Email Offenders

29th June 2007

posted in Colorado by themaiden |

Colorado now has a law that targets the online personas of those convicted of sexual offenses related to minors.

House Bill 1326 seeks the e-mail addresses, chat room identities and text message handles of the state’s roughly 4,500 child sex offenders. Those who fail to provide accurate information or no information at all will face separate felony charges and a revocation of their parole.

Sex offenders must register e-mail under new laws starting July 1

I can get behind this one. It touches some privacy issues, but considering the high rates of recidivism and the extraordinary counts of offenses that sexual predators of this type rack up, monitoring in every way possible is probably justified.

I don’t think that the law is going to be easily enforcible, though, which is the source of some criticism of the law.

But technology professionals questioned the effectiveness of such a bill, as individuals can easily create new e-mail addresses and screen names.

Rep. Terrance Carroll, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, also says he’s concerned the bill creates a false sense of security. He said he expects it to face a tough time in committee.

“It’s a feel-good measure with little teeth,” said Carroll, D-Denver.

Measure tracks offenders online

I’m sure Carroll is right. I also question the effectiveness of the bill, but I am not sure why that is reason to oppose it. I am quite sure that many offenders will be able to avoid the law, but not all will, and I think that is significant. The costs of the program strike me as likely to be reasonably low, there seems to be no better option on the table at the moment and over time it may be possible to give the law some teeth.

Nate Strauch, a spokesman for Suthers, said the bill wouldn’t catch all sexual offenders but would provide a “useful tool” for law-enforcement officials.

Measure tracks offenders online

At the very least, a predator arrested for or reasonably suspected of, some offense could have any associated computers scanned for unregistered email or online IDs, and perhaps that would lead the police to other evidence. It may even be enough to pull a predator off the street.

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1 On June 29th, 2007, Mark said:

….but considering the high rates of recidivism and the extraordinary counts of offenses that sexual predators of this type rack up, monitoring in every way possible is probably justified.

Turn off Nancy Grace and Chris Hanson and get a life.

The governmment’s own DOJ site exposed the hateful venom you spew.

2 On June 29th, 2007, themaiden said:

Hateful venom, Mark? That is a wee harsh.

The DOJ exposed it did they?

Would that be in this study? The one that reads: “Compared to non-sex offenders released from State prisons, released sex offenders were 4 times more likely to be rearrested for a sex crime”?

I think what you are doing is mixing up the data.

# Sex offenders were less likely than non-sex offenders to be rearrested for any offense –– 43 percent of sex offenders versus 68 percent of non-sex offenders.

# Sex offenders were about four times more likely than non-sex offenders to be arrested for another sex crime after their discharge from prison –– 5.3 percent of sex offenders versus 1.3 percent of non-sex offenders.

http://www.ojp.gov/bjs/crimoff.htm#sex

It looks like sex offenders are less likely to commit crimes on the whole than are non-sex offenders, but sex offenders are more likely to commit more sex crimes than criminals on the whole.

There is also this report, Recidivism of Sex Offenders, which paints a complicated picture but not one at odds with mine. Note that recidivism varies by several factors.

There is this one from The Ohio Department of Corrections.

There is one from the John Howard Society.

Maybe what you meant is that recidivism rates is not as high as for, say, burglary? And so, claiming high recidivism rates is vicious slander? Child rape is a vicious crime. 41% to 46% is high enough.