The Auburn Police Department's Sex Offender Monitoring Program

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) reports that the number of registered sex offenders in the United States has increased by nearly a quarter in the last five years. The total in the most recent survey was 795,066, up from 606,816 in 2006, the first year NCMEC did a count.

Unfortunately, sex crimes are very common in the US. RAINN estimates that 1 in 9 girls and 1 in 20 boys under the age of 18 experience sexual abuse or assault. 

The first sex offender registry was created in California in 1947. Today, every state has such a registry. Most convicted offenders live in the community under probation or parole supervision. According to CSOM, approximately 150,000 adult sex offenders are currently in state/federal prisons. Between 10,000 - 20,000 are released each year. Experts estimate that countless numbers of convicted sex offenders are unaccounted for across the country, with law enforcement unable to find or track their whereabouts.

In 2006, the Auburn PD implemented a “one-to-one” sex offender monitoring program where each patrol officer is assigned a sex offender to check on and monitor. An integral part of the program is the neighbor/community notification process. At least once a month, APD officers verify the offenders’ residences and look for violations. Sex offender notification flyers are distributed to neighbors.

Link to Maine Sex Offender Registry: http://sor.informe.org/cgi-bin/sor/index.pl