Virginia under crunch to develop alert system

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. -- Virginia stands to lose more than $1.1 million in federal criminal justice grants if it doesn't develop a system in the next year to inform people about sex offenders attending or working at colleges and universities in the state.\nOnly California, Tennessee, Utah, Iowa, Colorado, South Carolina, Michigan and Florida met the deadline to adopt campus sex offender registries Monday. Tennessee's law took effect this week and California's began Monday.\nBut Virginia State Police officials don't plan to let Virginia lag behind for too long because if a system is in place by Sept. 30, 2003, any grant money lost will be restored. If not, the money is gone forever.\n"As we speak, we are preparing legislation to enhance our sex offender registry," said Lt. T. W. Turner, assistant division commander for Virginia State Police Criminal Justice Information Services Division in Richmond.\nThat legislation would bring Virginia into compliance with the expanded version of Megan's Law, which now covers colleges and universities. Megan's Law requires states to make sex offender registries public so residents will know if a convicted sex offender moves into their area. \nPassed in October 2000, the Campus Sex Crimes Prevention Act went into effect this week. It requires states to keep track of registered sex offenders when they enroll at colleges and universities or begin working or volunteering on campuses. That information must then be shared with campus or local police and the public.\nBeginning Oct. 1, 2003, colleges and universities will be required to make that information available to students and employees.\n"I don't think anybody yet has figured out a prototype for that," said Sam Sadler, vice president of student affairs at The College of William and Mary. "But the public colleges have asked the state attorney general's office how we should handle this so there is a uniform methodology. We want to know if there is a best practice or approach in the way we inform our students."\nUntil such a method is determined, several local colleges plan to provide links on their Web sites to the Virginia State Police sex offender registry.\n"But that doesn't make us comply with the act," Sadler said. "We must get data that is specific to our institutions and let our campus communities know how they can get the information."\nMargaret Yancey, director of development at Christopher Newport University, said CNU's link will be up and running in about a week or two. The school's police department will then spend the next year working with the state police to develop a system to log and track sex offenders, she said.\nVirginia's sex offender registry is used as a model around the country, Turner said. But while it provides details about sex offenders registered in the state, he said, it doesn't say if they are going to school, working or volunteering on college campuses.\n"We can assume that they're in a college in the general facility of where they live," he said. "But that's not a good assumption to make because the student could live in Williamsburg and instead of going to William and Mary be going to school at ODU.\n"So we want to tighten that up," said Turner, "and the guidelines are now pretty well set."\nDaniel Carter, vice president of Security On Campus Inc., said most states failed to meet the Oct. 28 deadline because the U.S. Department of Justice didn't release those guidelines until this week.\n"That's been part of the problem," Carter said. "Many states were not comfortable moving forward with their own legislation until the Department of Justice came out with instructions.\n"But, hopefully, within the next year, Virginia will be in compliance," he said. "I know there are efforts to bring them into compliance, and it's good that steps are being taken."\nSecurity On Campus Inc., a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit advocacy organization, helped develop and secure passage of the Campus Sex Crimes Prevention Act two years ago after learning about loopholes in the law that often kept campus police from getting and releasing the names of sexual predators on college campuses.\n"It became apparent that this was not an isolated problem," Carter said. "So this new federal standard provides the same level of protection to campus communities that every other community receives under Megan's Law"