Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office, OffenderWatch Partner for New Sex Offender Management Technology
COVINGTON, La. (Feb. 26, 2018) – OffenderWatch, the nation’s leading sex offender registry network, has partnered with the Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office in Evansville, Ind. to launch a new, forward-thinking technology for sex offender management, called OffenderWatch FOCUS.
With more than 3,500+ agencies in its sex offender registry network and more than 60% of registered sex offender records, OffenderWatch is using advanced analytics to harness the power of data and unlock essential insights into offender management. Using predictive analytics, OffenderWatch FOCUS allows law enforcement agencies to better utilize internal resources on registered sex offenders who need the most oversight. By using FOCUS as part of a comprehensive sex offender management policy, agencies and states are able to efficiently allocate time and resources to those offenders who need it most.
OffenderWatch FOCUS uses complex predictive analytics to analyze more than 100 different risk factors found in a registered sex offender’s record, as well as other state, federal and commercial data sources, to assign a score to a registered offender. With the scoring system, law enforcement agencies can develop more proactive strategies and technical tools to support and reinforce their monitoring strategy. The FOCUS score appears on each offender's record and is seamlessly integrated into the search functionality of OffenderWatch so that agencies can see all of the high-risk offenders with a click of a button.
The Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office began using OffenderWatch FOCUS last fall, immediately seeing the benefit of focusing more time and resources on certain sex offenders. Det. Mike Robinson, coordinator for the office’s sexual and violent offender registry, saw a challenge in identifying the worst sex offenders so he could dedicate resources to monitoring them more closely.
“We’ve had some sex offenders whom we spent a lot of time on, but then we had other registrants who weren’t classified as severely and then were involved in other crimes,” said Det. Mike Robinson, part of the Offender Registry division of the Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office. “I thought, with a small investment of time and money, maybe we could prevent more crimes.”
OffenderWatch Provides Community Free Educational Information, Notifications
OffenderWatch partners with law enforcement agencies like Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office to offer online resources to educate and inform the public on ways to keep neighborhoods safe. The OffenderWatch sex offender monitoring and alerting program provides citizens with proactive alerts and real-time updates when an offender registers or moves within a specified radius of their address. The service is available at no cost to the public with confidential and unlimited address registrations—home, school, work, gym, day care, park, soccer field, or any address of interest.
The public can access the free OffenderWatch sex offender registry through the Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office at this link.
About OffenderWatch
There are more than 800,000 registered sex offenders in the United States. Most states have a different system for tracking these offenders, making it difficult for agencies to keep records when the offenders cross state lines. The OffenderWatch Network is the largest sex offender registry system in the U.S., working with more than 3,400 local, state and federal law enforcement agencies in 36 states. Founded in 2000 in Covington, La. under the Watch Systems company, OffenderWatch has expanded to include data on registered sex offenders from sheriffs’ offices, police departments, Attorney Generals’ offices, U.S. Marshal judicial districts, U.S. attorneys, federal and state probation and parole agents, department of corrections, Indian tribes, and more. The network delivers greater efficiency with technology, policy and procedure regarding sex offender monitoring and community notification. Learn more at OffenderWatch.com.
