UC’s CIMIP Awarded Grant to Study ID Risk of Sex Offenders

Congressman Michael Arcuri Instrumental in Securing Funds

Written By C. Leogrande, K.Henry, B. Engel

UC's CIMIP to undertake groundbreaking study with ID Analytics to assess relationship between sex offenders and ID theft

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Contact

cleogrande@utica.edu

Utica, NY (03/05/2009)

- He seemed a little taller than his classmates, but not the tallest. He mainly kept to himself and stayed out of trouble at the Arizona charter school he attended. Still, there was something not quite right about Casey Price and soon officials learned that the gangly youth who claimed to be 12 years old was really Neil Rodreick, a 29-year-old convicted sex offender from Oklahoma. He had repeatedly failed to register as a sex offender as he drifted from state to state. This disturbing case highlights the flaws of the current system for tracking sex offenders and ensuring the safety of children.

The U.S. Department of Justice recognizes the need to streamline and integrate the tracking system. Spurred by the mandate granted by the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act Of 2006, the Department is working to expand the National Sex Offender Public Website (NSOPW) to ensure law enforcement has access to information from around the country. The NSOPW will remain a database of all state and territory sex offender registries available to parents to help protect their children. The goal is to develop a more comprehensive and consistent registry system that aggregates data from the various jurisdictions to monitor activity across state lines. Congressman Michael Arcuri (D-NY) was instrumental in securing a grant to facilitate research that will determine how sex offenders manipulate their identities to avoid detection.

As part of the effort to find the best way forward, the Department, through its Bureau of Justice Assistance, has awarded a $670,761 grant to Utica College’s Center for Identity Management and Information Protection (CIMIP) to conduct research and analyses of the present systems. CIMIP, along with its partners ID Analytics, a research team from the criminal justice department at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and The Fraud Management Institute, will undertake an 18-month study of the sex offender registry systems across the country and through empirical analyses and predictive modeling, propose best practices for the new system. Research will focus on the identity manipulation employed by sex offenders to avoid detection.

“As a former district attorney, I know how important programs like CIMIP are to protect our community’s most vulnerable members – our children,” said Arcuri, who secured the funding for CIMIP in fiscal year 2008 legislation. “I am proud to bring this federal funding back to the Mohawk Valley to invest in a great local college, with growing national recognition, while working to keep dangerous predators off our streets.”

Sex offenders like Rodreick often behave similarly to identity fraudsters by using false identities and residential addresses. They assume another identity when applying for credit and other services. Just as fraudsters hide behind false identities and addresses, sexual predators are known to use the same tactics.

ID Analytics, the leader in on-demand identity intelligence and a pioneer in identity fraud detection, was selected by CIMIP to help combat this critical public safety issue.

ID Analytics will leverage its ID Network®, the nation’s only real-time, cross-industry compilation of identity information combined with the company’s Advanced AnalyticsSM to help identify predators that are manipulating identity information to avoid detection. The ID Network has 750 million unique identity elements such as names, addresses, and dates of birth, with an average daily flow of 45 million identity elements. It is also the largest repository of reported identity frauds in the U.S.
“Not only do some sex offenders simply disappear from the NSOPW, others use false addresses or create new false identities to avoid detection. This undermines the core purpose of the NSOPW—to highlight the location of sex offenders for neighboring families,” said Allen Jost, vice president, Business Strategy for ID Analytics, Inc.

The ID Network is national in scope and can help address the issue of offenders crossing state lines. This is a particularly difficult problem for law enforcement because sex offenders are registered and monitored by individual states.

“There is a large pool of people not being accurately tracked,” said Don Rebovich, Ph.D., executive director of CIMIP. “Our goal is to collect enough information to close the gap on the problem. We will provide research that will be applied to effectively reduce the number of offenders who are hiding in plain sight.” The research will also focus on identifying patterns. “The goal is to try to gather information that would be helpful in predicting future absconding, particularly through identity manipulation,” he said.

For more information about the study or to learn more about CIMIP, visit www.utica.edu/academic/institutes/cimip/.

About Center for Identity Management and Information Protection

The Center for Identity Management and Information Protection, housed at Utica College, is a research collaborative dedicated to the study of identity management, information sharing, and data protection and the crimes of identity theft and identity fraud. Founded in June 2006, its ultimate goal is to impact policy, regulation, and legislation through research and technical assistance applications.

CIMIP’s stakeholders are committed to working together to provide resources, gather subject matter experts, provide access to sensitive data, and produce results that will be practically applied to the fields of identity management, information protection and the prevention and control of identity theft and identity fraud. CIMIP study project results are put into action in the form of recommendations for best practices, new policies, regulations, legislation, training opportunities and proactive initiatives.

For more information about Utica College and its economic crime programs, visit www.cimip.org .

About ID Analytics, Inc.

ID Analytics, the leader in on-demand identity intelligence, provides unprecedented real-time visibility into the risk of individuals, protecting both organizations and consumers. ID Analytics pioneered identity scoring technology. ID Analytics combines three unique capabilities to assess risk and improve the customer experience across all consumer touch points: the ID Network®–the nation's only real-time, cross-industry compilation of identity information; Personal Topology™– an individual's particular identity characteristics and their connectedness to each other; and ID Analytics' proprietary Advanced AnalyticsSM. Leading communications, financial services, retailing, and healthcare companies, as well as multiple government agencies, trust ID Analytics to provide solutions that drive new revenue opportunities, reduce financial losses, and facilitate compliance with federal regulations. ID Analytics is based in San Diego, CA. For more information, visit www.idanalytics.com.

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