Nevada is not keeping tabs on sex offenders, group says

Jen Lawson

Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2003 | 11:07 a.m.

Too many sex offenders are slipping through the cracks of the system that is supposed to protect Nevada's children, a national child advocacy group says.

Parents for Megan's Law, a nonprofit organization based in New York, found that 925 of Nevada's 3,557 convicted sex offenders failed to comply with the state's sex offender registration laws. That's a 26 percent failure rate, the fourth highest rate of the 32 states that provided their rates to the organization.

"Nevada is not doing well," said Laura A. Ahearn, a certified social worker and the executive director of Parents for Megan's Law.

But neither are several other states, she added. Her group calculated the weighted average national failure rate to be 24 percent.

The survey found that there were at least 77,000 -- and more likely more than 100,000 -- convicted sex offenders whose locations are unknown to law enforcement.

Nevada's western neighbor, California, had one of the highest registration failure rates, 44 percent. But California's law is unlike any other in the nation in that it registers offenders from as far back as 1947. That gives California the highest number of registrants.

The results of the study were surprising, however, because "the national failure-to-register rates indicate that there is not a strong correlation between the number of sex offenders a state registers and that state's failure rate," Ahearn said.

Florida and Arizona, for example, have relatively large numbers of sex offenders -- 27,689 and 13,205, respectively. But the two states also have relatively low failure rates: 4.7 percent in Florida and 5.8 percent in Arizona.

In contrast, some states with fewer sex offenders had much higher failure rates. Oklahoma and Tennessee, for example, each have failure rates of 50 percent but have offender totals of only 5,415 and 6,300, respectively.

"Failure rates have more to do with legislative priority and resources," Ahearn said.

Ahearn said she is painfully aware of the fact that all state governments are fiscally strapped. The Nevada Legislature, for example, is struggling with how to raise more than $800 million in additional revenue to just keep the current levels of government services.

The financial strains "obviously are a serious concern. The job's not getting done now, so if there is less money it is likely that the situation will get worse. And state officials are saying, 'We can't provide the money when we don't have it.'

"Instead of waiting to hunt down an offender after he starts raping children or adults again, spend your money more efficiently on making sure you know where he is so that he is less likely to try to victimize people again," Ahearn suggested.

She also said that the states that are doing the best job at tracking sexual offenders tend to be the ones that have state authorities handling the duties instead of local law enforcement.

"In states that are successful, like Florida, it is the state agency alone and there is a greater accountability there, accountability directly to the state lawmakers who have made it a priority, giving the state agency the resources to get the job done, ordering them to get the job done and holding them accountable," she said.

That's not how it works in Nevada.

Offenders must register with local police once they're released from prison and whenever they move. Local police departments are then responsible for any community notification and for keeping tabs on the offenders.

Lt. Jeff Carlson of Metro's sex offender detail said the state sends out address verification letters to the most serious sex offenders every year, and if the offender doesn't respond, Metro is notified. Those offenders could be charged with failing to register, a felony, but they aren't always, he said.

Metro has two officers who are assigned to the sex offender detail who are responsible for submitting failure to register cases to the district attorney's office, maintaining the sex offender database and notifying the community that a sex offender lives in their area.

About 2,400 sex offenders live within Metro's juridsiction, Carlson said.

The Metro Police website, www.lvmpd.com, contains some information about the area's Tier 3 sex offenders, the ones considered the most dangerous. Out of 14 area residents listed in that section of the website, six are listed as either "whereabouts unknown" or "wanted." Three other Tier 3 sex offenders are listed on the website as frequent visitors to Las Vegas.

In Nevada, convicted sex offenders are also required to annually report to the Department of Public Safety yearly to verify their place of residence and other personal information. Failure to do so is considered a felony punishable by up to four years in prison.

"I think we do a good job with the resources we have," said Michael Compton, operations supervisor for the local sex offender unit of the state division of parole and probation. His unit has 11 parole and probation officers who supervise 560 sex offenders in Southern Nevada, he added.

Michael McClain, a Clark County parole and probation officer with the sex offender unit, recently arrested Donald Cassels, a convicted sex offender who moved and failed to register his new address.

Cassels was convicted in 1998 of lewdness of a minor under age 14. He pleaded guilty to child abuse, a lesser offense, but was still required to register as a sex offender.

McClain went to Lake Mead to arrest Cassels, who was working the docks at the lake. But in too many cases, authorities acknowledge, they are unable to find the sex offenders when the time comes to arrest them.

And even when the authorities know the home addresses of sex offenders, there have been problems with the court system overseeing the cases, said Susan Aller, a parole and probation officer who has been monitoring sex offenders in Clark County for about five years.

In one case last year a convicted sex offender was permitted to be an ice cream man.

According to Nevada law, sexual offenders generally aren't allowed to go in or near playgrounds, parks, movie theaters or other places where children gather unless approved by their parole and probation officer.

Aller said the man had reported that he was in the ice cream distribution business, but authorities discovered he was selling ice cream to kids. He was hauled before a District Court judge, but the judge did not rule that the occupation was one that a sex offender should not have, Aller said.

However, the man was employed illegally because he didn't have a work card, so he eventually did end up losing the job.

"That's got to be the worst case we had, the worst one we lost," Aller said. "I couldn't believe a sex offender was allowed to be an ice cream man."