Tomorrow night, before you let your little goblin go out trick-or-treating, St. Tammany Sheriff Jack Strain has a high-tech tool that can keep children and parents safe from potential sex offenders in the neighborhood.

“Every year, I get questions from parents on how to keep their kids safe from predators on Halloween,” Strain said.

He reminds parents that there is a tool for finding out if there are predators in a neighborhood. Parents can go to the Sheriff’s Web site at www.stpso.com, click on the button “Sex Offenders” and type in your address, and all the sex offenders within a one-mile radius of the address will show up on a map. The software, developed by the St. Tammany firm Watch Systems is now being used by law enforcement agencies all over the state and the country.

By law all sex offenders have to register with the Sheriff’s Office when they move into the parish. Currently, there are 217 offenders on the Sheriff’s registry.

The registrants fall into three tiers. Tier 1 offenders have to register once a year for 15 years. Tier 2 offenders have to register twice a year for 25 years. Tier 3, which contain the most dangerous predators must register every 90 days for life.

Alicia Irmscher, executive director of the Notification is Prevention Foundation that works in conjunction with Watch Systems, and sends out postcards with offenders addresses to local neighborhoods, said the best thing about the program is that the data is immediately put on the Web site.

“It is real-time registration,” Irmscher said. “As they register, the data is immediately available to everyone.”

Parents can also go on the Sheriff’s Web site and register for e-mail alerts so that when a sex offender moves into their area, the Sheriff’s office will send them e-mail.

By law, a registered sex offender cannot answer the door on Halloween, nor can they put on a mask. Penalties for non-compliance are very strict, Strain said. The first offense is up to 10 years in jail, and subsequent offenses go up to 20 years.

Also on the STSO Web site parents can find other safety tips for Halloween night so their children can trick or treat in safety.

Strain said that he will have 100 extra deputies on patrol tomorrow night to make sure that everybody is safe.

The data on the software is linked to every other law enforcement agency in the state, so if a parent puts in an address in Houma, the information on sex offenders there can be accessed.

“The best thing is that it is all free,” said Sheriff’s Office spokesman Capt. George Bonnett. “And residents do not have to register to use the maps.”

Again, the Sheriff’s Web site is www.stpso.com, and there is a statewide Web site, www.communitynotification.com, where all the sex offenders in the state can be located.