Gaps in sex offender tracking at USC
Legal loopholes, self reporting mean sex offenders can attend USC without ever notifying campus authorities.
By: Natalie Jarvey and Whitney Johnson
An unsettling combination of legal loopholes, a registry system reliant on self-reporting, a lack of both initiative and reliable information from campus authorities and the anonymity of a large college campus have allowed at least one registered sex offender in the USC community to fly below the Department of Public Safety's radar.
DPS is required by the 2001 Campus Sex Crimes Prevention Act to inform the campus community of where it can obtain information about the presence of sex offenders on campus, and to register all student and staff sex offenders in a campus database.
But the department failed to document at least one sex offender in the community.
"We do not have any registered sex offenders that we know of here at USC," DPS Capt. David Carlisle said last week.
There is, however, at least one registered sex offender in the USC community: a fifth-year architecture student convicted in December of attempted lewd acts with a child. The student, who is currently enrolled and set to begin his jail sentence this summer, lives in university housing.
Though the student's trial was widely covered by campus and local media, and he is listed in the Megan's Law database, neither Carlisle nor DPS Capt. Gloria Graham recalled anyone at USC registering as an offender.
DPS officials direct all inquiries about sex offenders on campus to the Megan's Law website, the state's online sex offender database, for information on the 93 sex offenders registered in the 90007 ZIP code.
Carlisle said DPS, which also uses the Megan's Law website to track sex offenders living in the surrounding community, did not recognize the Portland Street apartment in which the student lives as university-owned housing.
DPS and Los Angeles Police Department make no mention of USC maintaining its own public records.
Flaws in Megan's Law website
There are obvious loopholes in DPS's reliance on the Megan's Law website.
A search for offenders living within the USC area would exclude any registered members of the USC community whose permanent address is in a ZIP code outside of the USC area. The database also lists no information at all about out-of-state offenders, some of whom could be enrolled as students.
And since LAPD does not always have access to out-of-state registries, the department faces a particular challenge when following up on past offenders who might enter USC from different areas of the country, LAPD Officer Charles Schlund said.
"(An offender) could move from Nevada and we would never know they're required to register," Schlund said. "The only way we'd find out is if we arrested them for an unrelated crime when they come to California and the past offense comes up in their records."
Daniel Carter, vice president of Security on Campus, Inc., said there needs to be some way of pulling up an individual campus' information. Security on Campus, Inc. is a national nonprofit organization designed to prevent college and university crimes.
"We've had trouble with California since the beginning in getting that information included on their state registry," he said.
A new law requiring the establishment of a national sex-offender registry should provide a solution to this dilemma, but it is not yet in effect, Carter said.
Once created, the national registry will include information on sex offenders from all around the country, making it easier for law enforcement officers in California to search for out-of-state sex offenders in registries they currently do not have access to.
USC lacks a physical registry of sex offenders
Carlisle said DPS is working to improve enforcement within the university and may decide to keep its own online registry for students to view in the future.
"The laws are changing all the time, and it is not always clear what we can disclose to students," Carlisle said. "However, we are exploring the issue of registering the offender within the specific institution of study or place of work."
While Carter said most schools do not maintain their own registry, University of California public safety officials say some of their campuses maintain a public list of registered sex offenders.
"If anybody were to inquire, we would provide a list of names and then refer them to Megan's Law," said Nancy Greenstein, the director of police community services division within the University of California Police Department at UCLA.
If a high-level offender were to become enrolled or hired at UCLA, campus safety officials would notify all involved parties on campus so they could disseminate the information to students if necessary, she said.
Meanwhile, information specific to the USC campus is available only if offenders fulfill their responsibility to register themselves with DPS, and as long as DPS provides accurate information that reflects their records.
But the lack of a public on-campus registry separate from the Megan's Law database hinders their ability to provide such information.
Checking on university personnel and students
The university does not conduct background checks on prospective students, said Dean of Admissions Katharine Harrington.
But officials in hiring offices within the university said they are confident that their own precautionary background checks on prospective employees are effective.
Mary Campbell, executive director of Career and Protective Services, said the department conducts elaborate background checks before hiring new employees and lists a prior conviction for a sex offense as grounds for eliminating a candidate for consideration.
Campbell said the university also requires that all temp agencies the university conducts business with issue background checks of the same quality that USC requires of itself.
Still, the failure to conduct background checks on admitted students means an incoming student who has been convicted of a sex offense but does not declare the conviction in his application would likely never be discovered.
Loopholes in self-reporting
Both Carlisle and Graham acknowledged the unreliability of self-reporting.
"The responsibility rests on the offender, and it can easily be broken," Carlisle said.
"We'd be kidding ourselves if we didn't think it's a possibility," Graham said.
But Carlisle and Carter also emphasize that it's not DPS' responsibility to ensure that known sex offenders come in to register.
One student disagreed, saying tracking down sex offenders is primarily DPS' responsibility.
"It definitely sounds hypocritical," said Ashley Sullivan, a sophomore majoring in biomedical engineering. "That's what they're here for."
Another student expressed concern at the attitude of DPS.
"It's quite worrying, actually, especially coming from a community where they would inform us of such things," said Jenny Tarling, an exchange student from England who is majoring in management consulting. "I keep hearing about the dodgy area around USC."
Even in the event that DPS knows of an individual who may need to register and has not, it has no responsibility to investigate it or confront the offender, officials said.
"We could follow up with LAPD and find out if they would follow up with his parole officer," Carlisle said. "It is the responsibility of the offender to register, and if they don't, they are violating the law."
Though offenders could face a criminal penalty for not registering themselves with a campus police, USC has no legal responsibility to seek them out, Carter said.
"There is no obligation, in law enforcement, to enforce the law," he said. "It sounds strange, but there is no penalty on local or campus police departments for failure to enforce the law."
Community Watch comments:
All universities and colleges should take greater responsibility for ensuring sex offenders attending school are known and monitored closely.
