IN OUR VIEW All sex offenders are not equal

Tuesday, August 02, 2005 - 12:00 AM

The Daily Herald
The tiff between an Orem Web design company and the State of Utah over the accuracy of the sex offender registry diverts attention from an important issue.
While accuracy is obviously important, so is a bit of data that does not appear on the registry -- the level of risk a potential sex offender poses to the public.

Public sex offender registries were created in the mid-1990s after the murder of a New Jersey girl by a convicted sex offender who lived next door. The goal was to give people the information they need to protect their families from predators. Nobody expects the lists to be a cure-all, but they are a valuable tool.
Most state registries give some indication of how dangerous a particular offender is to the public. New Jersey, the home of "Megan's Law," only posts the names of those who have a moderate-to-high risk of offending again. Likewise, Washington State only lists offenders that are deemed more likely to reoffend.
Nevada requires all sex offenders to register, but only provides public notification about the ones most likely to pose a threat, and then only within the offender's neighborhood and among those who are likely to come in contact with him. The state does notify schools about moderate-risk offenders who live in the area. Idaho puts all sex offenders on its public registry, but indicates which ones are considered violent predators, as well as indiciating which offenders have not reported their addresses to the state.
But in Utah, all sex offenders are lumped together without regard for to risk.
Tom Green, who was convicted of child rape in 1986 and is on the register. The girl he is alleged to have raped was 13 but today is his wife, and she remains his most loyal supporter. Also on the register is Eugene H. Swensen, who was convicted of two counts each of sodomy of a child and sexually assaulting children, including his granddaughter.
It's highly unlikely that Green will offend again, while Swensen is dangerous enough that the state has denied him parole twice. Yet in the Utah sex offender registry, you can't tell the difference.
The fault doesn't lie with the Department of Corrections. Corrections officials are limited in what they can do with the list by state law. And the law that created the list does not contain any provision for evaluating a sex offender's potential for reoffending.
The orginal intent of the law was to provide the public with information on sex offenders in their neighborhoods. As far as that goes, the state's intention is good. But there's room for improvement.
Simply providing a blanket list of sex offenders without ranking them according to risk doesn't give residents the tools they need to know whether someone is still dangerous. There are always degrees
A person whose momentary impulses led to an offense is not the same as, say a member of the organized child molestation ring, such as the one recently cracked in France. Nor are all offenses the same.
Treating them as though they were leads the public frequently to overreact.
It's also not fair to low-risk offenders. Someone may have committed a relatively minor offense, such as urinating in public within sight of a child, and may be trying to put his life back on track. But because he's listed on the registry, he finds himself treated as a dangerous animal by his neighbors and prospective employers.
The Legislature should revisit this issue in January and authorize a risk assessment for offenders listed in the registry. This should not cost much; corrections officials know whether an offender is dangerous through sex-offender therapy, and through common sense. It's simply a matter of carrying that knowledge over to another forum.
With a proper risk assessment, Utah's sex-offender registry will become a more useful tool for protecting families.This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A5.