Despite a major push by Maryland lawmakers last year to get tough on sex offenders, the state still is not in compliance with the federal Adam Walsh Act, a public safety official said Tuesday.
Noncompliance could cost the state more than half a million dollars in federal grant money for law enforcement agencies.
Lawmakers pledged reform last year in the wake of the December 2009 killing of Sarah Foxwell, an 11-year-old Eastern Shore girl who had been in contact with a registered sex offender. Gov. Martin O'Malley backed legislation to revamp the state's sex offender registry — a move that officials believed would bring them into compliance with the Adam Walsh Act.
Changes included adding the names of those who commit sexually motivated acts of indecent exposure or possess child pornography and requiring people who list themselves as "homeless" to provide more information about where they are living. The registry includes nearly 7,000 people now.
The problem, said David P. Wolinski, who administers the state registry, is that Maryland does not require lifetime registration of juveniles convicted of the most serious sex crimes — a necessity under the Adam Walsh Act.
"That's the one hang-up," Wolinski told the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee. "Otherwise everything else is fine. We've made a lot of progress."
Only about four states are in compliance with the Adam Walsh Act, Wolinksi said. Still, Maryland's failure to meet its strict standards means the state is set to lose 10 percent of the federal funding it gets from the Edward J. Byrne Justice Assistance Grant Program. The state received about $6 million in Byrne money last fiscal year, according to the Governor's Office of Crime Control and Prevention.
Otherwise, Wolinski said, the registry expansion is "going well."
Within a month, he said, corrections officials will begin adding a "plain-language" description of the crime for which each offender was convicted, another requirement signed into law last year.
Fewer than 500 of the registrants — about 6.7 percent — are listed as "noncompliant" or "absconders," according to data distributed by Wolinski.
Some lawmakers have suggested that the General Assembly might take another look at the registry this year, but this time with an eye toward removing some kinds of low-level offenders. No bills concerning the registry have been introduced yet this year.
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