A legislative committee formed to address issues relating to sex-offender notices will recommend to the Legislature that an existing state agency be designated or a new agency be created to handle all questions regarding community notification and the risk assessments of sex offenders.

The recommendation was prompted by a survey of 28 law enforcement agencies by the Sex Offender Management Association that showed risk-assessment scores for the same sex offender varied among agencies nearly 90 per cent of the time and 23 per cent of the time the variation was enough to change the threat level assigned to the offender.

“I think this info is kind of stunning,” said Rep. Deb Gullett, R-11, the co-chair of the Community Notification Guidelines Committee. “Someone could be a Level 3 [sex offender, the most dangerous] in Florence and a Level 1 in Phoenix.”

By state law, the agency responsible for supervising a sex offender must perform a risk assessment within 72 hours of his or her release from prison. Based on information about the offender’s criminal history, treatment and current living situation, the risk score will determine the offender’s threat category. The public must be notified within 45 days.

Detective Mark Armistead, an officer with the Phoenix Police Department’s sex-offender notification unit, explained the risk assessment survey to the committee at its Nov. 10 meeting. He is a member of the Sex Offender Management Association, a coalition of representatives of enforcement agencies.

He said the survey was sent to 87 agencies but only 28 replied, which he attributed to the fact that the agencies had only two months to complete the survey, not enough time, he said, to collect an adequate sample of responses.

Mr. Armistead said the biggest problem is that agencies do not use uniform risk-assessment criteria.

“What we found,” he said, “is people were trying to use discretion on how they scored the risk assessment when deciding whether to notify the community.”

Such a wide variation in scores in such a small sample was surprising, Mr. Armistead said, and the discrepancies in scoring affected sex offenders of all levels.

“It surprised us to find out the disagreement was across the board,” he said.

The committee unanimously approved the recommendation that a centralized agency – some suggested the Department of Public Safety or the Department of Corrections – be given oversight of risk assessment testing procedures. Such an agency could provide training for local police departments on scoring risk assessments and could keep an offender’s previous scores on file.

“I think the training would lead to more consistent scores, instead of interpretation coming in,” said John Bell, a committee member.

Next Session

In other business, the committee approved a recommendation that unless the attorney general rules on how to apply last session’s notification act, legislation be drafted for 2005 to clarify how the act is to be applied.

The act (S1291, Chap. 308, Laws 2004) was sponsored by Sen. Dean Martin, and he addressed concerns the committee had regarding wording of the law, which authorizes law enforcement agencies to notify a community of the presence of a sex offender who committed his crime before the federal Megan’s Law took effect.

Megan’s Law, signed by President Clinton May 17, 1996, requires states to register individuals convicted of sex crimes against children and notify citizens when offenders move into their neighborhoods.

The federal enactment governs notification for post-Megan crimes, but courts have ruled that states can impose their own notification requirements for pre-1996 crimes. Mr. Martin’s bill has been interpreted by some to require, rather than simply to permit, law enforcement agencies to take on the considerable cost of notifying residents of all pre-1996 offenders.

Mr. Martin said such a mandate was not what he had in mind. “The original intent was to provide law enforcement the option to do it,” he said. “We wanted to have this as slow and as phased an implementation as we could.”

He said there are an estimated 10,000 sex offenders in Arizona and only 2,000 committed their crimes after 1996. The remaining 8,000, he said, will require risk assessments before any notification goes out.

“I don’t know how many law enforcement agencies have even considered the size of the pre-’96 population, in terms of notification,” he said.

The committee also approved a recommendation that the Legislature study whether a process should be created in which certain sex offenders could be exempted from community notification. —