Offender Watch

Mohave County Arizona Sheriff’s Office announces their startup of the most innovative and collaborative national sex offender program, OffenderWatch®.

Mohave County Sheriff Doug Schuster announces they are the newest Arizona County law enforcement agency to implement OffenderWatch® to manage registered sex offenders and make effective community notifications.  OffenderWatch® enables Arizona law enforcement agencies to collaborate and share information with law enforcement partners statewide, to include Sheriff’s Offices, Police Departments, and others.  This information sharing provides all law enforcement agencies all the information concerning sex offender movements, history and activities anywhere in the county, state or country.

OffenderWatch® is supplied and supported by Watch Systems, LLC and is currently in use by more than 1,000 leadership jurisdictions in 30 states to register, track and disseminate community information regarding sex offenders.  Nearly half the registered sex offenders in the US are in OffenderWatch® databases, available for searching or importing.

The OffenderWatch® program implements an innovative electronic registration and inter-agency pre-registration and alerting system designed especially for Arizona processes – when an offender is registered with the Sheriff’s Office or a Police Department, that information is immediately and electronically made available to the managing agency where the offender lives – this can save agencies several weeks previously spent waiting on paper forms.  Then, Mohave County detectives may contact and interview the offender, verify their address, collect additional data, arrange the community notification, and verify the address does not violate a safety buffer.  All data collected about the offender is now housed in an electronic, internet accessible form, so any law enforcement officer who needs the information about the offender, or has information to share, can access the record.  Also, all data collected on the offender follows with him as he moves from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, enabling much more effective supervision by law enforcement.

The Mohave County Sheriff’s Office is also now making available on their website, a citizen-friendly, very easy to use, sex offender registry, enabling citizens to search for the presence of registered sex offenders in proximity to their homes, place of work, schools, and daycares.  OffenderWatch® also provides the Community Notifications that go to all citizens in close proximity to offender addresses, as required by Arizona Law.  All partner agency databases are linked together, enabling seamless display of offenders from any jurisdiction in the county or region.

The OffenderWatch® database enables citizens anywhere in Mohave County, plus OffenerWatch® participating neighboring jurisdictions, to see maps and get email notifications concerning offenders near any address important to them.  Citizens may enter any address of interest to them, and see a map and listing of offenders within their preferred radius of that address.  Then, they may confidentially register the address to be continuously monitored by the agency, which will send to them an email alerting them if an offender or predator should register