HD8 - A Special Report on the Implementation of Sexual Offender Monitoring


Executive Summary:
[The reporting mandate of Item 383 C.4. 2006 is also included in this report.]

As of December 1, 2006, there were 15,226 sex offenders listed on the Virginia State Police Sex Offender and Crimes Against Minors Registry. This number included those offenders who registered in the Commonwealth but relocated to another state. In Virginia, there were approximately 13,000 offenders residing in the communities and were divided into the following three groups: (1) approximately 3,000 registrants under Department of Corrections Probation and Parole Services; (2) approximately 5,000 sex offenders whose verification will be conducted by the Department of State Police (VSP); and (3) the remaining 5,000 registrants are incarcerated in jails or prisons across the state.

Keeping in mind the number of offenders located in Virginia and the requirement to have home and employment addresses verified for those not incarcerated, VSP developed a web-based system for recording and monitoring address verifications. This database is utilized by VSP employees and shared with those Department of Corrections (DOC) employees who are tasked with completing this process. Training was conducted by VSP for both agencies on the use of this system and to date, there are 74 Probation and Parole Officers and eight VSP Sex Offender Investigative Unit employees trained. Training is on-going to ensure that all 443 Probation and Parole officers and 45 sworn employees of the VSP are trained to use this program.

It is important to note that in anticipation of the July 1, 2006 legislative mandate requiring address verification, VSP implemented a verification protocol that initiated 2,620 verifications of home and work addresses with 1,535 being verified. (Please see Appendix A, Table 1, and Table 2 in Appendix B for a map of the regions created and serviced by VSP and a breakdown of verifications by region and type of verifications by region.) These verifications were completed utilizing troopers statewide assigned to the Bureau of Field Operations. In the future, the newly created Sex Offender Investigative Unit will handle all verifications. The Unit will be comprised of the 45 sworn positions created during the 2006 General Assembly Session. With these troopers in place, the number of completed verifications will significantly increase as we work to make contact within 30 days of those offenders who initially register or those who make address changes and then every six months thereafter.