11A - REGISTERED SEX OFFENDERS - Laserfiche WebLink

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Santa Ana Police Department Memo To: Chief Paul M. Walters via COC From: Sgt. James Schnabl Date: May 10, 2006 Re: Staff Report on the Sexual Offender Ordinance The City of Santa Ana has approximately 380 sex registrants living within the city limits. Each sex registrant is required to register with the Santa Ana Police Department one time a year within five days of their birthday. Should the registrant be arrested between registration periods, they must reregister with the police department after their release from custody. Anytime the registrant moves, the registrant must notifY the local police agency of the new address. This notification provides the community with information necessary to protect itself. The information is especially critical with the recent addition of the Megan's law database on the Internet. However, a significant gap in the protection of the community remains. Bureau of Justice Statistics Director Dr. Jan M. Chaiken reported that there were an estimated 95,000 sex offenders in state prisons within the United States. Approximately 60,000 (63%) of sex offenders likely committed their sex crimes against children under the age of 18. A significant percentage of the sex crimes involved a victim under 13 years old. Dr. Chaiken's results are similar to the results observed by the Santa Ana Police Department. Of the 380 sex registrants currently supervised by the SAPD Sex Registration Unit, 264 (70%) subjects were incarcerated for victimizing children under the age of 18 years old. Sex offenders have been demonstrated to have a higher recidivism rate than any other criminal. A study of 9,691 men released from prison after serving time for a sex crime were compared to 262,420 men released for non sex related crimes. All of the subjects were released in 1994 from 15 different states including California. · Released sex offenders were 4 times more likely to be rearrested for sex crimes within 3 years (5.3% vs. 1.3%) · The more prior arrests the subject had, the greater the chance he would be rearrested for a sex crime · 4,295 of the 9,691 released sex offenders were in prison for child molestation. 60% ofthe subjects had victimized a child under 14 · Released child molesters were most likely to be rearrested for another child molest during the 3 year period after release (3.3% compared to .5% for the comparison group) o Subjects with more than 1 previous child molest arrest were most likely to be rearrested for child molesting (7.3%) . Page 1 11A-1