TACOMA, Wash., April 27 (UPI) -- Sex-offender registries in five states overestimated the number of offenders living in the community by as much as 60 percent, U.S. researchers found.
"Web sites that list sex offenders may make it seem that there are a lot of them living among us. It makes it hard for the public to discern risk," lead author Alissa Ackerman, assistant professor of social work at the University of Washington Tacoma, said in a statement.
Ackerman, Jill Levenson of Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., and Andrew Harris of the University of Massachusetts Lowell, examined sex offender counts compiled by Florida, Georgia, Illinois, New York and Texas -- states with large sex-offender registries. She obtained the counts from last year's state records, which are available to the public.
The researchers discovered the registries include people who are no longer living within the community because they had died, been deported, were in jail or moved out of state.
The study, published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Crime and Justice, found across the five states in the study, only 43 percent of sex offenders listed -- 114,690 out of 201,135 -- were living in the communities designated by the registries.
Florida had the greatest discrepancy, reporting 56,784 sex offenders when 22,877 were living in Florida -- a 60 percent difference.
Texas had the smallest discrepancy at 25 percent, with 49,786 actual residents from the 66,121 sex offenders listed.
