Registry of violent felons being pushed
Sheila Vaculik still remembers how she felt when she learned her daughter was gone.
“As Sierah’s mother, I knew there was something seriously wrong and time was of the essence. We called 911 and reported her missing,” Vaculik told the Ohio
Senate Judiciary Committee in Columbus recently.
On a July evening last year, Sierah Joughin, a 20-yearold University of Toledo student, left her Fulton County home on a bicycle for her boyfriend’s house. She never made it. Volunteers and authorities began searching that night, and law enforcement checked on registered sex offenders living in the area.
Sierah’s body was found a few days later in a shallow grave a few miles from home.
The man charged in her death, a neighbor, was not on the state sex-offender registry but had served time for a violent crime.
Vaculik wants Ohio to create a registry that would track violent felons. “I am only asking that this be considered so the ending may be different for the next family,” she told the Senate committee.
Senate Bill 67, introduced by state Sens. Cliff Hite, R-Findlay, and Randy Gardner, R-Bowling Green, as “Sierah’s Law,” would direct the Ohio attorney general’s office to establish such a registry. It would track those convicted of crimes including murder, aggravated murder, voluntary manslaughter, kidnapping and abduction. There’s also language in the bill to include attempted violent crimes and conspiracy to commit or complicity in committing any of those crimes.
“Perhaps we can save some lives,” Hite said in an interview with The Dispatch.
Some experts contend that the registries do more harm than good, serving as a potential barrier to those who have served prison terms and are trying to reenter society.
“It doesn’t reduce crime. It doesn’t make people safer,” said Emily Horowitz, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at St. Francis College in Brooklyn.
In the 1990s, many states created sex-offender registries with widespread support. The push to create registries often was tied to high-profile cases in which children were harmed.
“These are terrible cases, and you don’t want them to happen to again. But they’re really, really rare,” Horowitz said.
A Bureau of Justice Statistics study released last year examined recidivism in 30 states from 2005 to 2010. Of the 7,621 people released in 2005 after serving sentences for homicides, 2.1 percent were arrested in the killing of someone else within five years. A little more than half were arrested on some kind of charge.
“I don’t want people who have honestly been rehabilitated to be hurt by this bill, but there’s a chance they may be on the registry,” Hite said.
Horowitz said funding that would pay for a registry should instead go to help offenders re-enter society. That, she said, would make it less likely for them to reoffend. “You want them to do well,” she said.
There are various state registries. For example, Tennessee has a meth registry. Utah has a whitecollar-crime registry. Ohio also has an arson registry, but it’s accessible to only investigators.
Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Montana and Oklahoma are among states that track violent offenders.
Indiana has had its registry since 2007. Sheriff’s offices are supposed to keep tabs on violent offenders and sex offenders. Indiana defines violent offenders as those convicted of not only murder and voluntary manslaughter but also attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
Most of the violent offenders are required to be on the list for 10 years after release from prison. But if the victim of a violent crime was a child or there was more than one victim, offenders are placed on the list for life, said Brent Myers, director of Registration and Victim Services for the Indiana Department of Corrections.
In Marion County, Indiana, home to Indianapolis, 11 deputies keep tabs on 1,660 sex offenders and 11 violent offenders. (Indiana’s law affects only those who committed crimes after it took effect.)
Cpl. Chris Jaussaud, who works as part of the Sex or Violent Offender Registry at that county’s sheriff’s office, verifies information on offenders and is in contact with them at least twice a year. Jaussaud said he gets to know the offenders and their families. A small percentage get in trouble again.
“I would like to think the registry is good,” he said. “I think it’s important for people to know who’s around them.”
Here in Franklin County, four detectives were keeping tabs on 1,755 sex offenders as of February.
More than 100 people a year are convicted in Franklin County of the violent crimes outlined in the bill, according to data from the clerk of courts for the past three years. That doesn’t include convictions for attempting or conspiring to commit those crimes.
Adding violent offenders to the mix probably would require more deputies.
“Money is tight right now,” Hite said. “We all know that. It will be an interesting debate.”
Dan Tierney, a spokesman for the Ohio attorney general’s office, said, “In addition to meeting with members of the General Assembly, our office has had meetings with judges, sheriffs and prosecutors about the creation of a violent-offender registry. While every group is concerned about budgets and unfunded mandates, we have not heard any pointed opposition from these groups.”
It costs the attorney general’s office $544,000 each year, plus personnel costs, to manage the state’s sexoffender registry. Adding a violent-offender registry would cost an estimated $350,000 to establish and operate it the first year. Managing the registry in subsequent years is estimated to cost about $175,000 a year, plus personnel costs.
Among the groups pledging support are the Buckeye State Sheriffs’ Association. Wood County Sheriff Mark Wasylyshyn, who is president of the association, said the approximately 150 sex offenders in his county are monitored by one deputy. “To me, knowledge is power,” he said.
At the same time, it’s questionable whether registries prevent crimes.
In Columbus, Ohio State University student Reagan Tokes was abducted, raped and killed in February. The man charged in the crimes is a convicted sex offender who was released from prison on Nov. 13 and was wearing an ankle monitor.
Vaculik said she is still haunted by her daughter’s case and wonders whether a registry would have made a difference.
“Would my daughter have been found Wednesday alive instead of Friday in a shallow grave 7 miles from our home?” she told the committee. “I will never know the answer to that question, and that is the subject of my nightmares.”