NY Senator and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer claims the FBI and the Justice department have failed to provide the national database of sex offenders to local institutions so criminals could be weeded out from the state hiring process, N.Y Post reported.
By: Jared Evan
“While the FBI and the Department of Justice have a big list of every sex offender in the country, they don’t let our schools, our after-schools, our camps use the list,” the Post reported Schumer saying.
“This is not just for kids,” Schumer added. “Elderly people are often abused because they’re sort of old and less able to protect themselves. Seniors centers as well.”
The Division of Criminal Justice Services is responsible for maintaining the sex offender registry, which provides New Yorkers information about sex offenders living in their communities. The DCJS updates information regularly, but information can change quickly, Patch reported.
Critics say because each state separately runs their own registers, people can slip thru the cracks.
When you click on the registry’s website, you have three ways to search for information: last name, county or ZIP Code. You can eliminate anyone who is not at large by checking the Incarcerated, ICE Custody and In Custody boxes.
The Child Protection Improvements Act, which was supposed to go into effect in March, was meant to give state and local institutions access to the federal database so they could weed out sex offenders and other criminals while making new hires, The Post reported.
Schumer also released a stern letter — co-signed by US Rep. Adam Schiff — he sent to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General William Barr, demanding a reply by Dec. 1 explaining why the law wasn’t implemented and a timeline for when it would b, The Post reported.
The FBI and DOJ have a master list of 800,000 sex offenders nationwide, but it is currently off limits to local and state officials, he said.
The Child Protection Improvement Act was passed in March 2018 to address the loophole and was due to go into effect this past March — but it hasn’t happened.
The FBI and DOJ did not immediately respond to requests for comment, according to the Post
The majority of states and the federal government apply systems based on conviction offenses only, where registration requirement is triggered as a consequence of finding of guilt, or pleading guilty, to a sex offense regardless of the actual gravity of the crime. The trial judge typically can not exercise judicial discretion with respect to registration, Wikipedia researched.
Depending on jurisdiction, offenses requiring registration range in their severity from public urination or adolescent sexual experimentation with peers, to violent sex offenses. In some states offenses such as unlawful imprisonment may require sex offender registration.
The most comprehensive legislation related to the supervision and management of sex offenders is the Adam Walsh Act (AWA), named after Adam Walsh, who was kidnapped from a Florida shopping mall and killed in 1981, when he was 6 years old. The AWA was signed on the 25th anniversary of his abduction; efforts to establish a national registry was led by John Walsh, Adam’s father.
According to The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children there are 859,500 registered sex offenders in the US as of 2016.
