UPDATING: Arkansas Announces Sex Offender Registry Mobile Application

One other state has an app: North Carolina Sex Offender Registry goes mobile with new app, AG Cooper announces

1-18-2013 Arkansas:

"Knowledge is power." That's how Brad Cazort summed up Arkansas' new mobile application to track registered sex offenders.

Cazort the Repository administrator for the Arkansas Crime Information Center.

The center and in Information Network of Arkansas announced the application's launch on Wednesday.

Technicians developed a beta version months ago and so far three thousand people have downloaded the free application, Cazort said.

The program allows people to search the state's sex offender registry on their smart phones or tablets the same as they can online. The difference is that the mobile application integrates GPS and mapping technology to show the user the location of registered sex offenders in proximity to wherever they happen to be at any given time.

Read carefully, the person looking up a registrant on the registry, would have to know who they are beforehand. i.e., know them on sight. That is the only way any GPS would work to tell the app where they are at that given moment. (Except for false reports) And, if that location was anywhere near where the registrant lives, what good is the App? How many people -normally unknown to you- do you think you can remember?

"If you know what your surroundings are, you'll have a better aspect of how to deal with that and make sure you are aware and protect yourself in those situations," Cazort said.

Developing the application cost about $5,000, he said, adding that money was part of a $300,000 grant from the federal government two years ago to get the state's sex offender registry online and to make the conversion from paper records to digital files. ..Source.. by Jonathan Athens