Strict rules for sex offenders to start Sunday

As trick-or-treaters plan their costumes and prepare for Halloween night, the staff at the Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) are doing preparation of their own to ensure communities stay safe.

TDOC will start Operation Blackout, a period of strict rules and increased canvassing for registered sex offenders, on Sunday. For 10 days leading up to Halloween, department officers will conduct full searches of the homes of Tennessee’s roughly 3,300 sex offenders.

Madison County falls in District 60, a seven-county district that oversees about 196 sex offenders. West Region Specialized Caseloads Director Jeremy Buckelew said teams will visit each individual in the 10 days before Halloween and do “knock-and-talk” checks with about 40 “highrisk” offenders in the district on Halloween night.

“Every year we do this in October, and if you see our officers out, just know that we’re out enhancing public safety and doing everything that we can to make sure that the communities are safer,” Buckelew said.

District 60 covers Tipton, Haywood, McNairy, Chester, Madison, Fayette and Hardeman counties.

On Halloween, sex offenders under correction department supervision are barred from handing out candy, having Halloween decor, attending Halloween functions and having their porch lights on. They also must adhere to a strict curfew between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m., Buckelew said.

TDOC does compliance checks and property searches throughout the year based on individual offenders’ rules of supervision. October and April are the only months that they send teams out to check on every offender. But these checks are no different than the routine random searches officers usually perform, Buckelew said.

“This is a normal part of [the officers’] job,” he said. “They do random searches on offenders based on the supervision standard requirements that they have. So we focus on everybody in October, but they’re doing this day in and day out every day, so that helps make it run a whole lot smoother.”

Tennessee is one of a handful of states that prohibit sex offenders from handing out candy on Halloween, including Missouri, Texas, Ohio and North Carolina. Law enforcement officers in California conduct similar compliance checks on Halloween night in a program called Operation Boo.

Buckelew said TDOC keeps a close eye on offenders the other 364 days of the year, so Halloween night is just another compliance check.

“At the department, our mission is to provide effective supervision and enhance public safety,” Buckelew said. “We’re just making sure that these offenders aren’t out doing things that they shouldn’t be doing; 97 percent of them are going to be compliant, and we have no problems out of the big majority of them.”

TDOC also recommends several general safety practices for trick-or-treaters on Halloween. These include accompanying children on Halloween night or knowing what route they will take if they go out without an adult. The department also recommends checking the TBI Sex Offender Registry before going out to know which houses to avoid.

People also should report any suspicious activity and call TDOC at 1-844-TDC-FIND if they see any sex offenders at Halloween events, according to the department.

Buckelew said if people in the community see TDOC officers out on Halloween night, they shouldn’t be afraid to approach them.

“If they see one of our officers and have a question [or] some information that we need to know, don’t be afraid to share that information and let us know what’s going on,” he said.

Contact Cassandra Stephenson at ckstephens@jacksonsun.com or 731-694-7261.