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Unlike many states, Kansas posts information on sex offenders including certain juveniles, violent offenders and drug offenders. The interactive map is good, but would be more effective if you could search a radius around an address of concern. Add this mapping function and a search by offender type, and Kansas would rank amongst the top states.

Kansas Screenshots

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Information Provided:

The offender profiles are sparse compared to other states’ offender profiles. What’s missing? Hair color, eye color, distinguishing marks, work and school addresses, and vehicle information. Some indication of risk in the sex offender category would be helpful as well.

Search Functions:

The Kansas Registered Offender Search site offers four options for searching: by name, by city, by county and by zip code. Search results are the profiles. Kansas is the only state to omit profile pages; all of the information is on the results list. From here, you may map the location of each offender. The map includes the offender you specified and other offenders in the area.

The map would be improved by color-coding the offenders by offender type—sexual, violent and drug. And, the mapping function should be expanded to allow a user to type in an address and map offenders in a specified radius.

Additional Site Features:

On their site they post links to brochures that cover topics like abduction prevention, child abuse, safety tips and rape. However, they publish little information on the policies that relate registration requirements.

Ease of Use:

The site is simple and straightforward—easy to use. Here, it’s a matter of expanding functions to make the Kansas registry more useful.

Contact Information:

The Kansas Bureau of Investigation can be contacted by telephone, email or mail.

Summary:

Kansas offers a useful site with an interactive map. It is the only state to include both violent offenders and drug offenders with its sex offenders, providing more information to the community. However, to be more useful, Kansas should allow searches by offender type, code offenders on the map, and expand the mapping function to search areas of concern.