High School To Use National Sex Offender Registry

Another expensive scheme...

Bentonville High School plans to use a software program this fall that will allow school officials to check visitors' names against a national sex offenders registry.

The high school will ask visitors to show their driver's license or other state-issued photo ID. The license will be scanned into the system, which will check the person's name and birth date against a list of registered sex offenders from 47 states. If the system turns up a match, it also provides a picture of the registered offender.

If the visitor is registered as a sex offender and has no legitimate business at the school, that person will be asked to leave.

This is either going to be very expensive, or a colossal failure. In order to work what's needed is an independent and nearly instant check of the veracity of the license. Such is available, but at $2 a check this will eat into to the school's budget.

If the system merely checks the name & DOB against the registry, it will be very easily bypassed with a fake ID. And these guys have already been in prison so they'll know all about that.

Of course, this assumes that the visitor doesn't bypass the office altogether. Or the office can require ID tags on everyone -- another expense.

For the life of me, I cannot think of a single circumstance where such a system would have ever saved a child from an assault. But... it's their money to waste.