California Sex Offender List

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To Use It or Lose It: The California State Sex Offender List The State of California should use risk based tiering on the sex offender list to clarify risk levels of offenders, and provide information such as the date (year) offenses were committed to make this database more understandable and useful to the public it is supposed to be serving. In California all registered sex offenders are listed the same way on the public registry and are on the list for life, regardless of whether they urinated in public while drunk, fondled their fifteen year old girlfriend, or raped a six year old. What people hear from the media is that people on the sex offenders list are child molesters and rapists. When a member of the public looks at the California registry and sees that four sex offenders live in their neighborhood they become alarmed, and there is nothing on the website to tell them that the offenders are low risk, that three of the four committed their crimes over ten years ago with no further offenses, and the fourth offender is on the list for ‘streaking’ through a public park on a bet. The lack of information on the public website creates unintended consequences for the public such as increased anxiety about their neighbors, as well as increasing the risk of harm to the registrants. Information is needed for people to make a reasonable assessment of the threat level an offender poses. The public should know more about the offender, the type of crime committed, how long ago the offense occurred, and the offender’s risk level. People know that there is a difference between a man who urinates against the side of a building when he’s had too many beers and a man who forces a six year old to have sex. But they need to have the information in order to use it. When the public is needlessly alarmed by what they see on the website, with no information to help them
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