BUMP ON ‘FAILURES’ OF SEX OFFENDER REGISTRY BOARD,
The state’s auditor is expected to deliver scathing testimony before a joint legislative committee today on what she contends is a chronic failure by the state’s Sex Offender Registry Board to track convicted offenders.
“One thing that can be done is the Sex Offender Registry Board can do its job, frankly,” Auditor Suzanne Bump said yesterday on Herald Radio, “which is to use the other sources of data that are available to it, which they are required by law to use to keep track (of sex offenders).”
A recent audit found the registry did not have current addresses for 1,769 convicted sex offenders, of which 936 were never classified.
“These failures mean the public has no way of determining if individuals who pose a significant risk of reoffending live in their communities,” Bump’s office said of the audit, “putting public safety at risk.”
Bump will testify today before the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security.
“(The board is) supposed to have working relationships with, for instance, the Registry of Motor Vehicles, the Department of Transitional Assistance, other social service agencies like Mass Health,” Bump said, adding the agency should also be working with law enforcement to track sex offenders who move or do not have a permanent address.
“The law tells them to do this and yet they weren’t using this information kept by other state agencies to identify where the sex offenders are,” Bump said. “They were taking unfortunately a rather laissez-faire attitude about it and putting the entire onus on the sex offender rather than taking some responsibility themselves for holding the sex offender accountable.”
SORB spokesman Felix Browne said the burden to register falls on the sex offender.
“The SORB works diligently with a range of state agencies and police departments to bring offenders who haven’t met their obligations to register into compliance,” Browne told the Herald. “SORB takes its mission seriously and has 9,600 victims who they remain in contact with during the classification process.”
Browne also said SORB exchanges information “on a regular basis” with numerous state agencies and has ongoing relationships with local and state police, the U.S. Marshal’s Service, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“Each year the SORB conducts more than a million name searches through its sex offender registry information process with agencies that are in search of offender information as part of their screening process,” Browne said.