Nevada to participate in new national sex offender registry

Jen Lawson

Thursday, June 16, 2005 | 11:01 a.m.

Nevada was chosen to be one of 20 states that will help launch the Justice Department's national registry of sex offenders, which will go online next month and will allow the public to search all the state sex offender databases at once.

The registry is being established as a result of complaints by victims' rights advocates, who say that sexual predators can escape detection by slipping over state lines.

Currently the public must check the sex offender registries of each state individually, which could result in many offenders falling through the cracks.

"If you have a coach or neighbor or teacher, you can see that, 'Oh my goodness, this person's name popped up (as being a sex offender) in Ohio,' " said Donna Coleman of the Southern Nevada-based Children's Advocacy Alliance.

"We need a national sex offender registry. In light of everything going on in this country I think this year, for some reason, the light bulb has gone off in a lot of peoples' heads that this is an issue we need to address."

Officials got word this week that Nevada will be part of the pilot program, which is set to go online July 19. U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez announced the creation of the national registry last month.

The remaining states will be included by fall, officials said.

The Justice Department will establish links between existing state sex offender Web sites, which will allow the data to be shown though the national registry. Searches will be free of charge to the public.

The amount of information available through the registry will be in accordance with the laws of each state.

Visitors to the state's registry, www.nvsexoffenders.gov, will find more information on the most serious sex offenders within the next year.

Responding to an outcry that indicating sex offenders' zip codes wasn't helpful to citizens trying to see if any offenders live on their street, the Legislature passed a measure last week that would add the addresses of the most serious offenders to the registry no later than July 2006, Kim Evans, spokeswoman for the Nevada Public Safety Department, said.

Lt. Jeff Carlson, head of Metro's sexual assault section, said he's all for more information on sex offenders being available to the public.

"Obviously it's used for informational purposes," Carlson said. "It's not to suggest retaliatory acts against somebody, but to provide safety for their family."

But civil rights advocates see the expansion of information available on sex offenders could be seen as a violation of the liberties of people who've committed a crime, served the time and are trying to get on with their lives.

Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel for the ACLU of Nevada, called the trend troubling.

"In terms of people who are hired to work with children, clearly background checks would cover that," Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel for the ACLU of Nevada, said. "The more this information is public, the more vigilante actions we're going to see."

Although police contend that sex offenders, particularly those who victimize children, are not easily reformed, Lichtenstein said he disagrees.

"Despite the mythology, the recidivism rates aren't higher for people who commit these crimes than any other type of criminal," he said.