MN BCA SORNA Implementation Project

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.

The Minnesota Department of Public Safety/Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is working towards moving the State closer to compliance with the provisions of SORNA. To achieve this, the State has identified four goals: (1) validate all remaining digitized sex offender files to allow those files to be shared; (2) create a web application to replace Microsoft Access, which has limited sharing and verification capability; (3) digitize internal documents for distribution to law enforcement agencies; and (4) reduce the number of failures in the verification letter printing process. The verification letters are supposed to be automatically generated and printed every Monday, but the current system frequently fails for a variety of technical reasons. ca/ncf