Web site with 22 states’ sex offender lists debuts

MERIDIAN, Idaho – Idaho is among 22 states, including Nevada, Utah and Arizona in the West, that on Wednesday were included in a new national sex offender registry Web site coordinated by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Announced May 20 by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the site has taken on additional significance in Idaho with the abduction of two Coeur d’Alene-area children following a triple murder, crimes allegedly committed by a convicted sex offender.

This database linking existing sexual offender Web sites in individual states will make it easier to locate the names and the addresses of people convicted of sex crimes, said law enforcement officials and lawmakers. They’re counting on it to help track sexual offenders who move across state lines.

U.S. Department of Justice officials hope to include sex-offender registries from all 50 states on the database soon.

The Idaho State Police said it has immediate plans for the Web site: To search for the 6 percent of the state’s nearly 3,000 sexual offenders who are registered, but are no longer at the addresses they’ve given, to see if they’ve registered elsewhere or dropped out of sight.

Before this federal push, a person searching for a sex offender by name would have been forced to search the registries in each state if they didn’t know that person’s whereabouts.