Web site maps homes of convicted sex offenders

By CINDY CLAYTON,
The Virginian-Pilot © August 29, 2005

Finding sex offenders who live in your neighborhood just got a few clicks easier.
An online offender mapping site takes the information available from sex offender registries in 37 states and maps the locations of offenders by home address.
Web surfers can go to http://www.mapsexoffenders.com/ , type in a street address and see a neighborhood or area map with blue and red markers. A blue marker shows the address the user typed in. Red markers pinpoint the addresses of offenders. One click on a red marker reveals the offender’s name, address and, in some cases, a picture.
Virginia is included on the site, and North Carolina will be added soon, according to the site.
Since the site was launched in July by Orbizon, a Utah-based Web development company, it’s averaged 30,000 to 60,000 hits a day, said Mark Olsen, a spokesman.
Olsen’s brother, Aaron, came up with the idea to map sex offenders across the country because of the barrage of media reports about children being abducted and harmed.
They started with Utah and Delaware to see how the mapping would work. The site has been successful, with a few bugs to be worked out. In some cases, the company’s software can’t read addresses in state registry systems. When that happens, the addresses must be verified and mapped manually by someone at Orbizon, Olsen said.
The developers hope to eventually map all 50 states. For now, they aren’t able to map some states – including Utah – because of state laws that prevent the information from being republished, Olsen said.
Corinne Geller, a Virginia State Police spokeswoman, said she went to the site and checked the neighborhood of someone she knows. When she compared the map to the State Police registry information, there were some entries missing, she said.
She recommends comparing the two sites and also checking the U.S. Justice Department’s national sex offender registry at www.nsopr.gov.
Within the next year, Virginians can expect to see changes in the sex offender registry on the State Police Web site, Lt. Thomas Turner said.
State Police also want to add mapping to their site, along with some other advanced features, he said. Site users who type one ZIP code into the search feature will be able to see offenders who live on the edges of the other areas with different ZIP codes. The site will offer better reports and will be updated more quickly.
State lawmakers have formed a task force of elected officials and citizens to recommend improvements to the site.
“It gives you a better picture,” Turner said. “The more informed the public is, the better they can make decisions.”
Reach Cindy Clayton at (757) 222-5201 or cindy.clayton@pilotonline.com.