The Texas Sex Offender Registry enables the community to search using name and location AND use a mapping application to quickly identify sex offenders living near their family and friends.
Name and Location Search Options:
- Offender: Last Name, First Name, Middle Name
- Date of Birth
- Sex
- Race: All, Black, White
Suggestion: Texas borders Mexico and yet there is no ETHNICITY = Hispanic available in search or in the database. There are numerous records where the sex offender is Hispanic - consider a system update in the future.
Although most sex offender sites indicate RACE, they usually provide ETHNICITY in the dropdown choices.
- Location: Zip Code, City
Suggestion: When user enters zip code, search all zip codes within 1 mile radius of entered zip code.
Example: User enters zip code = 78759 but is unaware zip codes 78755 and 78720 are within a 1 mile radius of zip code 78759.
click here to view one vendor which sells inexpensive, high quality zip code radius data.
User must enter one of the following to perform a search:
- First and Last name
- City and Zip Code
- Zip Code
List of Records Matching the Search Criteria:
After the User clicks "Begin Search", a list of records matching the search criteria is displayed (user can click to get detail on each sex offender in the list) - data displayed is:
- Name/Address
- Date of Birth (DOB)
- Sex
- Race
- Height (HGT)
- Weight (WGT)
- Eye Color (EYE)
- Hair Color (Hair)
- SID - seems to be the DPS number - data is sorted by this number (sorted in ascending order)
Author editorial:
The purpose of this display is to help users:
a. understand how many sex offenders are in their area
b. understand the risk level of sex offenders in their area
c. determine which records to select (or click) to view details (including photos)
Suggestion: Add RISK LEVEL icon and most recent thumbnail photo to each row on this display. SORT the page by risk level - highest risk to lowest risk.
Sex Offender Record Details:
- Name (Last, First Middle)
- DPS Number (seems to be the same as the SID#)
- Date of Birth (DOB)
- Risk Level
- Sex
- Race
- Height
- Weight
- Eye Color
- Hair Color
- Shoe Size
- Photo(s) - current photo is auto-displayed with date of photo - user can click to view all photos and all photos have dates
- Alias names
- Registration record - date and agency
- Verification record - date and agency
- Current address - street, apartment, city, county,state, zip code
- Offense data - offense, general offense code, counts, victim's sex, victim's age, disposition date, time, status
Suggestions:
1. Add STATUS as a separate field in the database. There are numerous examples of placing status in the STREET field in the CURRENT ADDRESS - see example below:
Street
IN CUSTODY TRAVIS COUNTY JAIL City
AUSTIN County
TRAVIS State
TX Zip Code
78759
The Travis County Jail has a physical address - it should be entered as this makes this address unable to be be displayed in the mapping application.
2. Enable users to search using the new STATUS field. for example, provide a checkbox to exclude all sex offenders with a status = IN CUSTODY". If it is too cost prohibitive to add a STATUS field and update all the records, at least highlight the street field in RED when it contains status data.
3. Offense Data should be converted into Offense Information - for example - a sex offender with this offense data:
| Offense | 36990013 Indecency with a Child by Exposure |
| General Offense Code | |
| Counts | 1 |
| Victim's Sex | Female |
| Victim's Age | 8.0 |
| Disposition Date | 02/14/1994 |
| Time | 5Y |
| Status | PAR/DIS |
would be converted into offense information and read:
"Mr. Williams was convicted of 1 count of Indecency with a Child by Exposure with a 8 year old girl on February 14, 1994 for which he served 5 years.
Current status is PAR/DIS." (PAR/DIS is not defined on the site)
User enters an address of interest:
- user's home address
- child's school address
- grandparent's home address
- user's favorite parks (where child practices soccer, baseball, etc.)
User clicks "Show Map" and map is displayed with address of interest (centered in map) and sex offender addresses are highlighted with "pushpins" - the color of the pushpin indicates the sex offender risk level (red = high risk, pink = moderate, etc..)
Suggestions:
1. If the query returns less than 20 offenders, automatically list the offenders below the map with most recent photo thumbnail, risk level and associated summary data.
2. Review California's sex offender mapping application for other features which make the application intuitive and easy to use.
3. Consider comparing all home addresses of foster families in Texas to this database to ensure there are no sex offenders living close or next door to foster families.
