Authorities at the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office have spent the past several months reviewing and fine-tuning the department’s OffenderWatch Web site, a detailed sex offender site that may prove equally helpful to county residents and police.

nv. Lee Kahlenbeck said the Georgia Bureau of Investigation put the statewide Sex Offender Registry online in 1996. Last September, the Sheriff’s Office enrolled in OffenderWatch, a detailed program that allows law enforcement to better inform residents about local sex offenders.

“It’s all about protecting our children from predators,” said Carroll County Sheriff Terry Langley. “All of these people that are on the sex offender registry have been convicted of a sexual crime. We just want to protect our children and give parents the security of having the most information possible.”

The Sheriff’s Office pays $7,000 per year to be a part of the national OffenderWatch program, and all the money used to fund the first year was taken from seized drug money. Kahlenbeck said OffenderWatch offers a bevy of information that other, similar sites do not.

OffenderWatch gives more detailed descriptions of offenders convicted of sex crimes. Besides the standard physical description of age, height and weight, the new program allows Kahlenbeck to input smaller details such as scars, moles or tattoos that may be used to identify suspects. After typing one’s address into the OffenderWatch program, any resident can access a map that pinpoints every sex offender within a one half-, one- or two-mile radius of the resident’s home. The map also provides links to each offender’s profile, which includes basic information, what offense the person was convicted of and his or her photo.

“The database is very in-depth about the sex offenders,” Kahlenbeck said. “I can tell you what vehicle they drive, what color it is, and the tag number.”

Kahlenbeck said several smaller Web sites offer the mapping service but are not updated as often as OffenderWatch. Kahlenbeck oversees the sheriff’s sex offender registry and victims’ assistance programs in addition to OffenderWatch. That makes him responsible for keeping track of every sex offender who lives and/or works in Carroll County. When he started overseeing sex crimes four years ago, there were about 50 registered sex offenders in Carroll County. Today, there are about 230 registered.

All registered sex offenders are expected to keep Kahlenbeck informed about their lives, particularly where they live and if they plan to move. Each time Kahlenbeck meets with an offender, he inputs all of the offender’s updated information into the OffenderWatch system immediately. This means that if a sex offender moves across town, the map will register the move right away.

“The OffenderWatch is updated daily,” he said. “It’s more current than anything out there.”

Kahlenbeck said that because the GBI must keep track of every sex offender in the state, it sometimes takes three to four months to update the Web site.

Another bonus offered by OffenderWatch is the e-mail lists are available to all county residents. Residents can visit the program’s Web site and sign up to receive free e-mails alerting them if a registered sex offender moves into their neighborhood.

Kahlenbeck said this service is particularly useful for residents with children or elderly loved ones.

“It helps us keep track of [offenders] better,” he said. “It helps the public to know better who’s living in their area, and they’re automatically notified if a new one moves in.”

According to Langley, 134 county residents have signed up for the e-mail service so far, and 190 notification e-mails have already been sent out.

Kahlenbeck said having a more up-to-date and detailed record of local registered sex offenders is also helpful to law enforcement. He is not able to search more easily for persons matching witness descriptions of suspects in unsolved cases through both photos and the detailed physical traits.

“It doesn’t give us the one who did it, but it can give us a place to start,” he said.

Although the OffenderWatch Web site has been online since last September, Kahlenbeck has not publicized it until recently to give him time to work out the kinks in the program. He believes county residents will respond well to the program because of increased awareness of the presence of sex offenders everywhere in the country.

“It’s not that it’s something new,” Kahlenbeck said. “It’s just that the public realizes now that they could have a sex offender living next door to them, and now they want to know.”

The OffenderWatch link can be found by visiting www.carrollsheriff.com and following the “sex offender registry” link.