Oregon Halloween 2016: Where are the Sex Offenders?

On Monday night, children across Oregon will be headed out to go trick or treating for Halloween. And lots of parents - rightly or wrongly - will be worried about their kids being safe. One of those concerns - sex offenders in their neighborhood.

It's one of the great core beliefs about Halloween - that the holiday in which young children go to the doors of strangers and ask for candy results in a spike of child sex crimes.

Unfortunately, it seems to be nothing more than myth. A study in 2010 that looked at tens of thousands of sex crimes against children 12-years-old and younger from 1997 through 2005 found there was "no increased rate on or just before Halloween.

"These findings raise questions about the wisdom of diverting law enforcement resources to attend to a problem that does not appear to exist."

Still. Parents are parents and worrying is what they do. And Oregon does not make it easier for them to take a deep breath.

With numbers ranging from around 22,000 to 29,000 sex offenders in the state (it varies month to month if not day to day), Oregon has the highest number of sex offenders per capita of any state in the union.

A map released in June by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children showed Oregon had 28,736 registered sex offenders - or 713 per 100,000 residents. Second place was Delaware with 503 per 100,000 residents. Third was Michigan with 427 per 100,000 just ahead of Wisconsin with 418 per 100,000. Florida was fifth with 340 per 100,000.

So, Oregon's 713 registered sex offenders per 100,000 residents was far and above the nearest competitor. According to the center, nationwide there are 262 sex offenders per 100,000 people.

Not great, huh? It's actually worse.

Earlier this year, The Oregonian reported - and there were only 22,102 registered sex offenders in the state at the time - that a large percentage (21 percent) of registered sex offenders were out of compliance.

Clackamas County at the time had 1,429 registered sex offenders, 17.6 percent of whom were out of compliance. Multnomah County had 3,938 registered offenders - 27 percent of whom were out of compliance. Washington County had 1,953 registered offender, 15 percent of whom were out of compliance.

So, maybe a little worse than not great? It gets even worse.

Due to the way the laws are written in Oregon, only about two percent of the state's nearly 30,000 registered sex offenders are visible on the public database. That's about 600 (the actual numbers change almost daily).

So, even if you want to go to the state's publicly searchable database, put in your address, chances are you are seeing only a small fraction of the people who are out there.

The City of Tigard explains it like this:

"Oregon State law does not allow law enforcement to release the addresses of those sex offenders currently under probation or parole supervision in Oregon. If the person is on supervision, you will be provided with the name of the county corrections agency responsible for their supervision."

State officials have at various times vowed to try to make the laws tougher. At the same time, there is the above-referenced study saying that there is no evidence of more sex crimes against kids at Halloween. And that was backed up by an article last year by The Marshall Project.