County's Sex Offender Data Shows Full Story, Authorities Say

New Jersey residents using an online database provided by the state police to track how many registered sex offenders live in their town are only receiving part of story, according to information from the Morris County Prosecutor’s Office.

On Dec. 15 Patch ran a story on multiple sites in Morris County regarding the number of registered sex offenders living in each municipality. The numbers listed in the Patch reports were provided by the Prosecutor’s Office through an Open Public Records Act request, and showed higher – in some cases significantly higher – registrants than the data provided by the state police.

The discrepancy, which mistakenly was not originally clarified by Patch in its original reporting, is based on the level, or tier, the sex offender falls into.

There are three tiers of offenders in the system, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement to Patch this week. The New Jersey State Police only publish the number of tier 3 offenders in each community – those at the highest risk of reoffending.

To further clarify, the statement read:

“All adult registrants whom are found to be a high risk are included on the registry. Registrants who are found to be at a low risk to re-offend are not included on the registry. The remaining category are registrants who are found to be at moderate risk to re-offend. N.J.S. 2C: 7-13d requires that registrants who pose a moderate risk to re-offend are included on the Registry with some exceptions. These exceptions are based on the age of the registrant at the time of the crime, the relationship between the registrant and the victim and the specific statute of the conviction. Some examples of those who are excluded from the Registry include, most juvenile registrants, an adult registrant who was convicted of aggravated sexual assault on his or her child, a registrant, who at the time of the crime was 19, and was convicted of the sexual assault of a 15 year old who had consensual sex with the offender.”

Regarding address changes within the same community by a sex offender, that also had no bearing on the prosecutor’s data. If a registered sex offender moved multiple times within the same community, he or she was still listed as just one by the county law enforcement agency.

The original report brought confusion from readers in the comments section both on the articles as well as Patch’s Facebook pages. In towns like Washington Township, the New Jersey State Police database showed just one sex offender, but in actuality, there are six living in the town across the three-tier system.

In Morris County’s largest municipality, Parsippany, the discrepancy was extremely large, with the online database showing just two offenders, when in actuality there are 22 currently living in town. That number was good for second most, behind Dover’s 41, in all of Morris County.

The prosecutor’s office data showed a total of 292 sex offenders in Morris County, while the state police data showed just 57. Those 57 are of the tier 3 variety, or of the highest risk to reoffend.

“The level of risk an offender poses to the community, as well as the facts surrounding their conviction determines whether or not a registrant is included in the (New Jersey State Police) Registry,” the prosecutor’s statement read.

Patch ran the article marking the 20th anniversary of Megan’s Law being signed into action after Hamilton Township seven-year-old Megan Kanka was raped and killed by her neighbor in 1994.

That neighbor, Jesse Timmendequas, was twice convicted of sex crimes against children before murdering Kanka, but that information was not made known to the community when he moved in.

Timmendequas was sentenced to death but had his standing changed to life imprisonment when New Jersey abolished the death penalty in 2007.