Sex Offender Program Biometric Enhancement and Technical Management

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 states, the District of Columbia, U.S. principal territories 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 Iowa Department of Public Safety has established and maintained its Sex Offender Registry (SOR) Program since July 1995. In an effort to sustain and upgrade the program, the Department intends to use SMART FY 14 AWA grant funds to further technical equipment and programming resources. The Department also plans to build a Facial Recognition Program within the SOR in order to efficiently use biometrics and facial recognition to identify potential offenders. The use of the facial recognition technology will allow the Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) staff to complete four main goals: 1) verify SOR with other SOR\Mugshot or DOT images and investigate any potential fraud; 2) identify and prevent mistakes made in photo identification; 3) identify predators from prohibited media; and 4) identify criminal suspects in all other events. This project can also enhance the use of biometrics and leverage future technology to accomplish other goals such as: enable DCI to perform mobile face checks against their sex offender database when they do address checks with the proper smart phone, apps and workflow and enable Disaster Shelter Managers to detect sex offenders in a shelter situation in the future by running a check of every person entering the shelter to make certain the Shelter Managers separate sex offenders from the general population. ca/ncf