A federal law that requires college security officers with police powers to be informed when a convicted sex offender enrolls on campus will have little effect in Hawaii when it goes into effect Oct. 28. Sex offender law
has little effectInformation on those convicted
will go to police, not UH campus
security or studentsBy Treena Shapiro
tshapiro@starbulletin.comThat is because campus security officers at Hawaii colleges do not have police powers.
"Now sex offenders have to tell us if they have an educational institution affiliation, and that might be important to know for law enforcement," said Liane Moriyama, administrator of the Hawaii Criminal Justice Data Center.
But under the 2000 federal law, the Criminal Justice Data Center would have to inform police and prosecutors, not campus security officers, that a sex offender is on campus.
The law also requires colleges to tell students and staff where they can go to find information on sex offenders.
The University of Hawaii will comply with the law by including in its annual security reports information about how to find information about registered sex offenders through the Criminal Justice Data Center.
However, Moriyama said the sex offender registry is no longer open to the public.
Last November, the state Supreme Court struck down the public's right to access information about sex offenders over the Internet, ruling that a lack of procedural safeguards made the statute setting up the sex offender registry unconstitutional.
The Legislature will have to revise the statute regarding public access to make it workable, she said.
Moriyama said the law will have to be revised so that each sex offender can have a hearing to determine if that particular offender's information should be made available to the public.
There are 1,800 sex offenders currently registered.
"We have to take little steps to get this information available to the public once again," she said. "The logistics are currently getting worked on."
Over the 15 months that the information about sex offenders was available on a Web site, "We had 4 million hits," Moriyama said. "That's phenomenal."
The Campus Sex Crimes Prevention Act was sponsored by Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., who said he was inspired by an incident in 1999 when a convicted child molester secured a prison work furlough to pursue research at Arizona State University.
The university was afraid to tell the campus of his presence, noting federal privacy laws.