While proponents argue that the registries are a tool in protecting children and other potential victims from sexual predators, opponents question their effectiveness in deterring repeat offenders.

Sex offender registries, which appear in all states, also have prompted civil libertarians to question whether the rights of offenders who have served their sentences are being eroded.

In Maine, the state police have maintained a sex offender registry since 1992. The registry, which lists more than 2,200 sex offenders statewide, went online in December 2003.

Accessible from the state of Maine Web site, the registry includes photos, addresses and histories of the registrants.

According to the Maine Department of Public Safety, the online registry averages 575,000 hits a month and is the most visited site on the state Web page.

State Rep. Sean Faircloth (D-Bangor) would like some evidence that the state’s sex offender registry is working, but in the meantime, he supports the program.

An advocate for children’s welfare, Faircloth was chairman of the Commission to Improve Community Safety and Sex Offender Accountability formed in the fall of 2003. The commission issued a report to the Legislature in January 2004.

“Find me some studies, something regarding the effectiveness of sex offender registries,” he said in a recent interview, repeating a request he made often during commission sessions to gather information. “There is no evidence that it helped.

“One would think there’d be definitive studies. There are none as far as I know.”

Nonetheless, Faircloth thinks the state has an obligation to maintain the registry.

“In the end, I came down in favor of registries because it is not the government’s job to withhold information that would concern people,” he said. “Does it decrease [repeat offenses] overall, globally? As far as I know, it does zip.”

Faircloth said that as a parent he would use the information on the registry to help his children avoid potentially dangerous people in the neighborhood.

Local police agree that the registry’s most useful function is making people aware of registered sex offenders.

“I like having the information and having it available,” said Detective Dotty Small, who handles sex registry details for the Ellsworth Police.

Small doesn’t know how effective the registry is beyond providing helpful information to police and making the public aware of registered sex offenders in their midst.

“I’m not sure how much having the registry helps,” she said.

Each time a registered sex offender convicted of certain crimes involving children moves into Ellsworth, the police notify all licensed daycare centers in the city, as well as all local schools.

Small said a man on the sex offender registry recently moved in to a house across from the Knowlton School. She said that when police received a call about someone standing outside the school watching kids play, they knew immediately that there was a registered sex offender in the immediate neighborhood. When they investigated the complaint, they determined that the man watching kids play was the sex offender.

Small currently deals with 11 sex offender registrants. Ten live in Ellsworth and another one works in the city.

Sex offender registrants are required to check in with local law enforcement on a regular basis. Some offenders enter the registry for 10 years. Others remain on the list for life, depending on the crimes for which they were convicted and the details of the crimes.

Those on the registry for 10 years must check in with authorities once a year. Those registered for life must check in every 90 days.

When registrants report on schedule, local police verify their identification, their address, job status and the like, as well as fingerprinting them. The prints and all verified information are forwarded to the state police.

The job gets complicated for local police when a registrant fails to comply.

“If they’re non-compliant, we need to find them,” Small said.

Chief Deputy Richard Bishop of the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office manages the sex registry for the towns in Hancock County that do not have police forces.

He said he currently supervises 57 sex offender registrants.

In some cases, depending on the crimes for which the registrants were convicted, Bishop hand delivers notification to town and school officials, superintendents and neighbors.

He, too, tracks down those registrants who fail to comply with state requirements.

“It is time consuming,” he said, “but most of the time it’s well worth it. We need to protect the public and make them aware of these individuals in their communities.”

Bishop said he often advises school administrators to check the online registry and be aware of convicted sex offenders in the area.

Though Faircloth supports the registry in Maine, he believes more can be done to protect children.

He said laws enacted on the basis of the commission report in 2004 increased penalties for crimes involving children under the age of 12.

According to Faircloth, Alan Kelley, a deputy district attorney in Kennebec County who served on the Faircloth’s “sex crimes” commission, says the tougher laws enacted in 2004 have had a “positive effect on increasing public safety.”

He advocates incarcerating sex offenders who prey on children for longer periods of time as an effective approach to increasing public safety.

“If you want to stop these guys, remove them from the scene,” he said, adding that placing them on a sex offender registry could defeat the overall goal.

Part of the problem, he said, is that public outrage about some registrants living in their neighborhood drives them away.

“It turns them into eternal transients,” he said. “Globally, there is a broad public policy that creates a situation where these people can’t live anymore.

“If they become total transients, does it decrease public safety? You can’t keep an eye on them or monitor their behavior. Nothing in these laws is stopping them from going across town and preying on kids.”

Faircloth raises issues that could affect local laws being established in Maine.

For instance, the town of Lincoln recently enacted an ordinance that prohibits sex offender registrants from living within 1,500 feet of schools, licensed daycare centers or within 1,000 feet of libraries, parks, movie theaters and public playgrounds.

Does it make the public safer, or does it make what Faircloth refers to as “fixated pedophiles” more dangerous by sending them into hiding?

The registry includes people convicted of rape and other sex crimes against adults, as well as those who have sexually assaulted children.

Faircloth says people reading the registry sometimes overlook such distinctions.

“There are people who go on the registry that aren’t what you have in mind,” he said.

He cited a situation in central Maine where someone who was convicted of a sex crime in the early 1980s is required to register with the state police.

Faircloth said that if the man can be believed, he has maintained a clean record for 20 years. Appearing on the registry could jeopardize his job.

“I worry about those people being on the Web site,” Faircloth said. “In my opinion, a lot of the 10-year registrants should appear on a written list, not the Web site list.

“A 20-year-old who has sex with a 15-year-old is sleazy, but he is not what the public is looking for on the Web.”

The state police caution people who read the online registry that any “use of [the] information to threaten, intimidate or harass any registrant may result in criminal prosecution.”

The registry was implicated in a gruesome double murder last Easter.

According to published reports at the time, a man from Nova Scotia shot and killed two Maine men after getting their names from the state’s online sex offender registry.

One of the alleged victims lived in Milo and had been convicted of raping a child. The other lived in Corinth and had been convicted of engaging in an illegal sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl when he was 19.