Investigative: Sex offenders at large?

Published: 9/17/2007 6:01 AM
Some manage to elude police struggling to keep track of them
By James Fuller

The whereabouts of more than 8 percent of the sex offenders in Illinois -- and a good portion of those in the suburbs -- is uncertain, a Daily Herald analysis shows.

An examination of the state's sex offender database showed 1,667 registered sex offenders living in 99 suburbs in the newspaper's circulation area.

In a one-day snapshot, authorities listed 143 of those offenders "non-compliant," meaning they're missing or failed to hit their deadline to check in with police.

The number of non-compliant offenders ranges from only 10, or 3.3 percent, in DuPage County to 865, or 20 percent, in Cook County.

In Lake County, it's 15.2 percent; in Kane County, 6.9 percent; and in McHenry County, 6.2 percent.

Joseph Birkett, DuPage County state's attorney, said those figures are worrisome.

"The bottom line is they are within a group of very dangerous people who are very likely to re-offend," he said. "We need to know who they are and where they are."

All adult sex offenders in Illinois are listed on the Internet with a photo and address. But sex offenders tend to be highly transient because of the stigma attached to their crimes.

It's tough for many offenders to find housing. And because of the sheer number of offenders police are asked to track, some sex offenders vanish into the shadows.

Statewide, there are more than 22,000 registered sex offenders. Of the 1,794 who are non-compliant, roughly 20 percent are classified as sexual predators, sexually dangerous or sexually violent, or are convicted murderers of children.

No home, more roam

Tracking problems begin even before sex offenders are released from Illinois prisons.

The state bans them from living within 500 feet of schools and other places children gather, resulting in a backlog of inmates seeking legal housing. Thus, some sex offenders ready for parole and mandatory psychological therapy are kept in prison until their sentence expires.

"It would be better to have them out in the community, having them monitored, rather than stay with us and get out with absolutely nothing," said Alyssa Williams-Schafer, state corrections department sex offender services coordinator.

The inability to find legal housing may be one reason sex offenders vanish.

For example, when Iowa increased its 500-foot law to 2,000 feet, registration compliance fell from 90 percent to 50 percent.

Which way did he go?

Once sex offenders are released, more problems begin.

On the streets, the offender is either on electronic monitoring, released on parole without monitoring, or on his own after serving a full prison term.

The Illinois Department of Corrections and probation officers oversee about 5,200 sex offenders on the streets. Roughly 90 percent of them are tracked by a GPS device, which makes a big difference, Williams-Schafer said.

"Our sex offenders rarely disappear," she said.

GPS monitoring is gaining popularity in some states, such as California. It's not foolproof; many GPS devices rely on sex offenders to recharge the battery each night.

Birkett said he favors widespread and long-term use of GPS to track sex offenders. It hasn't happened in Illinois because the devices are expensive, and the bulky device tends to be a scarlet letter.

Still, Birkett said GPS will gain popularity if the state forces the offenders to pay for the devices. That's roughly $7 to $10 a day.

Beating the system

All the remaining sex offenders in Illinois are monitored by local police. The most dangerous offenders must register every three months and whenever they move or change jobs. Yet it's still at this level where most sex offenders go missing.

"I'd like to tell you that every person that's been convicted and needs to register has registered, but that's probably not true," said detective Sgt. Dan Cott of the Geneva Police Department.

The state sex offender Web site shows Geneva had 31 registered sex offenders, with eight non-compliant.

Cott said that's misleading because the Kane County jail is in Geneva and that may be an offender's last valid address. That said, Geneva police conduct regular spot checks, but there are ways to beat the system.

For example, some of the spot checks involve only calling a landlord to ask if a person is still a registered tenant at an address. There may be no face-to-face confirmation that the sex offender is actually there.

There are other gaps.

"Is it possible they can change their jobs and not notify us? Sure. That's kind of a loophole," Cott said.

Waukegan's sex offender numbers also stand out. The city has some of the highest totals of non-compliant sex offenders in the state. Out of Waukegan's 159 sex offenders, 40 are non-compliant. In comparison, Aurora has twice the population, but only seven of its 181 sex offenders are non-compliant.

"We're one of the largest cities in the county; we're the county seat, and we've got the jail," Waukegan Deputy Chief Mark McCormick said. "A lot of people get paroled here."

Despite the department's active sex offender registration unit, Waukegan sees many sex offenders fall off the map when they move and don't tell the police where they're going. By the time a sex offender misses his registration date, it may be long after he's gone.

"I think that's pretty common," McCormick said. "There's a label and stigma that's attached to the sex offense itself. They don't want that label to follow them. They think they can escape it. And we go out and obtain warrants on these people."

Birkett said a recurring problem in DuPage County is sex offenders getting their names legally changed, making them harder to track. His office is investigating how to close that loophole.

Short on tools

Some local police departments are also at a technological disadvantage to their peers in other states.

No local police department interviewed had a system that allows it to run searches to see where sex offenders may establish water, electrical or other utility service for a new residence.

But state police have the ability to use credit, employment and utility searches to track offenders. Still, it can take hours or years to find them, said Craig Burge, of the Illinois State Police.

"Imagine taking a segment of the population around 22,000 people and trying to monitor and track their every movement, every employment, every school they enroll at," Burge said. "It becomes overwhelming at times."

State police post the names and photos of missing sex offenders on the Internet specifically to cause concern among the general public.

"A lot of our tracking and monitoring is based on the general public," Burge said. "They know more about their communities than we'll ever know."

But a missing sex offender poses the greatest risk of attacking another child, said Dr. Mark Brenzinger, a clinical psychologist in Schaumburg who's treated and evaluated sex offenders.

Brenzinger favors a biometric identification system for sex offenders, such as retina scans, that police could use to pull up criminal history and registration status during traffic stops or arrests.

"We have a very reactive system," Brenzinger said. "We need to be proactive. There's a lot of work that needs to be done on the beginning end of the criminal justice system. We can't reward sex offenders when they break the law by giving them extended registration requirements or probation or a slap on the wrist.

"They need to feel the full weight of the government."