Wyoming Worries: Convicted Sex Offenders Arriving in Droves

According to state officials, Wyoming’s wide expanse of sparsely populated spaces has been attracting a lot of new residents to the state. In some cases population growth is a good thing, but not all of Wyoming’s new residents are welcome. Convicted sex offenders from other states are moving in and making Wyoming their home, evidently because the laws are not as restrictive there.

Other states have laws on the books that prohibit convicted sex offenders from living near daycare centers, schools, or other places where children are. Many states also require people convicted of indecent exposure or sexual battery to register themselves as sex offenders. Yet Wyoming does not have laws requiring any of these restrictions for convicted sex offenders. "They can live right next to a school if they want to. They can live in a home with children if they want to," said Sgt. Linda Gesell, of the Laramie County Sheriff’s office.

There are about 1,200 known sex offenders living in Wyoming, which is a fairly small number. But legislators and government officials are concerned because over 50% of those offenders were convicted somewhere else, and moved to Wyoming after their convictions. "We don’t want to become the playground for sex offenders," said Attorney General Pat Crank. "But there must be something that sex offenders are seeing. Otherwise they wouldn’t be moving here in the kind of numbers that we seem to be seeing."

However, the numbers don’t lie, and most people have no doubts about why sex offenders are attracted to the state. Ex-convicts who are deemed low-risk or medium-risk offenders are not listed on the state’s website for the public to access. Wyoming lacks a standardized procedure for accepting convictions from other states, so government officials have to request court papers about each sex offender and then figure out what corresponding Wyoming crime their conviction translates to. Then they must decide whether or not that person must register, and there is only one person handling that responsibility.

With so little manpower being devoted to keeping track of convicted sex offenders, the task "becomes daunting," according to Bob Brackett, the program manager for the sex offender registry in Wyoming. According to Brackett, a convicted sex offender in Florida called him recently to ask about the state’s laws. After learning about the relaxed atmosphere in Wyoming, the man moved there. "A short time later," Brackett said, "He called our office to ask a question, indicated that it was much easier to live here, and that he was going to call a buddy of his." The man said his friend was a convicted sex offender and he was going to urge him to move to Wyoming.

State legislators are working to close loopholes in the laws, and they have widespread support for their efforts. Bills are being considered to require all sex offenders to be listed on an online database, and for some offenders to be required to wear GPS tracking devices. Gov. Dave Freudenthal has signed bills increasing penalties for incest, and making it a crime to knowingly harbor an unregistered sex offender. Another bill that has been introduced would stipulate an automatic life sentence for anyone convicted of two sex crimes against minors.

Despite the public support for tightening the laws, there are some legislators who are in opposition, saying that new laws may drive sex offenders underground and make it more difficult to be sure they aren’t offending again. They also say that flooding the registry with hundreds of new names will make it more difficult to keep track of legitimately dangerous convicts. "I don’t want to dilute the effect of the sex offender list," said Sen. Bruce Burns, who claims that it would be inappropriate for the same list to include both child molesters and people convicted of statutory rape.

Rep. Jane Warren, a Democrat, said that she thinks the statistics are not being interpreted accurately. Warren says that the rise in out-of-state sex offenders moving to Wyoming might just be due to the new jobs being created by the oil and gas boom.

But many others disagree, saying that states such as New Mexico, Virginia, Vermont, and Washington have beefed up their sex-offender laws, and the new restrictions are driving convicted offenders to find new places to live, and many of them are heading west. As Wyoming's attorney general told reporters, "They look around for states that do not have the strongest laws, because if you can go someplace and you don’t have to be a registered sex offender, you don’t have to check in with authorities, obviously from their perspective that's a better situation."