Authorities cannot locate an estimated 20% of the nearly 68,000 rapists, child molesters and other California sex offenders who are required under state law to register with local law enforcement officials, casting doubts on the effectiveness of the recently enacted Megan's Law, officials say.
State law requires convicted sex offenders to register annually with local police departments, but police across the state say they have no mechanism for ensuring that these criminals obey the requirement. And even if a sex offender registers, there is no foolproof way to track him, officials say.
Take the case of James Steven Turner.
A former television installer and exterminator, Turner has three convictions for child molestation. He is 47 years old, 5 feet 10 and 145 pounds, with blond hair and brown eyes, and in 1990 he was paroled from state prison after serving six years of his latest sentence for child molestation, according to the state Department of Justice.
Turner ranks as one of the 900 so-called high-risk child molesters in California--felons with multiple convictions for sex crimes against minors--and so police are very interested in watching him.
Authorities say Turner registered with Los Angeles police, giving his address as an apartment in Granada Hills. He was apparently on parole for three uneventful years. In 1995, the state Department of Justice sent postcards to the addresses it had for all registered sex offenders, reminding them of new registration requirements.
The card sent to Turner's listed address came back stamped "undeliverable" and authorities have been searching for him ever since.
Officials say 20% of all the cards statewide were returned as undeliverable, leading them to conclude that one-fifth of the sex offenders were missing.
But that is only the tip of the iceberg, authorities say. The system for monitoring sex offenders in an effort to make them easy to track and control is fraying, officials concede.
"People like this, they don't think like law-abiding citizens, [who] tell DMV when they move," said Jay Johnston, who manages the state Department of Justice's database. "They don't necessarily want people to know where they are, especially policemen."
And, since Megan's Law quietly took effect Sept. 25, some authorities fear that its strongest provision--allowing police to notify the public about the whereabouts of sex offenders--may make it even harder to get them to register and keep authorities advised of their movements.
