Sex Offenders: Not in My Backyard

Updated: 11:17 PM Feb 2, 2006
Becky Hillier

There are more registered sex offenders living in the city of Madison right now, than there are city police. Authorities admit that some offenders will re-offend, and that's why they say an informed community is a safe community.

Grant Budd was released on January 24th to the Rock Valley Halfway House in Janesville. He served time for first-degree sexual assault of a child and being a sexually violent person. Now, he's taking steps towards becoming part of a community. He's out of prison, but still under supervision.

Chief Dep. Robert Spoden of the Rock County Sheriff's Department says, "based upon the seriousness of his crime we felt that he rose to a level 3." That means Budd is at high-risk to re-offend.

So why then, are high-risk offenders released in the first place?

Melissa Roberts explains, "by law they have to be released, they have served all of their time that the courts have given them and they have to be released."

Roberts heads up the Department of Corrections sex offender programs. She says released offenders must abide by strict rules and supervision, but there is always concern over how they will respond.

"We craft our supervision strategies and tools to monitor them and manage them in the community as best that we can, recognizing that there is a risk that they could commit a new offense or a new sex offense."

It's a big responsibility that corrections officials share with local law enforcement, who try to keep the upper hand.

Lt. Tom Snyder recalls, "when I came into this office a year ago, these binders were left behind for me." Snyder is a member of the Madison Police Department, and the binders tell a sad tale.

"These are all different sex offenders who've come through and we've talked about or had meetings about." Snyder says many of them have re-offended.

Snyder helps determine what level of community notification is needed when a sex offender is released. "We'll do news releases, we'll put something on the website, in some cases... we'll put bulletins up throughout the neighborhood and have a community meeting."

Despite their best efforts, there are only so many resources, and only so much they can do with them.

"I would like to say that it's common practice for us to track sex offenders throughout the city and in neighborhoods and know where they're working, know what they're doing all the time, unfortunately that's not feasible."

That's where both Roberts and Snyder say citizens can help by staying alert and using resources available to them, like the sex offender registry website.

"I did the same thing and there were sex offenders living in my neighborhood in the city of Madison that I was not aware of," says Snyder.

Roberts says, "law enforcement is involved, community groups are involved, neighborhood watch programs all have to be involved so we're keeping ourselves safe and our families safe."

Snyder says, "it's not something that I want people to panic about but...
it's frightening and to be honest personally I didn't realize that there were so many people out there that had serious backgrounds and serious sexual offenses, and I've been a police officer for a long time."

Here are some websites to use as resources.
The following website lets you put in your address and it shows you on a map where registered sex offenders are living in relation to your home.
http://www.mapsexoffenders.com/

The Department of Corrections website for the sex offender registry allows you to search by zip code and find the addresses of sex offenders, and see whether they're compliant or not and also find out what their offenses are.
http://offender.doc.state.wi.us/public/