Special Report: Are sex offender policies keeping you safer

They move among us in our daily lives.

Thieves, murderers and other convicted criminals finished with prison pass us in the grocery store or running the bridge and we have no way of knowing who they are by sight.

No way of knowing, unless they've committed a sexual crime.

“People break in our homes and offices, but we send our children out into the world.  And we need to have a way to track those who mean to do them harm,” says South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson.

His office oversees prosecuting violators of the sex offender registry maintained by the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED).

“We're going to go to every length legally and morally that we can to protect our children,” says Wilson.

State law requires sex offenders, whether adults or a minors, tell their local sheriff's department twice a year where they live.

Then local schools are notified, and the offenders appear in a public online database.

The registry and notification system is for a sex offender life, even if the crime was committed as a juvenile.

“For me it's not punishing them again, it's about ensuring the safety of kids, it always comes back to the child,” says Wilson.

For the most violent offenders (criminal sexual conduct with a minor, kidnapping, etc.) there are residency restrictions.

They cannot live within 1 thousand feet of schools, playgrounds and other places where children are commonly located.

“Not only are we going to hold you accountable, but we're going to watch you,” says Wilson.

But are these policies actually making us safer?

“Lifetime registration and notification does not make sense,” says psychologist Elizabeth Letourneau from the Medical University of South Carolina.

She has been studying sex offender issues for 20 years and find that registry and notification doesn't prevent offenders from committing new sex crimes.

“It's a wash, these policies don't effect sex offender recidivism,” says Letourneau.

She says the registry doesn’t significantly reduce the overall number of sex offense either.

“95 percent of sex offenses are committed by first time offenders, who are not going to be on any registry,” says Letourneau.

Wilson disagrees about the importance of the registry, saying it is a useful tool for detering first time offenders.

"It sends a powerful message to people who would commit these crimes: Not only are we going to hold you accountable, but we're going to watch you," says Wilson.

9 out of 10 sex offenders are people you know.

“Knowing the 2 or 3 that are caught in your neighborhood, may seem like a good tool for keeping your family safe, but it doesn't seem to be working that way, certainly not in our extensive investigations of South Carolina data,” says Letourneau.

What the data does show is that since lifetime registration went online in 1999, the number of plea bargains offered sex offenders to non-sexual crimes increased.

For juveniles many more sex-crime cases are dismissed.

“What you have are kids who may actually be committing sex offenses who need treatment, and there's good treatment, who aren't going to get it because if you're case is dismissed or you plead to a non-sex offense, you're not going to get any kind of sex offender intervention,” says Letourneau.

Studies of residency restrictions point to no difference in offenders who do commit new crimes doing it near their homes or several miles away.

Letourneau says laws that try to push sex offenders away from highly populated areas can hurt their opportunities for treatment or family support.

“We know that people are less likely to re-offend in anyway if they have stable jobs and stable housing,” says Letourneau.

Unless lawmakers change the laws, Letourneau says South Carolina is stuck with expensive and ineffective policies that only target the most extreme violators for which the state already analyzes and places under civil confinement.

“We need to look at prevention,” says Letourneau.

One area where the state is being progressive is hunting down sex offenders online.

“Criminals now, those meaning to do harm to our kids, they're coming through the internet,” says Wilson.

The Attorney General’s Office is expanding resources to nab hundreds of sexual predators before they act.

The Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force finds sexual predators before they act as well as tracks down violators of child pornography.

“It's certainly my opinion an epidemic and we've seen folks travel from far away to try to solicit and engage children within our state,” says Wilson.

Letourneau agrees prevention needs more attention as well as a more nuanced approach to handling current sex offenders.

There are nearly 11,000 registered South Carolina.

“We need to figure out more rational, effective policies for helping them live safely in our communities,” says Letourneau.