are popular – Maine’s registry is the most visited state government web page – they often have negative consequences and increase law enforcement costs, yet there has been no examination of whether they reduce the number of sexual crimes.

Although murder of sex offenders is extreme and rare – two men were killed under similar circumstances in Washington and a New Hampshire man is in prison for the attempted murders of two sex offenders he found on that state’s registry – other negative effects are problematic. A major drawback is that registration requirements drive some offenders underground where it is much more difficult for law enforcement officials to keep track of them.

Without knowing if an on-line registry is providing a public benefit, Maine officials must proceed cautiously in deciding how much information should be at the public’s fingertips.