Sitting in her Santa Fe office at the state Public Safety Department, Regina Chacon estimated it costs taxpayers about $30 to register one sex offender in the state’s database.
It’s a figure she brings up when she meets with state lawmakers to push for new laws called for by the federal government, she said. It’s also a number that is charged with politics, as Chacon tries to expand the scope of the state’s sex offender registry to meet those federal mandates.
Lloyd Swartz, an activist with the nonprofit group called Reform Sex Offender Laws, which opposes the registry, scoffed at that figure. He estimated that with Chacon’s staff, the computer software, and the time spent by sheriff’s deputies who have to register offenders and verify their addresses, registering an offender could eat up thousands of taxpayer dollars over his life.
“Show me the data that says expending this money and sacrificing civil liberties is justified,” Swartz said. “What we’re doing is wrong.”
The behind-the-scenes landscape of the sex offender registry in New Mexico mirrors that discrepancy between Chacon and Swartz. Law enforcement employees like Chacon try to convince state lawmakers and tribal governments to bring the state’s laws into compliance with federal standards, which are tied to federal grant money. Chacon said she faces opposition from a lack of response by tribal governments and from people like Swartz and his group, who argue the state’s system for dealing with sex offenders is too expensive, tries to correct a problem in the wrong way and violates the rights of people who have already paid the penalty for their crimes.
The $30 figure belies additional work Chacon’s office gets, such as when a registrant moves to New Mexico from out of state, according to Chacon. Federal laws require states to communicate with each other when an offender moves. But because sex offender laws are not uniform across the country, this situation sometimes touches off a legal review by Chacon’s staff to determine if an incoming offender also has to register here, Chacon said. For example, learning if someone convicted of committing “lewd acts with a minor” has to register in New Mexico requires Chacon’s staff to spend sometimes as much as 16 hours reviewing state law, the convict’s court case and possibly the instructions to the jury in the trial, she said.
Chacon said this, alongside keeping up with other legal requirements for the registry, is time-consuming, describing one of her staff members who works on the registry as “swamped.”
Federal Mandates
When asked if the oversight job might be better suited for the federal government, Chacon said it was important to have local control over the registry.
“How does Washington know what’s best for New Mexico other than New Mexico?” Chacon said.
But that shift has already happened to a degree. The federal government has dictated every state’s policy for sex offender registries, leaving the work of implementing it to state agencies such as Chacon’s.
The Act states its purpose is to close existing “loopholes” in sex offender registries across the country. The legislation orders all states to expand the number of people tracked by the sex offender registry to include new violations and requires tribal jurisdictions to either to create their own registries or to work with the state to create one.
Chacon said the state is already complying with most federal requirements, such as turning over its list of sex offenders to a national database and adding a system to notify people via e-mail if a sex offender moves in their neighborhood.
However, Chacon said her office has run into roadblocks in meeting at least two requirements: adding more offenses to the list of crimes that require registration and bringing tribal law enforcement into the system.
“We’re very close,” she said. “We’re very, very close.”
Chacon said these sticking points could cost the state hundreds of thousands of dollars in assistance to local police departments if the laws are not in place by a July 2011 federal deadline. For example, the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Department used its 2010 grant money to buy Tasers with video cameras to record the incident in which they were used, former Santa Fe County sheriff Greg Solano said.
The state stands to lose 10 percent, or at least $120,000, of its current federal grant money every year if it’s not in compliance with the law, Chacon said. This would be stacked on top of previous cuts to the federal funding. New Mexico collected $1.2 million in grants related to the registry this year, which is down from $2.7 million two years ago, Chacon said.
New Mexico isn’t alone in failing to comply with the federal laws. The original deadline for becoming compliant passed nearly two years ago, according to the federal Justice Department’s sex offender website. At that time, only Ohio, Delaware, Florida and two tribal governments had fully implemented the new laws. That left 47 states, six territories and 184 tribes that missed the first deadline.
In the Roundhouse
At the state level, complying with federal laws means getting lawmakers to add additional crimes to the registry, something Chacon said she’s tried to do without success for the last three years. Such crimes include voyeurism, aggravated indecent exposure, four different crimes involving patronizing or promoting child prostitution, human trafficking and conspiracy to commit those offenses.
She said a bill that would have made these crimes require registration sat on the floor of the state House of Representatives in its first year and died in committee in the second and third years. This year, Chacon said the bill does not have a sponsor.
Additionally, New Mexico’s sex offender registry office advisor Lorie McPherson said the federal laws require New Mexico to adjust its “tiers,” or the amount of time a registrant stays on the registry. Currently, registrants in the state can be required to stay on the website for anywhere between 10 years and life, depending on the severity of the offense, according to state statute. The new federal laws would create three tiers, with a minimum registration time of 15 years.
Arguments Against the Registry
Chacon said she is also meeting resistance from lobbying groups, such as Reform Sex Offender Laws, who oppose the sex offender registries, believing them to be a violation of the Constitution, impractical and costly.
“It’s about getting this grant money,” Swartz said.
Swartz, who is a registered sex offender in Albuquerque, disagrees that adding more offenders to the registry would be cheap. He predicted any attached funding would be eaten up by the cost of running the registry and pointed to a report by the Justice Policy Institute, a think-tank dedicated to “ending society’s reliance on incarceration,” according to the group’s website. The group reported that Ohio spent $475,000 in implementing a registry in its first year and would take on a recurring cost of $85,000 a year in maintenance costs, as well as additional personnel, benefits and equipment costs. That report was confirmed to a degree by the New Mexico registry office, which reported Ohio’s implementation costs to be “approximately” $400,000.
Chacon could not be reached for a follow-up question on the implementation costs.
Swartz opposes what he sees as a slippery slope in punishing sex offenders in perpetuity, as he says the registry does. He argues the registry pushes people on it to the fringes of society. He said registrants throughout the country have problems re-entering society to find work or a place to live. He pointed out as an example an April 2007 CNN report showing that many sex offenders in Miami were living under bridges due, in part, to city laws that restrict how close they can live to city schools, parks or other places children gather.
“We’ve decided this subgroup of humans is not worthy,” he said.
And studies don’t back up the kind of reasoning that goes into the Florida ordinances or the sex offender registry, he said. A rapist is more likely to be someone the victim knows, not a stranger, he said. The national nonprofit group Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network cites government studies showing 73 percent of sexual assaults are perpetrated by a friend, intimate partner or relative.
“He’s not hiding in the bushes,” the nonprofit group’s website declares in all capital letters.
Swartz said he thinks the website is attempting to answer a fear that a stranger will commit a sex crime, which he says is rarely true.
“It’s someone the person knows,” Swartz said about sex crime perpetrators. “You’re warning people about the wrong thing.”
Swartz’s group is having some legislative success. His group is supporting a bill currently in the state Senate Judiciary Committee that would prohibit local, city or county governments from enacting laws telling registrants where they can or cannot live, according to Swartz and the bill. The bill was introduced by state Sen. Cisco McSorley (D-Albuquerque).
Swartz also hopes to have a person who opposes the expansion of sex offender laws appointed to the state’s Sex Offender Management Board, of which people like Chacon and representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union are members. That organization is tasked with recommending policy for the treatment of sex offenders to the New Mexico Sentencing Commission, according to its website.
Tribal Jurisdiction
The other problem Chacon faces has to do with tribal sovereignty. Federal laws require tribal governments to set up their own registration systems or ask the state for help. Chacon said she has been in contact with about eight or nine tribal governments throughout the state, though none of those were in Rio Arriba County. She thinks the reason for this would be because it would give the state power over tribal governments that it didn’t have before.
“We can’t go to a tribe and validate an address,” she said.
Federal laws actually state the “consequences” for a tribe failing to comply with the Act is for the state to step in and create a registration system for the tribe. Linda Baldwin, director of the New Mexico registry’s office, said the state would not lose its grant money if tribal governments missed the implementation deadline, but she said the state would be responsible for taking over the registry for tribal governments.
“The obligation does go in roundabout ways to the state,” she said.
The federal law is also being tested by current case law in the state. A state Appeals Court ruling from June 4, 2009, overturned the conviction of two Navajo men who were convicted in a lower court of failing to register under the state’s sex offender laws, court records state. The men, who do not live or work outside of the reservation, were charged when the Navajo Nation did not yet have a sex offender registry.
The court concluded New Mexico did not have any authority to infringe on the Nation’s sovereignty by charging the men.
No tribal government in Rio Arriba returned a call seeking comment for this story.
Baldwin said she is following the Navajo case as it’s being appealed to the state Supreme Court but it would not affect her efforts to bring the registry to tribal lands.
“Right now we’re working under the existing law,” she said.
The third part of this series tells the story of a man who was convicted of criminal sexual penetration and criminal sexual contact with a minor and now lives in Alcalde.