About seven months after its launching, the state's Sex Offender Registry Web site has proved highly popular with parents, employers, and other concerned or just curious citizens. Parents, bosses flock to
Web site on sex offendersStar-Bulletin staff
The Web site has logged 2.5 million "hits" from August through January. That compares with a little more than 4,000 hits during its first three years of existence, when anyone wishing to access the site had to use a handful of state computers. (A page hit equals a single visit to one Web page.)
Now anyone who wants to check on a neighbor or job applicant can use their home computer.
"That was the whole reason for putting it on the Web," Criminal Justice Data Center Administrator Liane Moriyama said.
The Sex Abuse Treatment Center refers callers to the Web site whenever they ask for information about convicted sex offenders.
"We do get from time to time people who want to check out their neighborhood or a particular individual," social worker Lynn Renalde said.
State lawmakers established the Sex Offender Registry in 1997. Beginning in September of that year, the site was accessible only from computer terminals at the Criminal Justice Data Center in downtown Honolulu or at neighbor island police stations and court houses.
At the urging of the Legislature, the registry went online last August.
Officials say frequent visitors to the site typically include prospective employers, parents of young children, and neighborhood security watchers.
One convicted sex offender who has been on the registry for the past two years said he looked himself up on the Web site.
"It's stopped me from getting jobs, but it hasn't been bad in Hawaii. It's much worse in California," said the man, who talked to the Star-Bulletin on the condition that his name not be used. He said he had been confronted on the street in California by people who found his name on that state's database of convicted sex offenders.
Stuart A. Clithero, also on the list, said no one has confronted him about his 1995 fourth-degree sexual assault conviction before or after the registry went online.
Hawaii's Criminal Justice Data Center maintains the registry of convicted sex offenders who are required by law to submit their names, addresses and other information upon their release into the community and whenever they move.
The center's staff also does periodic checks to ensure that the information on the registry is up to date.
The registry lists more than 1,500 names, up from the 1,403 listed when the site went online last August.
Hawaii's site provides the name of the street where the offender lives and works, a mug shot, types of crimes committed, and information on the person's vehicle.
Sex offenders who fail to register or report changes face prosecution.
Maximum penalties for violating the law include five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. So far there have been only a handful of prosecutions statewide.
>> To access the Hawaii Sex Offender Registry, go to http://www.ehawaiigov.org/HI_SOR.
