Read More About Offender Watch Here
See the email we sent (at the end) to this sheriff at "dbussey@rcso.org" on the lie they have on their Offender Watch web site. Hopefully they will change it, but I seriously doubt it.
08/31/2011
By Meredith Armstrong
Phenix City - The electronic Offenderwatch program is designed so that anyone can enter an address and instantly know where sex offenders live and work. That knowledge is something Russell County Sheriff Heath Taylor said his department is catching up on.
Sheriff Heath Taylor said, “Us getting on board with this is kind of following suit with everybody else around us that has offered this same program to their community already.”
Alabama Governor Robert Bentley signed a law that went into effect July 1st that puts tougher restrictions on sex offenders. The law now requires the offenders to register with the municipality where they live. In the past sex offenders were only required to register with the law enforcement of the county.
Taylor said, “The last thing I want to happen in this county is for a child to be offended by a registered sex offender and we didn't know who they were or where they were.”
 |
| Offender Watch and sheriff's continue to spread this lie! |
The computer program also allows you to sign up for email alerts to get the latest information within your neighborhood. Sheriff Taylor said the program will bring awareness to the nearly 160 sex offenders in Russell County.
- The Offender Watch program comes with a generic presentation, which the sheriff departments never change, and it has the lie "50% of sex offenders re-offend," and you can read more about this here. And as expected, this county has the same lie, see photo. And here for more accurate recidivism studies.
The sheriff said, “I think that this type of program is going to allow our community to at least have some knowledge of the registered sex offenders that live in your community and live in your neighborhood.”
Part of the new law requires homeless sex offenders to check in with law enforcement agencies even though they don't have a permanent address.
The Muscogee County Sheriff's Department is using the same system. Their database said there are 273 registered sex offenders in Columbus.
Here is the email we sent to this sheriff's office:
I noticed on your Offender Watch web site, there is a presentation, which is here:
http://communitynotification.com/presentations/al/russell/russell.html
Why do you have the lie "50% of sex offenders re-offend?"
This is a known lie, and more accurate studies, which we have linked on our blog, can be found here:
http://tinyurl.com/SOIRecidivism
Offender Watch comes with a generic presentation, the one you are using, and should be changed to be more accurate. We have documented this, on our blog, here:
http://sexoffenderissues.blogspot.com/2010/06/urgent-offender-watch-spreading.html
Why do you not change this? This is just helping keep the sex offender moral panic and mass hysteria alive.
Also, why do you not have a WARNING, similar to the one embedded below, about misusing the registry to harass ex-offenders?
Sincerely,
Sex Offender Issues
http://sexoffenderissues.blogspot.com
