At least four YMCAs in Indiana plan by next month to be using the state registry of sexual and violent offenders to screen out members who might threaten the safety of others.
Critics say the practice is shortsighted. An advocate for former prisoners said it excludes people who have rehabilitated themselves or who pose no present danger. The head of one of the state's largest YMCAs, meanwhile, said the registry does not detect all potential threats, so other steps were necessary.
The Indiana Sex and Violent Offender Registry is designed to tell the public who released offenders are and where they live.
While employers and groups routinely use it to screen volunteers who work with children, using the year-old registry to bar people from organizations represents a new way in which it is being used to isolate convicts after prison.
The YMCA of Kokomo, beginning May 1, plans to withhold membership from people listed on the registry and expel current members who are listed. YMCAs in Lafayette, New Castle and Greensburg also deny membership to people on the registry.
''It was better to be proactive than reactive,'' Kokomo YMCA Executive Director Dave Dubois said in an interview.
A growing number of YMCAs across the country are banning registered sex offenders. Dubois also said he had spotted the name of at least one of his members when a newspaper printed the names of Kokomo-area people on the registry. ''That was one of the things that precipitated it,'' he said.
Asked whether the move was driven by the rising cost of liability insurance to organizations that work with children, Dubois responded, ''It's driven for the protection of our members.''
''We will take any measures necessary to ensure that no child can ever be harmed at our YMCA,'' Dubois said in a statement released Monday. The Kokomo Y has 1,876 members under the age of 18.
Andrea Marshall, executive director of Prevent Child Abuse Indiana, said that YMCAs are multigenerational, with children and adults sharing facilities such as locker rooms
''There's just an extreme opportunity for risk there for the Y,'' she said.
Among isolated reports of child exploitation occurring in YMCA programs or facilities is a 1998 case in which a man videotaped naked boys in a locker room in Stevens Point, Wis.
The more than 2,500 YMCAs in the United States are locally governed. Their national office advises local YMCAs to make full use of resources to protect children, including offender registries but not necessarily to screen out members, said spokeswoman Julie Mulzoff of the Chicago-based YMCA of the USA.
An undetermined but growing number of YMCAs use offender registries to screen members, Mulzoff said.
Offender advocate J.T. Ferguson cautioned against using the registry to stigmatize those listed without learning more about their situations, because each one is different. He knows a man who landed on the registry for having sex with an underage girl.
''He was 18, she was 16, and now he's a sex offender,'' said Ferguson, executive director of PACE/OAR, an Indianapolis agency providing services to about 5,000 offenders and their families in central Indiana.
''If we continue to exclude people on the basis of a criminal offense, we create a disposable population, which is ludicrous,'' Ferguson said.
The 45,000-member YMCA of Greater Indianapolis uses the registry to screen employees and volunteers, but relies on other means to create a safe environment, said Norris Lineweaver, its president and chief executive. For every name on the registry, he said, scores of other people also hurt children.
''The registry is not a perfect screening device,'' Lineweaver said.
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