By Andrew Welsh-Huggins
The Associated Press

COLUMBUS - The state has identified about 1,000 additional convicted sex offenders at risk of striking again, according to a study done following the rape and slaying of a northeast Ohio girl last year.

The Department of Rehabilitation and Correction re-screened almost 9,000 inmates earlier this year as part of a review of Ohio's sex offender laws.

Gov. Bob Taft today is expected to sign a bill strengthening those laws. He ordered the review after the September 2002 rape and murder of Kristen Jackson, 15, who was abducted at the Wayne County Fair in northeast Ohio.

Joel Yockey, 46, of Wooster, pleaded guilty in December to aggravated murder, rape and kidnapping. He was sentenced to life in prison without the chance of parole.

Yockey had been released from prison in March 2002 following a 1987 conviction for raping a 17-year-old girl. He then lived with his parents several blocks from Jackson's home.

Yockey had been classified as a sexually oriented offender, requiring him to register his address with the sheriff's office, but he wasn't subject to having neighbors notified of his presence in the area.

After Jackson's murder, Taft, a Republican, created a committee to review Ohio's 1997 Megan's Law, which requires convicted sex offenders to register with local police. The law requires community notification for serious offenders.

Under current law, local police only have to notify neighbors about repeat offenders and those labeled sex predators by judges, meaning they have been deemed at risk of committing additional sex crimes.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Jeff Jacobson, a Dayton-area Republican, will extend the notification requirement to all convicted sex offenders.

That would include offenders such as Yockey.