The United States Department of Justice provides a link on its website to a national sex offender website, which is known as the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Website ("NSOPW"). The NSOPW is coordinated by the Department of Justice and is a cooperation between all 50 states and the federal government. In addition to including sex offender registration information from all 50 states, it also includes registration information from Puerto Rico, Guam, the District of Columbia, and participating Native American tribes. The NSOPW allows users to submit a single national query to obtain information about sex offenders through a number of search options, including by location/zip code or by offender name.
The NSOPW was created in response to the November 2003 murder of Dru Kathrina Sjodin, who was a student of the University of North Dakota. She was kidnapped and killed by a registered sex offender (who was later caught, convicted and sentenced to death).
In addition to providing a comprehensive national database, the website also provides links to the separate sex offender registries of all 50 states (Public Registry Sites). This is a helpful place to quickly locate the sex offender registry of your specific state.
One more great resource for identifying the locations of registered sex offenders is a website called Family Watchdog. It is an excellent site and very comprehensive and user-friendly. This site displays search results on a map of the search location. The map uses color-coded markers to identify the exact location of registered sex offenders in your area. The color-coded map markers allow users to quickly determine whether the offender was convicted of an offense against children, rape, sexual battery, or a different sexual offense. And, if you click on one of the map markers, a separate window opens that shows a picture of the offender and provides a description of the crime.
As a father of two young children, I was terrified to see how many registered sex offenders live in my general area, which is considered a nice, clean, and safe neighborhood. Scary!
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