To Catch a Predator Facebook Style: Sexual Offenders Application
Published by Rodney Rumford July 26th, 2007 in Facebook, Facebook Applications, Facebook Review.
Rating: 
Everyone has seen the “To Catch a Predator” Dateline TV Series. Well this facebook application is a really useful application to help people locate sexual offenders in their city (no need for a TV crew). This application is powered by SexualOffenderslist.org We chose Indiana and selected a specific city. This facebook application allows you to see the offenders name, picture, last known address and to search and see if they are on facebook.
You simply select the city and the list populates with the offenders. Nice. The application also displays an image slideshow of the offenders on your profile, so that your friends will be able to familiarize themselves with the local sex offenders. Both the application page images and text and the slideshow images also link to their SexualOffendersList.Org offender page, which contains more information about the offender. They have applications for several states so far.
This application is clunky, could be designed better and is littered with google ads and hideous banners. However; it’s pure usefulness to society outweighs its terrible visual aesthetics. Here is the link for the Indiana Application
Now I dare anyone to say Facebook is worthless. 
City List of Offenders with links to search for them on facebook.
Profile page slideshow of a specific cities offenders
Technorati Tags: facebook, sexual offender, sex predator, catch a predator, dateline
8 Responses to “To Catch a Predator Facebook Style: Sexual Offenders Application”
- 1 Trackback on Dec 11th, 2007 at 6:28 pm
I think this is a great application and an “indirect bullet” fired at Myspace. =)
There should be an application for all of the most wanted people as well. Leveraging these thriving social networks to catch the filth of the world is great.
This application gets into murky territory. A lot of people who are listed as sex offenders were 19 when they had sex with their 17 year-old girfriend and woke up to freaked out parents.
I think any site that publicly lists sex offenders should at least list what they were found guilty of so that citizens have a clear idea of just how dangerous they are.
The site does list what they were found guilty of. Click on the image slideshow on your profile page and you can see what they were found guilty of…
Like this for example: CRIMINAL SEXUAL CONDUCT-FIRST DEGREE (PERSON UNDERTHIRTEEN) [750.520B1A]]
or
CHILD MOLESTING, C FELONY 2 CTS []
or
SEXUAL MISCONDUCT W/MINOR & SEXUAL BATTERY C-FELONY []
or
RAPE A FELONY []
or
RAPE / CRIM CONFINEMENT []
So much for the girlfriend theory. Dangerous enough for you Teresa? These people are scumbags.
This is a horrible application! Why would I want pictures of child molesters on my facebook profile?? If my friends need to find out about sex offenders they can check the state website…This has no place on facebook.
Kathryn,
I don’t know… Why do we watch Americas Most Wanted? To make sure we keep society safe? It is about raising awareness. Feel free to not add it.
i am still amazed by the amount of negative responses from publishing public information in an effort to keep people safe.
indirect bullet at myspace? what are you talking about? they built their own app / partnership to do this 6 months ago. that’s what all the press is about when they say myspace deleted xx number of registered sex offenders.