Sex Offender Web Service for Ohio's Colleges and Universities

The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006 (AWA) (Pub. L. 109-248, 42 U.S.C. § 16901, et seq) authorizes the Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking (SMART) to administer sex offender management grants. These grants assist state, local and tribal jurisdictions in developing and/or enhancing sex offender registration and notification programs that support substantial implementation of Title I of the AWA, known as the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA). SORNA was enacted to protect the public from convicted sex offenders and offenders against children by establishing a comprehensive national system for the registration of those offenders.

To effectively carry out the SORNA requirements, the Ohio Attorney General's Office will verify the sex offender status of enrolled students at Ohio's colleges and universities by offering the OffenderWatch® Academia Web Service. The Ohio Attorney General's Office goals and objectives are to provide approximately 147 public and not-for-profit colleges and universities with a means of identifying the sex offender status of their enrolled students and verify the student status of convicted sex offenders attending public and private not-for-profit colleges and universities. The OffenderWatch® Academia Web Service will compare data in an educational institution's enrollment system against registered sex offender records stored in sex offender databases.

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