Oregon seeks to reduce backlog of sex offenders by eliminating risk assessment requirement for those over age 35

Sex assault survivors slammed Oregon's proposed solution to address a backlog of thousands of unclassified sex offenders in the state.

According to KATU, approximately 12,500 sex offenders live, work, and go to school in the Beaver State who haven’t been given a risk assessment by the Oregon Board of Parole or local corrections agencies. As a result, state officials don’t know how likely those individuals are to commit new sex crimes. Last year, Oregon lawmakers did not approve a request to give the parole board an additional $6 million to address the backlog.

The agency is under a legislative deadline to clear that backlog by Dec. 1, 2026, but now officials are supporting Senate Bill 821 which removes the deadline, and Senate Bill 820 which reduces the number of people that need to have risk assessments performed.

Board of Parole Chairperson John Bailey told the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, “The board has never been funded to be able to meet that deadline. Not even a significant influx of resources at this point will allow us to meet that deadline.”

If the legislation is passed, the parole board would only need to do risk assessments on offenders who are younger than 35 years old next January and people with two or more sex crime convictions but would continue to do the assessments on people getting out of prison or moving into Oregon.

Bailey claimed younger offenders and people with multiple convictions are most likely to re-offend and the actions would reduce the backlog of unclassified sex offenders from about 12,500 offenders to roughly 3,700 offenders.

Rape survivor Danielle Tudor said, “If these bills pass this legislative session, we will never get oversight or power back over the sex offender registry and how it works.”

Jane Mendoza told KATU about a Level Three sex offender from New York who moved into their community and the outlet discovered the man is unclassified in Oregon due to the backlog and would not undergo a risk assessment under Senate Bill 820. Mendoza said in opposition to this bill, “To know that I had allowed kids to go to the bathroom during practice in pairs, knowing now that there was a registered sex offender who had been issued a level three in another state, and who was walking around unassessed in Oregon because Oregon cannot get through their backlog, was shocking and horrifying.”