The Hardliner just recently learned of this issue, but we cannot take credit for bringing it to light.  Way back in January 2007, Republican Attorney General candidate Tim Fox had a press release on this very topic, and we must give full credit to him for bringing this issue to light.  Interestingly, the Montana media has yet to look into this story.

It's pretty simple really, Attorney General McGrath is charged with maintaining an online Sexual or Violent Offender Registry. According to the it's web site, the Registry must include a photograph of all sex offenders.  The law mandating the Registry is pretty clear about this as well.  The problem is, McGrath's Department of Justice is not providing photographs for an alarming number of sex predators even though the photos are available.

With such a large mandate, a few missing photos would be excusable.  The Registry's web page even provides an explanation for why photos might not be displayed.  On records without a photograph, a box is displayed with the text: "The Registration Unit has not yet received a photograph for this offender."

But are they even trying?  It turns out that many of the "missing" photos are already available on the Dept. of Corrections ConWeb database.  Let us illustrate:

Go to the Sex Offender Registry's web site and do a zip code search for 59101.  That will give you an alpha-ordered list of all the violent and sex offenders in that zip code.  (For the purposes of this experiment, ignore the violent offender records; only certain types of violent offenders are required to have a photograph)  Now let's cross-reference those sexual offenders without photographs against ConWeb.

Here's an example of a sex offender (crime: sexual intercourse without consent) without a picture in the Sex Offender Registry, but with one on ConWeb.

Here's a second example (crime: sexual intercourse without consent and sexual abuse of children), without a picture in the Sex Offender Registry, but with one on ConWeb. 

Third example (crime: sexual intercourse without consent): Sex Offender Registry, and ConWeb.

That's three examples from the 59101 zip code, and we haven't even gotten past names starting with the letter A! According to Tim Fox's press release, the "failure rate" is estimated to be around 60%.

Granted, the Registry does have photographs for some sex offenders, and Con Web does not have photographs for every record in its database either.  However, there fact that these photos are available on one state site and they're not on the state site where they are required by law to be is unacceptable.  McGrath is required to post these photos, and he's completely falling down on the job.

It's obvious that providing information about sex predators is not a priority for Mike McGrath.  This should be a fairly easy fix--you could even copy and past these photos on an individual basis!  It's also obvious that after 16 years of Democrat administration of the Dept. of Justice, we desperately need a change in leadership.  Kudos to Tim Fox for exposing this problem; and shame on the Montana media for sitting on this bombshell for over two months.