Through the process of buying a home, Realtors stress that they do NOT do any research on sexual offenders in the area. If they know of one, they will tell you about it, but it is something you have to take up with the police if you are concerned.
Megan's Law (or state equivalents) have made it so that the record of many sexual offenders are available online. This is certainly the case in Colorado, and since curiosity almost always gets the better of me, I decided to take a look.
Man, there are some scary people out there!! Looking ap the location of our new house, we are blessed with a very clean slate - there is no-one near us. So I had a look around where I live currently, and I got chills.
So here is the low-down: they publish the picture, name and last known address of all sex offenders in the area. If the person is a multiple offender, or failed to register, they also publish the crimes with which they were charged. Though they don't directly link to maps, taking the address and pasting it into Google maps is a 5 second task that did nothing but scare me. I walk past a number of registered offenders every day!
A little more research showed that none of them were violent, repeat or predatory offenders - one 20 year old got on the list because he had sex with his 17 year old girlfriend, which I'm not saying is right morally or legally, but he posed little threat to anyone else. I'm sure the end result is that not too many people look as far into it as I did, and get completely freaked out in the process.
Take my advice, unless you have a pressing and relevant need to check out your area - STAY AWAY.
