Eliminate misuse of Registered Sex Offender Proximity maps
The registered sex offender proximity maps are a bad idea because they are basically worthless due to the fact that the data that is it based includes approximations other inbuilt inaccuraries when generalized. For instance a city or zip code may be approximated by the center point, but not actually be where the sex offenders specifically live. The list is mainly of use for local law enforcement to be used in a case by case manner in the way that most lists were established and are actually maintained. Also, the average person does not understand how little it takes to make the list in many cases. What people really need to know is where the monsters live and they are a small percentage of the list and also the monsters are the most likely to give false addressess or have missing information. Residential areas near commerical areas can give a falsely low perception, while densely populated areas can give too high of a perception of risk.
For safety, use actual local crime data statistices adjusted to population densisty instead.
Thanks for this feedback. We receive a lot of positive feedback about the sex offender data, indeed our site is the only apartment hunting site that allows renters to view maps of this information by apartment community. In the future, we may make this a pay feature, but we don’t anticipate taking it away from users because it has proven such a popular and unique feature.