Inaccuracies overstated, corrections official says

DRAPER — Reports that addresses for as many as two-thirds of Utah's convicted sex offenders are incorrect are grossly exaggerated, a Utah Department of Corrections spokesman said Wednesday.

"Sixty percent of the people on the registry are incarcerated, on probation or parole, so we're in contact with them every week and we know where they are," Jack Ford said. "Most of the other 40 percent are in compliance as well."

Ford said addresses for some offenders become incorrect when offenders move in from other states or move without notifying the department, but he said such cases represent only a small part of the population of registered offenders.

"The law puts the requirement on the offender to tell us when they move," he said.

The concern over missing offenders arose this week when www.mapsexoffenders.com, a public site that mapped the addresses of registered sex offenders, shut down because the site's designers said they had been informed by the state that many of the addresses on the state's registry, possibly up to two-thirds, were incorrect.

Ford said UDC did meet with the site's designers on Monday, at their request, but the two-thirds number did not come from officials.

"When we talked, we told them that some people have moved and we're not sure where they are," Ford said. "It was not a big issue, but the two-thirds figure never came up."

Ford said UDC receives around 15 e-mails a day from citizens with tips about offenders who have moved. Sometimes the tipper is only aware that the offender moved to another city; sometimes it is someone who bought a home from an offender but still has the address listed as the residence of a registered sex offender.

Ford said there is a team of agents who follow those tips and work to track down offenders who do not update their information.

"The law doesn't require us to enforce the (registration) statute, but we are proactive and we want to keep the information accurate," he said. "Sometimes it's a three-week process because the agent may have a caseload of around 100 names, but we will get it done."

Ford also denied reports that UDC does not provide information about the registry to organizations that request it.

"When we get a request (for information), they are always answered," he said.