Texas sex-offender registry plagued with problems

In a two-part series Emily Ramshaw of The Dallas Morning News reports on the state of Texas' sex offender registry, which is ladden with inaccuracy. Some experts blame an ever-increasing database without the manpower to maintain the information. " The result? Vigilant parents and community groups are relying on faulty or incomplete data to protect themselves. Some homeowners are targeted as sex offenders because their addresses mistakenly appear in the database. And hundreds of the region's sex offenders are avoiding registration or filing false information with law enforcement agencies - some to hide in the crowd, others to re-offend."A graphic of their findings can be found here.

In the second part of her series, Ramshaw looks at the unintended consequences of Texas' zero-tolerance sex offender registration laws. "They're working to design better risk-level assessments to help police departments distinguish between sexual predators and high school boyfriends. And they've passed legislation to allow some young offenders with negligible recidivism rates, particularly those in consensual-sex scenarios, to be removed from the registry."