A convicted sex offender that federal authorities say is so dangerous to Hawai'i's children that he should be locked away in a mental institution is not listed in the state's public registry for such criminals.

Attorney General Mark Bennett said Jay Abregana is not on the registry because the state did not request paperwork about the man's federal child pornography conviction when he was first released from prison here in November 2006.

The state eventually did request the records, in August 2007, but only received them from federal court this month, Bennett said.

To place Abregana on the registry, authorities now must determine if his federal offense is equivalent to a state offense that would require his being listed.

Bennett said Thursday his office had not completed a review of the information to determine if Abregana's 2002 federal conviction for transporting child pornography through the mail requires posting his name on the Internet registry.

Under state law, a conviction for possession of child pornography requires listing of the offender in a separate database that is available to the public only through personal visits to police stations or to the office of the Criminal Justice Data Center on King Street, not online, Bennett said.

Dissemination of child pornography, Bennett said, is a more serious offense that requires posting of detailed information about the offender, including his photograph, on the state's Internet registry at sexoffenders.ehawaii.gov.

More than 2,500 offenders are currently listed.

Abregana is not listed in either the walk-in or the Internet registries, Bennett said.

Abregana "did appropriately register as a sex offender" with the state when he was released from federal custody in November 2006, Bennett said. However, "We did not request documents from federal court at that time," he said, and so Abregana was not listed.

Changes to state law that take effect January will mean that offenders such as Abregana will be automatically listed on the Web site.

The new changes were enacted to conform with federal sex offender registry guidelines. One of those recommendations would require public identification of certain juvenile sex offenders, he said.

Abregana's twin brother, Jed, is listed in the Internet registry of sex offenders.

Jed Abregana was convicted of possession of child pornography in federal court in 2002, but he was also convicted earlier in Hawai'i state court of a separate charge of sexually assaulting a minor, which resulted in his listing on the Internet registry.