Boulder 2018 Halloween Sex Offender Safety Notes

BOULDER, CO -- Before kids go out trick or treating on Halloween, fall is a good time to take an inventory of who is living in your neighborhood. Boulder County currently has 357 registered sex offenders, according to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation Sex Offenders Registry. 8 of those are classified as sexually violent predators.

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation website notes that it "does not list all convicted sex offenders in Colorado. The CBI does not post information concerning (1) sex offenders only convicted of misdemeanor sex offenses, or (2) juveniles adjudicated for sex crimes."

In Boulder County, the concentrations of sex offenders are as listed:

Erie - 5

Boulder - 98

Jamestown - 1

Lafayette - 35

Longmont - 195

Louisville - 11

Lyons - 3

Superior - 5

Ward - 0

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation explains it "Maintains this site and evaluates the accuracy and integrity of all sexual offender registration records to determine if the data fulfills the minimum requirements for all Internet postings. These records are updated hourly and will be posted to the website as soon as they are available."

By typing your town or neighborhood into the search function on the Bureau of Investigation's website, you can see a list of addresses where the registered sex offenders live. You may want to avoid trick or treating at these houses and apartments on Halloween, or merely be aware of who's living in your neighborhood during the rest of the year.

Law enforcement officials and researchers caution that the registries can play only a limited role in preventing child sexual abuse and stress that most perpetrators are known to the child. The U.S. Department of Justice, which oversees the National Sex Offender Public Website, estimates that only about 10 percent of perpetrators of child sexual abuse are strangers to the child.

The Justice Department estimates 60 percent of perpetrators are known to the child but are not family members but rather family friends, babysitters, child care providers and others, and 30 percent of child victims are abused by family members. Nearly a quarter of the abusers are under the age of 18, the department estimates.

Related Coverage
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Source: Colorado Sex Offender Registry

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