OKLAHOMA CITY – Legislators held an interim study on needed changes to the Oklahoma Sex Offender Registry.
State Rep. Ross Ford (R-Broken Arrow) hosted the study before the House Public Safety Committee.
“Society is safer when we know where sex offenders are,” Ford said. “One issue is language in that it allows a sex offender 72 hours from the time they are released from Department of Corrections custody to register an address. Some don’t bother to register; others say they just arrived in town and the 72 hasn’t started yet. We need to make sure they are following the rules.”
Ford said he also wanted to look at language for homeless offenders, which currently says they can give an approximate location for their whereabouts. That is too vague for the courts, he said, and approximate can be five miles or 100 miles.
Ford also asked presenters to discuss the current level system that ranks sex offense crimes by severity and to discuss the pros and cons of possibly releveling after a number of years have elapsed from the original sentence.
Another area of concern, Ford said, is protection for senior citizens.
“We currently focus a lot of our efforts on protecting children by not allowing sex offenders to live in proximity to schools or daycares,” he said. “We need to consider protections for those in our nursing homes and other places that serve senior citizens.”
Presenters spoke of the challenges of not knowing where sex offenders actually live or can be located and the lack of manpower to track them.
The 2,000 foot restriction on living requirements were supposed to keep the public and their families safe, Ford said, but with the limited housing options available, more offenders are refusing to register with the local law enforcement and living among the public unmonitored.
Ford said his goal is to rewrite statutes to ensure that each sex offender is registered, and that law enforcement knows where they are located so they can best keep the public safe.