Lars Larson has been asking the hard questions for decades and he's not stopping now. Every weekday, Lars hosts two of the most listened-to talk radio programs in the country.
From noon to 3pm PT, he anchors a Northwest-focused program heard across more than 100 affiliates in Washington and Oregon, covering the stories and policies hitting closest to home.
Then, from 3 to 6 pm PT, he takes it national with a syndicated program reaching listeners from coast to coast.
No talking points. No agenda-driven nonsense. Just the news, the debates, and the conversations that actually move the needle. Subscribe and find out why millions of listeners keep coming back.
Rep. Kevin Mannix - Should Oregon’s Sex Offender Registry Include More Offenders?
•The Lars Larson Show
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
0:00
|
8:11
Oregon State Representative Kevin Mannix joins Lars to discuss why fewer than 2,000 of Oregon’s roughly 34,000 registered sex offenders appear on the state’s public database and his efforts to expand who is listed. Should parents have the right to know about more registered sex offenders living in their communities?
Hey, welcome back to the Lars Larson Show. It's a pleasure to be with you. You know that Oregon has almost 34,000 registered sex offenders, but only about five percent of that number shows up on the public database, the public radar. So parents have the right to know, and should they have the right to know who's actually living in their neighborhood? I thought I put that to Oregon State Representative Kevin Mannix, who's a Republican representing House District 21, and he joins us now. Kevin, welcome back.
SPEAKER_00
Hello, Lars, and good afternoon to you and everyone listening.
SPEAKER_01
How do we get this fixed?
SPEAKER_00
First of all, this stinks. Um, we had legislation that was supposed to set a timeline to clean all of this up, but the stinky mess is still out there because there was what I call a sneaker bill that passed. 52 to 1. Why? Because as it was presented on the floor, we didn't dig into the substance. It's something I'm gonna watch out for next year, assuming I'm re-elected, because behind all of that we extended deadlines and we uh pushed things off because we didn't want to spend the money for staff to go to and do the designation. So right now we're talking about over 34,000 registered sex offenders, but only less than half have been assessed and classified as level one, two, or three. And your your point is well taken. It's only the level three that are regularly available to the public. And the last figure I have is only 1,819 out of 33,813. This is terrible. And so, yes, it's going to cost some money. Okay, hire some temporary staff or bring an outside contractor and get in there and carry out the process of the registration. Secondly, we have to change the substantive standards. We are too tough on ourselves about what we're willing to make generally available to the public. We ought to be much more willing to generally make uh sex offenders available to the public. I can understand if someone committed something 25 years ago and the person was 18 years old at the time, and it was the lowest level sex offense to be registered, and nothing has happened since. Okay, maybe that would be a level one where you have to have a very good reason to dig into it. I want to revisit, though, the standards. I so we need a complete reappraisal of this because we have failed to deliver what the public deserves.
SPEAKER_01
Okay. And and and I gotta tell you, Kevin, why shouldn't we make all of this available? Shouldn't all of it be on a public database? So it doesn't matter how low level it was or how high level it was, and then you can you can div you can evaluate it yourself and say, okay, this was a kid, you know, who was in who was found guilty of indecent exposure when he was 18 and a half years old, and that was 20 or 30 years ago, and he hasn't had anything since then. Okay, we'll take that into account. But give all the information to the public. Why the objections and and why is it gone this long with only 2,000 in the database and 34,000 out?
SPEAKER_00
My friend, you speak with common sense. God bless you. Uh you we should start out with that system. And then uh we don't do want to avoid someone who's 36 and at the age of 18 had the lowest level and has done nothing since having neighbors and friends harassing that person. But that's another issue that you can deal with. Harassment is a separate issue. And the presentation is a very important thing.
SPEAKER_01
Well, that's if they're harassing them, but but uh Kevin, I gotta tell you something. I hear all this all this whining from so po so-called victims who are actually you know, if you were a criminal at some point and people say, Well, I still don't want you babysitting my kids. I don't want you hanging out with my kids, I don't feel comfortable with you being my uh granddaughter's uh music teacher or gymnastics teacher or dance teacher, I don't want you that close to the kids. That's what what pervy uh uh criminals do. And you say, Okay, I can make that decision. And if you say, well, that's not fair, yes, it is. Everybody gets evaluated based on the things they've done throughout their lives, right?
SPEAKER_00
Laura, you're gonna be amazed at my answer. You are completely correct. Well, you and I usually debate some details about something. We do. Your philosophical position here is completely correct. We should start out from that proposition and then go forward. And if there is something wrong with the classification system, fine, we can fix it. But the point is to let the public know what's out there.
SPEAKER_01
I've got a radical idea for you, okay? There are all these crazy well, these crazy groups out there, the so-called exoneration groups that are constantly trying to get convicted criminals back on the streets. You know, they run them out of law schools throughout America. What would happen if a legitimate law school, somewhere, say in Oregon, said, let's take this on as a project. Let's classify the 34,000 registered offenders, and let's do the classification, and we can run it. We can we can write the classifications up and say this is how we classify these various criminals based on their background and everything else. And it could still be reviewed by somebody who, say, works for the state police or works for some other government agency. But the actual nuts and bolts legwork of doing it could be done by college classes, say, at a law school, couldn't they?
SPEAKER_00
Yes. And yeah, there's certain things you have to do if you're dealing with public records, you have to be handled property, et cetera, et cetera. That can be dealt with. Lars, that is actually a a very good idea.
SPEAKER_01
And go and challenge, say, the University of Oregon's law school or Willamette's Law School, you know, or Lewis and Clark. I know they're all liberal as the day is long, but if you said to them, would you like to actually do something useful for a change, instead of trying to put convicted criminals and convicted murderers back on the street, because those exonerations are kind of a joke. I mean, that most of them are.
SPEAKER_00
They have what they call the innocence project. They have money for that.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, they're always finding people who are factually guilty, but uh technicality says they're not. How about taking some of these registered sex offenders, do the legwork for all this, write up the evaluations, and say if you could do thirty, four hundred a year in ten years, we'll be caught up. Do 7,000 a year, and we'll be caught up in uh half that and and get it done and and do a service for your state.
SPEAKER_00
So I am making note here, and I will bring this with me. Of course, I'm running for re-election on November 3. It's looking good, but you know, I'm working at it. Um, and uh and so far I'm on the Judiciary Committee. Uh I'm making note of all of this. I will bring this up. So there.
SPEAKER_01
Hey, Paul, Paul, call some of those law school deans to testify and say, is there any reason your school wouldn't want to sponsor a project like this when it has the kind of practical effect of putting all this information within the reach of average citizens so they know what kind of creepy perverts are living in their neighborhood? I think it could actually do some good, and maybe the law schools would have something to brag about instead of we freed three uh convicted murderers last year. That is Kevin Mannix. He is running for re-election in House District 21, and we're glad to have him on the program. Back in just a moment, ready to be done with being a landlord. This segment of the show brought to you by NickShivers.com. My rocket listing lets you sell that investment property guaranteed, even if you've got non-paying tenants. Go to nickshivers.com.
.png)