SALT LAKE CITY — An internal audit of Utah’s Sex Offender Registry confirmed what a recent KSL investigation uncovered: More than 100 convicted sex offenders were missing from the registry.
For over a year, the KSL Investigators reviewed Utah’s registry, cross-referencing it with public records from Utah’s parole board, online court records, inmate databases, and information gathered by knocking on doors in several neighborhoods.
While people with criminal convictions that require them to be on the registry do sometimes attempt to skirt the law, the KSL Investigators found many were in compliance and did register, but the state failed to publish their profiles for the public to see.
Utah law tasks the Department of Corrections with maintaining the registry.
“This is important information that needs to be accurate,” said Utah Department of Corrections Executive Director Brian Redd during a recent interview with the KSL Investigators. “And we’re committed to that.”
In response to questions from the KSL Investigators and concerns raised during a legislative hearing in September, Redd ordered an internal audit of the registry.
The results of the audit revealed the number of people who were not appearing on the public side of the online registry was higher than initially known.
It should be every single one of them. They wouldn’t be able to arrest all of us if we just stopped complying with it.
Emailed the following to the author. Suggest others write as well. Her address is at the end of the article.
Ms. Rivera:
After reading the above story, I presume the intent was to cause alarm by implying that Utah is more dangerous due to the DOC’s failure to publish a handful of its sex offender registrants. If so, I would think the point would have been better made had you included the number of arrests for new sex crimes committed by those unpublished registrants. But even if my presumption about your story is not correct, why were new sex crime arrests (or lack thereof) for those “missing” registrants omitted? I can’t believe such information would be that difficult to find – simply cross check your names of “missing” registrants against arrest records.
My email to the author this morning:
Dear Ms. Rivera,
As “an investigative journalist with a passion for serving the public through seeking and reporting truth”, I sincerely hope you start investigating the real truth about sex offender registries. There are almost 1 million people forced to register in this country and yet the registries prevent zero crimes and do nothing to keep people safe. In fact, registries put people in danger thinking they know who to be fearful of, when in fact at least 95% of all new sex crimes are committed by people not on a registry, by people they know, such as family, friends, clergy, coaches, other children, etc.
Do you even know who is on the this registry? Do you know there are children as young as 10 years old on the registry? There are teens and tweens who were convicted for sexting each other and people who “committed” public urination? There are people who completed their sentencing decades ago and have been offense free since, only to be blacklisted on this un American (aka unconstitutional) registry scheme adding restrictions to their lives constantly that do nothing to keep the public safe. Quite the opposite, residency and presence restrictions make people homeless and unemployed and unstable. And while you’re at it, please investigate how many millions (billions?) of dollars have been poured into registry administration which has been proven to be ineffective at best. Shouldn’t this money and resources be spent actually helping reduce crime and keeping people safe?
And lastly, please investigate and report on how sex offenses have decreased since these registries expanded over the past three decades. You will find they have not decreased – the registries do not work; people on registries have extremely low re-offense rates, they are not committing new sex offense crimes and yet sex offenses are not decreasing, what does that tell you? Registries are political theater designed to distract and get votes.
Utah is failing to keep up with the administrative burden of the registries – find out how many are added to the registries daily. Soon one of your loved ones may find themselves on the registry and then you will know first-hand how counter productive and harmful they are. People who commit crimes should be punished, serve their sentence, and be allowed to reintegrate into society to be law abiding citizens. This is the United States of America, after all, the registries must go.
If you have the courage, please investigate and report the truth, even though it may be unpopular. That is what true “investigative journalism serving the public” is supposed to be all about.
Thank you for your time.
If 100s are missing from the database, that sounds like a good thing. That means less people harass