Sex Offender registry not always accurate

The Walker’s Deluxe Motel on East Main Street, operated by Paresh Patel and his parents, has been a family-run business for 26 years.

Currently, all but two of the motel’s 20 units are rented by temporary workers assisting with an outage at Farley Nuclear Plant. That’s why the proprietors were shocked to learn that the National Sex Offender Registry showed three registered sex offenders living at the hotel.

“Here is our records. You can look,” Patel said Monday.

No sex offenders were living at the Walker’s Deluxe as of Monday, and the Patels say no sex offenders have tried to stay there in a long time. The registry also lists seven registered sex offenders living at the nearby American Inn, but only two could be verified according to police and the hotel owner.

The National Sex Offender Registry was created in the late 1990s and enhanced in 2006 in order to keep residents aware of registered sex offenders living in their area. The law requires sex offenders to submit an address to the sheriff’s department of the county they will be living in 180 days prior to release from prison. If the address is not within 2,000 feet of a school or daycare, the address is approved. Offenders are then required to physically register the address with police when released from jail and notify police when they plan to move.

The law also requires nearby residents to be notified when a sex offender moves into the area. Residents near the two hotels became alarmed when they began receiving multiple notices of offenders moving to the hotels. That led Dothan City Commissioner Paul Lee to urge the city to ask legislators to pass a law barring sex offenders from living near each other.

However, it appears the registry is not always accurate.

“Sometimes we don’t know,” Patel said. “Sometimes we rent a room, then get a notice in the mail that a person is a sex offender and we go to see, then they are already gone. We can not ask a person when they rent a room if they are a sex offender. If we find out, if we get a notice, and they come back to rent a room, we do not allow it. But we do not have anyone here that is a sex offender, have not had in quite some time.”

Yet, the registry lists three sex offenders as living there, which makes one wonder about the accuracy of the registry.

The State of Alabama maintains the state portion of the National Sex Offender Registry website. It compiles information submitted from law enforcement agencies throughout Alabama and updates the information in real time when it is received, according to Martha Earnhardt, spokesperson for the Alabama Department of Public Safety.

However, there could be lag time between an offender’s move or status change and the time the website gets updated. In fact, the registry includes a lengthy disclaimer that must be read before viewing. It states, in part:

“It is possible that information accessed or obtained through this website may not reflect current residences, employment, school attendance, or other information regarding such individuals, and users are forewarned that it is incumbent upon them to verify information.”

State law requires an offender’s address to be verified only every six months. A local program, known as SOAP (Sexual Offender Accountability Program) attempts to verify addresses more often by assigning an officer to an offender, but it isn’t foolproof. The Dothan Police Department is responsible for tracking sex offenders in the city limits and the sheriff’s office is responsible for tracking offenders living in the county.

Family members have been known to register addresses for offenders and offenders have been known to register one address and stay at another. There is no way to know exactly where an offender is once his or her address is registered, until it is checked again. If an offender is found not to reside at an address for three consecutive days, then he is considered no longer living there and, when found, can be arrested for failure to notify. Adding to residents’ concerns is the fact that residents are required to be notified when an offender moves into the area, but not when an offender moves out.

There are currently more than 8,450 registered sex offenders on the state website in Alabama. Another 4,000+ are kept in a state database, but not on the registry because they may be juvenile offenders, or come under another lawful exception. The only time an offender is removed from the database or website is upon death or receiving a pardon from the governor.