The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children estimates that 100,000 sex offenders who fail to add their names or update state registries, essentially vanishing from the system, says the Salt Lake Tribune. The new federal Adam Walsh Act, enacted last summer, establishes a national sex offender registry and makes it a felony not to update a registration when moving between states. Nationally, 84 arrest warrants have been issued and 66 fugitives have been apprehended for violating the law.
Among the four offenders charged in Utah is John Henry Gill, whose arrest last October was the first in the country under the new law. The Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending Registering and Tracking Office – the SMART Office – was named after Elizabeth Smart. It is headed by Laura Rogers, a prosecutor from California, who is developing guidelines to set uniform standards for various state registries. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said he hoped that the Justice Department would issue the guidelines “for public comment in the next few months, as promised.”