State board wants low-risk sex offenders taken off list

A state board overseeing California’s sex offender registration laws wants to overhaul the registry because they claim it has grown too big and does not help differentiate between offenders who pose significant risks and those not likely to reoffend.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the California Sex Offender Management Board is recommending to the state Legislature that only high-risk offenders, such as kidnappers and sexually violent predators, should be required to register for life.

Others could be removed from the registry 10 to 20 years after the offense.

The board says a list of almost 100,000 sex offenders is unwieldy because California requires all sex offenders to register for life.

The result, according to a board report last month, is that the list has many offenders, including nearly 900 whose last sex crime was over 55 years ago.