Law enforcement knocked on more than 100 doors in Lowndes County over the last two weeks as part of a county-wide address compliance check on registered sex offenders.
Gulf Coast Regional Fugitive Task Force, a task force run by the U.S. Marshals Service and made up of marshals and local law enforcement, handles compliance checks in counties a few times a year, said Jeff Woodfin, chief deputy U.S. marshal in Mississippi’s northern district.
“We go in and check all the addresses,” Woodfin said. “So somebody’s supposed to be living at 123 Fake Street Here, and they report that (as) their place of residence, we go and knock on that door and see if they are indeed living there.”
There are about 8,000 registered sex offenders in Mississippi, about 2,500 of whom reside in one of the northern district’s 37 counties, Woodfin said. Their offenses range from statutory rape to sexual battery and various other offenses — and all are required to register with the Mississippi Department of Public Safety. Every 90 days, offenders must go to Highway Patrol offices to be photographed and confirm residence, employment and other information with DPS. Failing to report — or failing to give accurate information — is a felony offense.
Failure to report
In fact, failure to report is actually more common than offenders committing and being convicted of another crime, sexual or otherwise, said Tony Cooper, an investigator with the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office.
DPS keeps the information on the Mississippi Sex Offender Registry, where offenders are listed by county, along with the offense, date and place of conviction and addresses where the offender has resided in the county.
Of course, someone has to make sure that all that information is accurate. That’s where the address compliance checks come in, Cooper said. A team of marshals and local deputies breaks into groups, and those groups spend a few days knocking on offenders’ doors throughout the county.
“We don’t just take the person’s word for it,” Woodfin said. “We look for signs that they are indeed living at that location. If they’re not … then after we finish the compliance operation, we go into the enforcement part of the operation where we issue a warrant for their arrest.”
Signs they look for include whether the offender’s vehicle is in the driveway, whether his or her mail is delivered there or whether an offender’s clothes are there. Officers usually come back a few times in case the offender is at work or otherwise out when marshals and deputies knock the first time, Woodfin said.
“When we go in and check, if we find obvious signs that their behavior has not changed — for example you go in and find that there’s child pornography or something that is just right there in the open — then, of course, we take other actions,” Woodfin said.
All offenders treated the same
And at least when it comes to the compliance checks, all offenders are treated the same, Cooper said.
“If it’s an 18-year-old who had a 15-year-old girlfriend and they got charged with statutory rape, as far as the sex offender registry, that person is just like somebody who raped a 3-year-old child,” Cooper said. “We treat them all the same. They follow the same rules and everything.”
For the most part, Cooper said, offenders are compliant, but there are always at least a small handful who either don’t live at the registry’s listed address or are violating some other rule for sex offenders. For example, under Mississippi codes certain offenders, including those convicted of rape or sexual battery, are not allowed to live within 3,000 feet of a school or child care facility.
“A couple of years ago we had a guy that was living in another county like two doors down from a school,” Cooper said. “He didn’t want those people knowing he was a sex offender, so he was still using an address here and living up there. We catch them every once in a while. Or they’ll do something to try and keep anybody from being able to go on the Lowndes County part of the site and seeing that they’re there.
“Just like any other criminal they’ve got tricks and they try and pull them,” he added. “It’s our responsibility to catch them.”
Registered for life
Once an offender is on the registry, they never get off — a good policy when applied to someone convicted of rape, local attorney Carrie Jourdan said, but a harsh one when applied to other types of sex offenses.
“I think the sex offender registry is an important tool to protect communities and young people, but like all tools it should be wisely used,” Jourdan said.
The Legislature deemed the registry treat all offenders equally as it pertains to permanent placement and adherence to reporting standards — whether sexual battery or statutory rape. Jourdan argues, however, there needs to be leniency for teenagers who have consenting sex with other teenagers.
“We’re trying to discourage underage sex and underage pregnancy,” Jourdan said. “…So we have taken the position of underage people can’t consent.”
She suggested teenage offenders of statutory rape be only temporarily on the registry or that there be a way for certain classes of offender to petition judges to take them off after a certain amount of time. The Legislature could even leave it up to the judge to determine whether the offender must register in the first place.
Still, even that comes with issues that would need to be sorted out legally. An 18-year-old having consensual sex with a 16- or 15-year-old, for example, is different than an 18-year-old having “consensual” sex with a 13-year-old, she said.
“Part of the difficulty is where to draw the line,” she said. “If we have to have a line, I would prefer it if we could protect underage people, male and female.”
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