Many Simply Ignore Law : Sex Offender Registration Not Working, Experts Say

California’s nearly 40-year-old law requiring lifetime registration of a wide variety of sex offenders is frequently not being obeyed nor effectively enforced, according to Los Angeles police and sheriff’s officers and officials of the state attorney general’s office.

Despite the fact that failure to register is a misdemeanor offense punishable by up to a year in jail, these experts said that thousands of people required to register are not doing so and that many more thousands who have registered at least once are not notifying the authorities when they move.

In addition, they said, a good number of the addresses given by the 63,012 such offenders who are registered in California, according to the latest figures, prove either wrong or nonexistent when checked by law enforcement agencies.

And no one seems to have any clear idea of how many never go to police or sheriff’s offices to register at all, or how many such offenders moving in from out of state have simply ignored the law.

Those required to register for life--unless they get a specific court order to the contrary--are persons convicted of rape, sodomy, lewd and lascivious conduct with children under the age of 14, child molestation, felony exposure, penetration by foreign object, and persons once designated to be mentally disordered sex offenders under a law since repealed.

A criminal identification specialist in the attorney general’s office, John Brodie, said Thursday that no reliable estimate can be made of the number of potential registrants.

He said statistics on the number of sex offense convictions is not a reliable guide, because individuals may have been convicted more than once and there is no telling how many individuals are included within each, say, 1,000 convictions.

He added that there are no statistics on how many people now living in California were convicted of such offenses in other states and have completed their supervised parole, or how many convicted Californians have moved out of state after finishing their parole.

It is also difficult to get exact figures on how many sex offenders recently released from prison or state hospitals are failing to register.

Because of the lack of precise information and the difficulty of getting better information, the law is subject to considerable debate among law enforcement officials.

Question Usefulness

The attorney general’s office, in particular, backed by some police officers, questions whether the lists of registrants are useful enough to justify the cost and effort needed to compile them.

Others, however, including most police and sheriff’s spokesmen, Los Angeles County Supervisor Pete Schabarum and spokesmen for missing and abused children’s groups, said the lists are important as a check against repeaters of horrendous crimes.

The debate is not new.

When then-Gov. Earl Warren signed the Sex Offenders Registration Act in 1947, he had a memo from then-Corrections Department head Richard A. McGee that outlined both sides of the argument.

“There is no group of offenses so revolting to the public mind, and anything serving as a procedure which would control or tend to control these individuals . . . might be viewed as desirable,” he said.

But McGee also warned that there was a very serious question whether such a law would be readily obeyed or easily enforced.

About 50% Register

“We have some reason to believe that no more than 50% . . . of those for whom we receive notifications (that they have been released) actually come in to register,” said Cmdr. William Booth, chief spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department.

But John Kolman, captain in charge of records and statistics for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, said he believes that only 7% to 10% of such offenders for whom the sheriff’s office receives notification are failing to register.

Of those who do register, according to officers who keep the police department’s records, many later fail to keep their addresses current in the files, as they are legally required to do. Particularly after their parole period is finished, thousands are never heard from again.

The assistant director of the attorney general’s criminal investigation and information branch, Fred Wynbrandt, acknowledged in an interview that he had no idea how many wrong addresses are listed for those who are registered throughout California.

Asked about reports that 90% of 4,400 registrants whose names were turned over to a task force investigating the disappearance of Laura Bradbury in San Bernardino County in 1984 were not at the addresses listed for them, Wynbrandt responded:

“I can’t refute the numbers or confirm them. I have no way of saying whether they are correct.”

Tracking Problem

The fundamental problem, Wynbrandt said, is that “We have a people-tracking system of people that don’t want to be tracked.”

The attorney general’s office has, in the meantime, established an informal system under which it keeps a special eye on a relatively few sex offenders it regards as especially dangerous and tips off police agencies as to their whereabouts.

Some of the authorities interviewed said they feel that any effort to correct the situation and to make the registrations comprehensive and up-to-date would require so many officers to work so many hours, taking them away from other tasks, as to be virtually out of the question.

“It’s totally impractical to follow up to the degree that we’d be able to know where they all are,” said Kolman of the sheriff’s office. “It’s a matter of workload and numbers.”

The officer in charge of sex offender registration for the LAPD’s records and identification division, Lt. Jim Sterling, said that last April the Police Department stopped even trying to contact by mail those released sex offenders for whom it had received notices from state institutions of requirements to register and who did not appear voluntarily.

Almost No Response

“Less than 1% of the letters were getting any positive response,” Sterling said, adding that the letters were too much work for the results obtained.

Kolman said, however, that the Sheriff’s Department continues to send mailed reminders to those it is informed must register. If the department does not hear from them, he said, it notifies the sheriff’s station in the area of the address that has been reported for them.

“We do try to follow up within the bounds of reasonableness,” he said.

Another issue, raised particularly by officials in the attorney general’s office, is whether the list is useful enough to justify the cost of compiling it.

The director of the attorney general’s division of law enforcement, Glenn Craig, suggested that a study be done to see whether the sex offender registrations are widely enough used to make them worthwhile.

“We . . . have a history of creating files, projects, for governments to do over a period of years, without regard to cost,” said Craig, a former commissioner of the California Highway Patrol who was recently elected Sacramento County sheriff.

“One of the things that’s happening here is that law enforcement is saying it would take so much effort to get these people registered,” he said. “To bird-dog people that have completed their parole obligation is one of those things that takes a tremendous amount of resources in officer time.

“And the question is, how much is gained? Suppose we had a file that was 100% accurate. What use is that file? How effective is that file in combating the sex crime problem? I’m not sure that anyone has really done that kind of analysis. We don’t know how many crimes we would solve, or prevent.”

Others, however, including police and sheriff’s spokesmen and Los Angeles County Supervisor Schabarum, insist that the registrations are important.

Schabarum recently introduced a resolution asking the Sheriff’s Department to report on the status of enforcement of the sex offender registrations.

Likely to Repeat

“That category of convicted criminal has a propensity to be repetitive in the violation of the law,” the supervisor said this week. “We would be well served if those folks, as the law requires, were kept in hand as to where they are. That’s just good plain common sense. . . . If these rules are not being enforced, it’s a rather serious omission.”

There is a widespread belief that recidivism among sex offenders is more common than for other categories of criminals, but this has not been established, according to Brodie in the attorney general’s office and David Guthman, head of the psychiatric section in the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

Guthman said a state study proposed several years ago to provide such comparisons was never done because no research organization would do it for what the state was willing to pay. He added, however, that there are statistics indicating that those sex offenders who do repeat are repeating very often.

The state Department of Corrections did a limited study in 1983 that drew some comparisons among rates of recidivism for various offenses. It indicated that fewer released sex offenders were being returned to prison within two years than the average for the overall prison population. This survey showed 8.2% of those originally convicted of lewd and lascivious behavior returning and 13.4% of rapists, but 24% of those released from the general prison population.

Most of those interviewed for this story said the sex offender registration files are used more in a reactive than an active sense, with law enforcement officials being more apt to check suspects against the lists than to develop suspects in a crime by using the lists.

‘A Starting Point’

“It’s a tool,” said Lt. Donald J. Foster, chief of the rape unit in the LAPD’s robbery-homicide division. “We use it. Of course, we have found flaws in it. But we use it for elimination purposes . . . and it gives us a starting point in some cases. . . . We think it’s a valuable tool and should be maintained.”

However, Sgt. Ralph W. Bennett in the department’s juvenile division remarked, “Basically, this is a law that works a lot better in rural localities. They’re a different ballgame from a vast urban neighborhood like Los Angeles. This is a setting that affords a lot of anonymity.”

Wynbrandt, in the attorney general’s office, said that his division, which organizes a statewide file of all those registered as the names are sent in by local authorities, has received “well in excess of 1,000” requests for names from local authorities in the first seven months of 1986, despite the problem with wrong addresses.

He said this contrasts with the eight requests for names from the office’s file of about 30,000 serious narcotics violators, who are required to register under another statute.

However, the LAPD’s Sterling said it was his impression that “basically these registrations aren’t used very much. . . . From our prospective, it takes a lot of time and effort to collect the data.”

Registration Procedure

Sterling said each registrant in Los Angeles must come to department headquarters for a process that includes being photographed and fingerprinted and filling out forms. It takes from 40 to 90 minutes.

Those registering must sign a form saying:

“I have been notified of my requirement to register as a convicted sex offender pursuant to Sections 290-290.5 of the California Penal Code. I understand that:

- My responsibility to register as a sex offender is a lifetime requirement.

- I must register within 14 days of coming into any city, county, or city and county in which I am domiciled with the law enforcement agency having jurisdiction over my place of residence.

- I must upon changing my residence inform in writing within 10 days the law enforcement agency with which I last registered.”

California is said by the attorney general’s office to be one of comparatively few states requiring such registrations. Utah has a law modeled on California’s, and Nevada has a law under which all felons must register.

Authorities in New York recently contacted the California attorney general’s office to ask how such registrations could be carried out constitutionally, according to a spokesman for the attorney general’s office here.

‘Needs to Be Improved’

Speaking of the failures in enforcing the registrations, Los Angeles police spokesman Booth said, “We do not think the answer is to abandon the system. We think the system needs to be improved. It might take some research as to the best way to improve it. Some users believe that the answer is a centralized state system, where they are actually registered before they are released (from state institutions).”

The officials in the attorney general’s office reply that that method would not solve the problem of keeping addresses current.

Kolman, in the sheriff’s office, said there had been some discussion about making failure to register or keep addresses current a felony rather than a misdemeanor. But, he added, “I question that. Such people tend to be transient in nature. I think they’ll do as they please anyhow.” Besides, he indicated, many known failures to register are not prosecuted in any case.

Meanwhile, there are at least two other efforts under way to keep tabs on what Craig in the attorney general’s office called “the most notorious” sex offenders, believed most likely to be involved in repeat offenses.

One is the informal process of specially tipping off police--often by telephone--as to the whereabouts of persons recently released from state institutions. This is in addition to the written notifications involved in all such releases.

Blood, Saliva Samples

As to the other effort, Steve White, chief assistant attorney general under Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp, noted that under a recently adopted law that he drafted, those believed to be the most serious offenders are required to give blood and saliva samples to state authorities before they are released.

The plan is to compare these with blood and semen samples that may be obtained as evidence in rapes and other offenses, he said, explaining that saliva and semen have the same typing properties.

REGISTERED SEX OFFENDERS

The state Attorney General’s Office lists these May figures of registered sex offenders by county. They include persons who have been convicted of rape, sodomy, lewd and lascivious conduct with children under the age of 14, of child molestation, of penetration by foreign object and of felony exposure, and persons who had been designated to be mentally disordered sex offenders.

Alameda 2,718 Alpine 0 Amador 29 Butte 301 Calaveras 33 Colusa 28 Contra Costa 1,094 Del Norte 61 El Dorado 126 Fresno 925 Glenn 33 Humboldt 346 Imperial 148 Inyo 29 Kern 1,038 Kings 115 Lake 85 Lassen 41 Los Angeles 26,118 Madera 124 Marin 246 Mariposa 20 Mendocino 137 Merced 272 Modoc 17 Mono 11 Monterey 425 Napa 169 Nevada 65 Orange 3,884 Placer 172 Plumas 28 Riverside 1,636 Sacramento 2,260 San Benito 25 San Bernardino 2,267 San Diego 4,215 San Francisco 2,725 San Joaquin 923 San Luis Obispo 414 San Mateo 1,009 Santa Barbara 656 Santa Clara 3,038 Santa Cruz 340 Shasta 276 Sierra 4 Siskiyou 68 Solano 430 Sonoma 577 Stanislaus 757 Sutter 108 Tehama 86 Trinity 26 Tulare 550 Tuolumne 55 Ventura 1,059 Yolo 241 Yuba 113