How to To Identify Sex Offenders In Your Area

There are a lot of reasons why knowing who in your community is a sex offender is a good idea. Safety is the number one reason for knowing the truth. Fortunately, there are a few ways for you to be able to tell if someone is a sex offender. If you have found yourself thinking “who are the sex offenders in my area” then you’re in luck. Today we’re going to go over a few tools you can use and red flags to be on the lookout for to ensure that you and your family are as safe as possible from sex offenders.

Sex Offender Registries

A very easy way to find information about sex offenders in your area is to use a sex offender registry. Every state has its own sex offender registry to ensure that the community has access to information about sex offenders that live in their community. In most cases, you can find things like name, address, physical description, a picture, and the charges of the sex offender. This information is crucial for ensuring public safety.

The easiest way to find the registry website for your state is to simply use Google or another search engine of your preference. You can also go through the National Sex Offender Registry. The national registry collects information about sex offenders all over the country and puts it all in one place.

While today every state has its own sex offender registry, this wasn’t always the case. Sex offender registries got their start in 1994 with the death of Megan Kanka. Megan was a young New Jersey girl that was raped and murdered by her neighbor. This neighbor had been convicted of sexual offenses and was known to be a pedophile. After this tragic event, many lawmakers and other government officials realized something simple but important. If there was a way for the public to access information about sex offenders this kind of tragedy could be avoided as much as possible in the future. By 1996 there were a lot of states that had passed their own version of Megan’s Law, and the federal government had passed their own version of this law as well.

In 2006 another landmark law was passed. This was the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act. In the 1980s Adam was kidnapped from a Sears in a shopping mall, two weeks later his body was found in a drainage canal. Twenty-six years later when the law was passed, every state was required to provide information about all sex offenders that are moderate to high-risk4 offenders at a bare minimum.

Sex Offender Red Flags

There are a lot of red flags you can be on the lookout for when it comes to sex offenders. This includes both pedophiles and non-pedophiles. There are certain ways that people behave that can give away that they could be a threat to you or your children’s safety.

Pedophiles typically don’t have many friends their own age, have take jobs or volunteer opportunities that give them access to children if they aren’t a registered sex offender. They also gravitate towards children and seem to get oddly close with children, as well as typically being shut-ins. These are not anywhere near hard and fast rules. There are plenty of people that are shut-ins, prefer the company of children, or work with children that aren’t pedophiles but if someone has more than one of these traits you might want to keep a closer eye on them.

The red flags for sexual predators that target adults can be a little harder to spot. If someone is pushy about a lot of things, especially drinking alcohol, you might want to steer clear. Never get more intoxicated than you want to, and make sure to go out in public with friends to make sure that you’re a harder person to target. There’s safety in number. Adult sexual predators are typically manipulative and will try to use your own emotions against you in an attempt to get you to sleep with them. There are also cases where the predator is violent and will use force to try and coerce you into giving them what you want. You can usually tell this type by anger issues and control issues. Always trust your gut. If the alarms are going off it’s best to get out of there as quickly as possible.

Staying Safe in the Face of Sex Offenders

Sex offenders have a particularly high rate of recidivism. That’s why it’s so important for public safety for there to be an easy to access, accurate registry. This end has been met by posting the registry online. That ensures that the highest number of people can have access to it at any time. Keeping communities safe from sex offenders can help us avoid as many tragedies as possible.