County software keeping closer tabs on sex offenders

By Kyle Mooty

LPR Editor

Thanks to its OffenderWatch software, Caldwell County is now able to keep even closer tabs on registered sex offenders.

The software, installed in October 2023 at the Caldwell County Sheriff’s Office, has already made a difference.

A female registered sex offender absconded from Ohio to Michigan and had moved to Caldwell County. She had not notified local law enforcement, although by law she had to register as a sex offender. The OffenderWatch program notified the Caldwell County Sheriff’s Office, court documents were obtained, and within a matter of hours the woman was arrested while visiting a local business.

The woman had been living in Caldwell County for several months.

OffenderWatch has benefited multiple agencies. There is another story out of Grimes County (east of College Station) where a man was found to have failed to register as a sex offender for three years despite having been sentenced to prison and required to maintain a lifetime registration after his release. He was later sentenced to 10 years for failing to register as a sex offender.

Even if the sex offenders are homeless, they are required to register.

Profiles are obtained from each individual sex offender on OffenderWatch and are available to every agency with the programs.

Caldwell County is the only law enforcement agency in the county with OffenderWatch. Juan Villarreal, Captain over the CCSO’s Law Enforcement Support Services Bureau, said there are “about 100 registered sex offenders in the county,” which does not include the cities of Lockhart and Luling. Those cities have their own jurisdiction registration for sex offenders.

“We still assist in Martindale and Mustang Ridge,” Villarreal said.

The State of Texas, depending on the level of sex offender, mandates they either register monthly, quarterly, or annually.

“OffenderWatch is a way to manage the sex offender population,” Villarreal said. “We can look up what they’ve registered, where they’ve registered, and we can also go out and do an impulsive check. We like to keep tabs on them. It helps the community. We pick the randomness that we go out and make sure they are residing where they say they are, have the right vehicles and all. It keeps all the data we want to have. It’s information from other agencies and it’s available to other agencies that have the same OffenderWatch and it comes across in real time.”

Information is shared through OffenderWatch with various agencies, including the US Marshals.

Villarreal estimates between 5 and 10 percent of the sexual offenders in Caldwell County are female.
The transfer of information from one agency to another, thanks to OffenderWatch, has never been smoother. Previously, records had to be mailed or emailed, but now it’s as simple of signing on to OffenderWatch.

An estimated 800,000 individuals in the United States are on the sex offender registry with about 100,000 of those in Texas. California is second with about 62,000.

About 15,000 law enforcement agents, staff, and community members closely monitor dangerous sex offenders on OffenderWatch, a cloud-based program with more than 25 years of experience in the business.