The wrenching story of North Idaho's Shasta Groene — her mother and brothers murdered, allegedly by a man known to be a violent sex offender — provoked a rage last summer that may be familiar to longtime Washingtonians.

Fifteen years ago, the sexual mutilation of a 7-year-old Tacoma boy by a serial predator prompted similar reaction — and a new law-enforcement campaign against sex offenders unprecedented in its aggressiveness and cost.

The campaign got results. Since 1990, prison sentences for sex crimes have doubled. Hundreds of the most predatory go straight from prison to a locked treatment center. Home addresses for thousands more are easily retrieved from a state Web site. But when two sex offenders in Bellingham were killed last month, allegedly by a man who found their address on that Web site, police feared Washington would retreat.

Instead, the rage over the Shasta Groene case is driving Washington to get even tougher on sex offenders.

Sex offenders are likely to be a central issue in the legislative session in January, with bills already being drafted on everything from "one-strike" life-sentence laws to GPS monitoring.

The hottest debate will likely involve an ordinance that the city of Issaquah passed a month after 8-year-old Shasta Groene was found with her alleged abductor, Joseph Edward Duncan III. The ordinance forces sex offenders to live in specific areas in the same way that strip clubs must cluster in red-light districts.

Sex-offender registries

Washington Association of Sheriff's and Police Chiefs: State Sex Offender Information Center, along with links to county Web sites, www.waspc.org/wa_sex/

King County: www.metrokc.gov/sheriff/

services/sex_offender_

search/

Snohomish County: www1.co.snohomish.wa.us/

Departments/Sheriff/

Services/Sex_Offender/

It's strange that Washington feels the need to be so aggressive, said Seattle Police Detective Bob Shilling, one of the nation's foremost experts on sex-offender management and a sex-crime victim himself.

"I do trainings all over the country and world, and I can tell you there is no state or province that has tougher sex-offender sentencing laws than the state of Washington," said Shilling.

Legislators should be cautious in tinkering with sex-offender laws, he said, lest they drive sex offenders to stop registering their addresses and become homeless. "Because we've had a particular bad case, let's not throw away what we've done in being a leader in the U.S. I think there's a risk of that right now."

Sen. Pam Roach, R-Auburn, supported a one-strike law last session. "Let's face it, 100 years ago you'd get hung. So we shouldn't feel too bad about getting tough on sex offenders."

"Stranger danger"

vs. reality

Much of Washington's approach — which has since been replicated around the country — was aimed at preventing highly publicized cases of so-called "stranger danger" like that of Duncan, the man charged with killing Shasta's family.

But the real public risk looks much different, said Scott Matson, a research analyst with the Center for Sex Offender Management in Silver Spring, Md.

"There's got to be a way of getting through to the public that not all these guys are monsters who snatch and grab your children," he said.

Research has shown at least 80 percent of sex offenders victimize someone they know, such as a relative or neighbor, and are most likely to be first-time offenders.

Last month, the Washington State Institute for Public Policy, the Legislature's research arm, reported a surprising fact: Sex offenders have the lowest rates of recidivism among all felons.

The study found 13 percent of sex offenders were convicted of a new felony within five years, less than half the rate of other felons. Child molesters had the lowest recidivism rates among sex offenders.

One reason for the low recidivism may be the longer prison terms.

Suzanne Brown-McBride, head of the Washington Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs, which represents 42 rape-crisis centers, said those rates are so low due in part to improvements in the treatment of sex offenders.

"Sometimes the bar for the public seems to be whether you cure it or not," she said. "The treatment community has gone from calling it 'treatment' to 'management.' Treatment connotes fixing, while management connotes something the offender will have to manage the rest of their lives."

Sex-offender registry called "a fragile statute"

The 1990 law forced sex offenders released from prison — nearly 19,000 so far — to register their addresses with police, information that is now available on a statewide database.

That law has been a critical tool for police and the public, but in August, an ex-convict named Michael Mullen said he used Bellingham's registry — which listed specific addresses — to find and kill two released sex offenders.

Police fear the case will force the registry to be weakened or even eliminated. Bellingham Police Chief Randall Carroll changed his department's Web site to list block-level addresses, as do most other municipalities statewide.

"The registry law is a fragile statute," said Carroll. "If people target sex offenders for retribution or assault or homicide or property damage, there is a risk we'll lose the law."

No chance of that, said Rep. Al O'Brien, D-Mountlake Terrace.

"People would go nuts," said the retired Seattle police sergeant and chair of the House criminal-justice committee. "They don't think the system is tough enough."

Since 1996, the state's "two-strike" law for sex offenses has sent 60 men to prison for life. An additional 500 sex offenders are on lifelong parole, under a law passed in 2001.

O'Brien has more get-tough proposals, including expanding the list of offenses that qualify for two-strike sentencing, and he's talking to the governor about allowing other cities to duplicate the Issaquah ordinance.

Issaquah's law:

a model?

Among the most likely additions to sex-offender laws during the next legislative session could be so-called "community protection zones."

Washington already has a version of the law, passed last year, which limits sex offenders from living within two blocks of a school. The city of Issaquah in August went much further, limiting offenders to a swath of mostly industrial land and a total of 260 housing units. The ACLU has since filed suit against the city.

At least seven other cities are considering similar laws, raising concerns among police and treatment providers of a confusing patchwork of local laws. "It would force sex offenders into communities that can't afford attorneys and PR" to uphold such zones, said Brown-McBride of the rape-crisis coalition.

Wayne Tanaka, the Issaquah city attorney, acknowledges that could be a problem and is a good reason for a statewide ordinance. "The state had not taken action, and my client had an immediate crisis to deal with," said Tanaka.

O'Brien said taking Issaquah's solution statewide will be a tough sell, in part because of a rising number of homeless sex offenders.

"We have to react to soothe the nerves of the citizens in the wake of the Joseph Duncan case, but we also have to approach it with the knowledge we have and to act intelligently," said O'Brien. "It seems like a contradiction, I know."

Jonathan Martin: 206-464-2605 or jmartin@seattletimes.com