HOME BROKERS DRAFTED INTO POLICING MOLESTERS; REGISTRATION, NOTIFICATION LAW UNLIKELY TO PREVENT SEX CRIMES.

Byline: Michael Dear and Lana Krtolica

STARTING this month, California real estate brokers are required by law to tell potential buyers how to obtain information about former sex offenders who may be living in the neighborhood where they are shopping for a home.

This requirement is the latest in a series of statutes collectively known as Megan's Law, named for 7-year-old Megan Kanka of New Jersey, molested and killed by a neighbor. Megan's Law basically requires that communities be notified when a former sex offender is being discharged into their midst.

In 1947, California became one of the first states to require registration of sex offenders, and the state now has one of the nation's strictest notification and registration laws. For many people, former sex offenders are the worst neighbors in the world.

But just at the moment when real estate brokers are being recruited into a surveillance and policing role, we should also consider the viewpoint of the sex offenders themselves. Not so long ago, one Bay Area man committed suicide five days after his release into the community, unable to bear the stigma attached to public awareness of his criminal past.

The names of more than 67,000 registered California sex offenders are to be found on a CD-ROM. Any adult can access this CD-ROM by going into a police station and passing a simple screening procedure. Information is also available at other places, including the Los Angeles County Fair, although a recent plan to disseminate such data to schoolchildren in Orange County was hastily suspended.

Unfortunately, the data on sex offenders in these registers are unreliable. For instance, the records name people who were convicted of offenses that are no longer considered crimes, including female topless dancing and public displays of homosexual affection.

In the LAPD's Hollywood station, two enterprising detectives, Jay King and Greg Stearns, embarked on a mission to find the 500 registered sex offenders in their division. The results of their investigations were startling. Some of the criminal records dated back to the 1940s, and King and Stearns found that 360 of the 500 were by now deceased, deported, in custody or living outside Hollywood.

Only 140 sex offenders of the original 500 were located and registered in Hollywood.

Because of extreme controversy about the constitutionality of Megan's Law, some states have elected not to allow the implementation of notification statutes, deeming them unnecessary and even harmful to communities and ex-offenders.

Federal judges in Connecticut, New York and Washington, D.C., have banned notification laws on the grounds that they inflict further punishment on the offender. Other states are monitoring the effects of notification laws.

Apart from double jeopardy and the risk of physical harm, former sex offenders are finding their post-sentence lives increasingly confined.

A 1995 California law requires psychiatric evaluation of offenders before their release from prison. Those who are deemed unfit may be committed to a secure mental health facility upon completion of their sentences.

Ex-offenders become lifelong registrants of the state and are obliged to provide blood and saliva samples to a law enforcement DNA database.

Chemical or surgical castration is being suggested to dull the urge to commit sex crimes.

In recent months, California Penal Code 209 has been amended to make it illegal for ex-offenders to live within a 10-mile radius of schools. The new code also prohibits them from sharing a residence with other convicted offenders unless they are members of the same family.

Vigilantism against ex-offenders has imprisoned them in their homes, caused them to move and subjected them to personal violence.

Hollywood detectives King and Stearns were very frank when we asked them about Megan's Law. They conceded that registration and notification regulations are unlikely to prevent sex crimes, but said they could speed investigation procedures by helping to eliminate suspects. Critics of the law counter that it will most likely drive the worst offenders underground.

Spurred by concerns about what makes or breaks a sense of community, we've been tracking Megan's Law for the past year. Megan's Law poses one of the toughest problems in civic morality - namely, how to balance the urgent need for public safety with the rights of individuals who have paid the price for past crimes.

Most of these individuals will sooner or later return to society. We believe the best solution to the threat they pose lies in proper treatment for the sex offender. Studies suggest that without such treatment, recidivism rates among sex offenders can vary from 58 percent to a high of 80 percent.

That's an 80 percent chance that a former sex offender will go out and commit a similar crime. With treatment, however, recidivism rates drop below 25 percent, to as little as 10 percent.

Treatment for sex offenders works to curtail the rates of repeat offenses. Updating CD-ROM records is not enough, and Megan's Law might have gone too far. There are other ways to deal with the worst neighbors in the world.

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Photo: In Thousand Oaks, Ventura County sheriff's Sgt. Rod Mendoza shows how to search for computer data on sex offenders.

Michael Owen Baker/Staff Photographer