Alicia's Law; funding for child exploitation law enforcement efforts. (SB37)

This bill presumes that internet sex crimes are a huge issue when these types of crimes actually make up only a tiny fraction of sex offenses. Although an oft-cited study notes a high percentage of youth who say they have been approached on the internet in ways that make them feel uncomfortable, another part of that same study notes that this INCLUDES advances and inappropriate sexual language from peers which actually make up the largest percentage of so-called "offenses".

Although highly publicized, internet sex crimes are not as prevalent as the Center for Missing and Exploited Children would have us believe, yet this bill would provide millions to address the problem. How about if parents take the responsibility for their children's internet usage?

A large percentage of actual internet offenses are set-ups (reference Dateline's "To Catch a Predator") as opposed to people actually committing crimes on their own.

It is unfortunate that Sen. Deeds is simply jumping on the sex offender and Dateline bandwagon without actually citing relevant research. Our politicians are jumping on every opportunity to garner votes by getting "tough" on sex offenders instead of actually utilizing available research to provide practical and effective policies. Our tax dollars are being wasted yet again in the name of "protecting the children."

Dear Lawless,

I'm not sure what your official sources are that have provided you with a gross misunderestimation of the problem of internet sex offenses.

Both the Department of Justice and The Internet Crimes Against Children Task Forces report that they know where 485,000 predators are right now who are actively engaged in internet sexual exploitation crimes against children. This number does not include the 600,000 convicted predators who are on the sex offender registry in this country.

Child sexual exploitation is a human rights crisis and i assure you that its proportions are epidemic in this country.

For accurate sources that reflect the actual problem, please see The Energy and Commerce Staff Report from Congress dated 1/2007 as well as the House of Representatives Judiciary page of related testimony on this subject.

Yours,
Camille Cooper
PROTECT
www.protect.org

I disagree with both of you, sort of.

Lawless, while I agree that there are some "set-ups" for sex crimes, I can't imagine that there are anywhere near as many as there are actual offenses. That is a real problem, and it is entirely appropriate for the government to be spending money to deal with that problem.

Camille, not everyone who is on a sex offender registry would qualify as a "predator" as that term is usually used. The fact is that most of the people who have committed crimes that get them on the sex offender registry are NOT predators. Under Virginia law, we have defined a sexually violent offender as someone who has "a congenital or acquired condition that affects a person's emotional or volitional capacity and renders the person so likely to commit sexually violent offenses that he constitutes a menace to the health and safety of others." Although one can say that anyone who has been convicted of a sex crime is more likely than someone who has never been convicted of a sex crime to commit a sex crime in the future, it would be a fallacy to say that everyone who has committed a sex crime is likely to re-offend. The problem is that although we have some idea of who on the sex offender registry is likely to re-offend, best estimates (from law enforcement officers who have studied this in places like Oklahoma) are that 80% of the people on the list are no danger to re-offend. I looked for some of the studies that you mention, and I found a report by the House Judiciary Committee that included the following -- "Justice Department data also shows that in 15 States in 1994, 5.3 percent of 9,691 sex offenders who were released from prison were arrested for a new sex crime within 3 years of release--in real terms that means approximately 480 sex offenders committed new sex crimes." What this means, aside from the fact that the statistics are 14 years old, is that we are tracking 19 people who will not re-offend to catch the 1 who will.

In some states, you can get on the sex offender registry for indecent exposure, and you can get convicted of indecent exposure for urinating in public (at least a man can). In Virginia, an 18-year-old who has consensual sex with a 14-year-old will end up on the sex offender registry. According to the Justice Department research, 30% of the cases of consensual intercourse with someone underage arise between boyfriend and girlfriend. Don't get me wrong -- that's illegal and should be illegal. But to say that that person is a predator -- particularly if we're looking at that guy 10 years later -- is just wrong. And as the Oklahoma study that I saw notes, we spend a huge amount of resources chasing after people who don't need to be monitored. And we actually have some pretty good metrics for figuring out who the likely problems are.

There is a simple way to avoid getting place on the sex offender registry: Don't get convicted of a sex crime. Cvillelaw claims that you can get put on the register for urinating in public. I would ask him or her to identify the person on the sex offender registry that was placed there for this offence.

Maybe the tool is blunt in the hypothetical, but it's better than there being no tool at all. Sex crimes against children are underreported. What comes to light is the tip of the iceberg.

The answer is not to say that we should not keep track of sex criminals, but that we should refine what it is that constitutes a sex crime. If someone were tracked by the sex crimes registry for urinating, then lets change the law that says urinating is a sex crime.

There are not any members of society that are more vulnerable than children. Society should provide more protection for children, not less. Going back to the days when sex crimes against children were swept under the rug is not the answer.