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With the Maryland General Assembly's next legislative session drawing nearer and a gubernatorial election on the horizon, ideas abound about how to keep better track of the state's registered sex offenders, from global positioning system anklets to lifetime supervision of the highest at risk to repeat their past.

For about the past five years, the Maryland Sex Offender Registry Unit has been responsible for processing new registration statements for the state's sex offenders, said Unit Manager Paul Kozloski.

On Sept. 23, Maryland's registry contained the names of 4,284 sex offenders.

Cases in which registered sex offenders, in Maryland and across the country, have failed to update their addresses and have gone on to commit heinous sexual crimes have prompted some local lawmakers and others to examine Maryland's way of accounting for them.

Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. has proposed strengthening penalties and increasing oversight of offenders, including global positioning system anklets.

Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, a Democratic gubernatorial candidate, has proposed lifetime supervision for the most violent offenders.

Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr., a Democrat, has unveiled a plan to require lifetime supervision for the most violent sexual offenders and notification to the community into which an offender moves.

GPS plan

A "back of the napkin figure" for Ehrlich's proposed global positioning system anklets and supervision costs is about $10 million a year, said state Del. Christopher B. Shank, R-Washington, who supports the idea.

Shank, a member of the house Judiciary Committee, said that during the 2004 legislative session a task force was established to investigate the feasibility of outfitting sex offenders and other violent criminals with global positioning anklets, which would keep track of their whereabouts at all times. If the offender removed the anklet, it would send out an alert, and police would be called, he said.

A final report on the feasibility study will be submitted to the Maryland General Assembly in December, Shank said.

The system is used in Florida and seems to work, he said.

"We're dealing with a population that has an extremely high recidivism rate. Those that are released, the very least we should be doing is monitoring them 24 hours a day, seven days a week," Shank said.

Over the summer, Ehrlich sent police across the state to check on more than 400 sex offenders who reportedly had moved to Maryland but had not registered. Under his Sex Offenders Compliance and Enforcement (SOCEM) Initiative, of 403 sought: 69 sex offenders were found and ordered to register immediately; 130 were determined to be living outside Maryland; 104 were incarcerated in federal or state prisons; five were dead; seven remained under investigation; and for another 88, there was no information to show they had moved to Maryland, the Associated Press reported.

The initiative, launched in August, also includes providing immediate assistance to victims and families and empowering communities to protect themselves against that category of sex offenders listed as sexual predators, those considered the highest risk to the community, The Associated Press reported.

There were three sexual predators registered in Maryland this summer, Kozloski said. Two live in Baltimore and one lives "way up in Western Maryland," he said.

Lifetime supervision

Curran is to propose legislation that would require lifetime supervision for those sex offenders evaluated as posing the most risk to society, said Carolyn Quattrocki, Curran's special assistant.

"Right now, after parole or probation ends, that offender is just free in the community," she said.

"He believes there ought to be a link between when an offender is released from supervision and an assessment that he no longer has a potentially high risk to the community," Quattrocki said.

Lie detector tests, which are not admissible in court, "are an important piece of monitoring sex offenders," and would be used to help determine the risk they pose, she said.

Curran also would like community meetings in the neighborhoods to which sex offenders move. Ideally, Quattrocki said, such a meeting would include a discussion involving police, school officials, therapists for sex offenders and therapists for sex offense victims.

"When they move into communities right now, it goes up on the registry and it puts the burden on parents to see if there's someone who has moved into their neighborhood," she said.

No price tag has been attached to Curran's proposal yet, she said, but "this is important enough" to the community.

"Everything costs money," she said.

"We want to be sure, assuming we can get lifetime supervision, that we can put the resources into it to make it meaningful," Quattrocki said.

Relapse rates

According to a U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics report, which tracked 9,691 sex offenders released from prisons in 15 states in 1994, including Maryland, they were more likely than other convicts to relapse into the behaviors for which they were convicted.

"Compared to non-sex offenders released from state prisons, released sex offenders were (four) times more likely to be re-arrested for a sex crime," the report states.

Forty percent of the alleged relapses occurred within the first 12 months of their release from prison, the U.S. Bureau of Statistics found.

Shank said a bill will be introduced in the next Maryland General Assembly next that, if passed, would require that some sex offenders released on parole "would be forced to wear the GPS ankle bracelet."

Some sex offenders released from prison might have to wear those anklets for life under the proposed legislation, he said.

Shank said he feels that there is a certain population "that should never leave prison" and said resources are going into investigating the possibility of more strict sentences for certain convictions.

"Public safety officials say their biggest concern is when they do lose contact with them," Shank said.

Seeking verification

Quattrocki said Curran's plan does not directly address problems with the registry, but said the two are related.

"The lifetime supervision proposal would address, indirectly, the problems with the registry," she said.

Del. John P. Donoghue, D-Washington, expressed concern about how the current registry operates.

"I don't think an honor system is adequate. There has to be verification. I don't know that a violent sex offender is going to be the best person in the world to rely upon," he said.

Shank said he understands law enforcement agencies provide some voluntary help in verifying offenders' addresses, but said it's his opinion that if police are required to play a bigger role in tracking offenders, they must have adequate resources.

Shank said law enforcement officers are not required to verify that registered sex offenders live where they say they do.

Donoghue said he wasn't surprised to learn that The Herald-Mail's investigation turned up at least 12 incorrect addresses among 102 sex offenders listed in July as having a 21740 ZIP code.

"If we're gonna tighten that up, there has to be personnel to do that," he said. "It's great to jump and scream and say this has to change," but there have to be the means to do that, he said.

Kozloski said there is talk of making sex offenders register twice a year instead of once and post fresh digital photographs on the registry Web site.

Having photographs posted on the Web site is important, Donoghue said. Even if a sex offender's correct address isn't listed on the registry, people might at least recognize his face.

Del. Robert A. McKee, R-Washington, said the photographs are necessary.

In 1999, he opposed the bill to put the registry online because it lacked photographs and the support service necessary to update the Web site, he said.

McKee said the vote was 83-54 in favor of the bill.

Since then, he said, he's supported legislation regarding the registry because photographs and a regular updating system were added.

McKee said he had heard of incidents in other parts of the country where an innocent person's house was burned down because someone believed a registered sex offender lived there.

McKee expressed concern that the state might not be putting enough resources into what already is in place.

When told that the registry unit has four employees, McKee said, "It probably doesn't have adequate staff to know that what they're putting up is accurate, and that is frightening."

McKee said he is in favor of the GPS tracking devices, but thinks the $10 million figure might be too high right now. Perhaps, he said, as the technology gets more refined, the cost will go down.

"I think that we'll all work together and come up with something that's workable," Donoghue said. "I think you're gonna see a lot of different people come in with a lot of different bills ... It's a little early to tell what the final product will be."