The Folly of S-431 `The KIDS Act of 2008': Part 3

5-23-2008 National:

Experts disagree with S-431, but no one is listening!

KIDS Act: How Far is The Law's Online Reach?

The KIDS Act

This month, a bill goes before the House of Representative's Judiciary Committee that would require Short and all other convicted sex offenders to register any e-mail address, instant message address, or similar Internet identifier the sex offender used or will use to communicate over the Internet with the National Sex Offender Registry.

The bill is called the Keeping the Internet Devoid of Sexual Predators Act of 2007 or KIDS Act. Congressmen Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.), Paul Gillmor (R-Ohio), Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) and Senators Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and John McCain (R-AZ) introduced the KIDS Act in January.

"Millions of teenagers log on to Web sites like MySpace and they, and their parents, shouldn't have to worry about running into these predators online," Senator Schumer said in a joint statement to announce the bill.

"We know that many predators are using the Internet to find victims. This legislation will take a big step toward keeping sexual predators out of the online neighborhoods our kids frequent, Schumer said at the time.

Social networks MySpace and Facebook support the act and say they would use it to block convicted sex offenders from using their sites.

But some, including academics and child-safety advocates, take issue with Schumer's claims, saying they misrepresent the issue. This group won't go so far as to say they are against the KIDS Act, but they do argue it doesn't solve any real problems.

Overlooking a problem?

David Finklehor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, said characterizations such as Senator Schumer's are "based on anxieties and not on a careful analysis of the nature of the problem or the way in which kids get harmed."

Preventing convicted sex offenders from joining social networks through something like the KIDS Act might do some good but won't solve the problem. The notion that the main problem is social networking sites is "overdrawn."

"Our research suggests that kids who interact on those sites are not at any higher risk," Finklehor told InternetNews.com. "If kids are taking risks -- suggesting they're interested in sex, talking with people they don't know about sexual topics -- they can run into danger. But only in the same way that they could going to parties."

According to Finklehor's research, only 7 percent of arrests for statutory rape in 2000 were Internet-related. He says that most of those cases are what he calls "criminal seductions," where most of the victims are teenagers seduced by adults who did not try to conceal the fact that they were adults.

Only 5 percent of offenders concealed the fact they were adults from their victims. Eighty percent of the offenders were "quite" explicit about their sexual intentions, and, in half the cases, victims are described as being in love with the offender or feeling a close friendship.

"There's some sense that if you can zone [sex offenders] out of people's neighborhoods and social interaction spaces, somehow kids will be safe. That's a natural, crude, popular analysis. But it doesn't respond to what we know about the nature of child molestation."

Instead of passing laws like the KIDS Act, Finklehor wants lawmakers to treat online and offline child molestation as a public health issue to be dealt with scientifically.

He also wants the government to focus more on prevention education aimed at teenagers to persuade them to avoid engaging in relationships with adults online.

Next page: Political posturing?

Political posturing?

Others go to the core of the KIDS Act, claiming the mistake is in requiring convicted sex offenders to register their e-mail addresses.

One such advocate is the Reverend C. David Hess, the New York State Representative of SOhopeful International, an organization that "is working with families, citizens and professionals to change the way legislation mandates the registration, tracking and community notification of non-violent, low-risk sex offenders."

Hess's main point is that most sex offenders are capable of changing their ways, but that laws like the KIDS Act prevent it from happening.

He cites a study from the State of New York Department of Correctional Services, which set sex offender recidivism at 2.1 percent. A 1994 U.S. Department of Justice study puts the number at 3.5 percent.

By way of comparison, the New York study reports that, of those who committed robbery and were released from prison between 1985 and 2001, 6.5 percent returned to prison for another robbery.

Hess said the reason sex offender recidivism is so low is the crimes are caused by a disease, which he argues can be cured in a stable environment. But he said the KIDS Act and other such laws rob sex offenders of such an environment.

"Corrections experts will say that the most important thing to prevent recidivism is stable employment, home, family and social support," Hess told InternetNews.com. "These laws are destructive to all of those things. Therefore, rather than making communities safer, they put people more at risk."

The KIDS Act "isn't serious legislation or a serious attempt to address a real problem," he continued. "It's all political posturing."

Certainly, politicians on all levels pay attention to the issue. After her June appointment, New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram's first order of business was to serve the Fox Interactive Media (FIM) company a subpoena for information on any accounts held by sex offenders.

She followed with another subpoena in July. Milgram's attentions stem from a mid-May letter signed by attorneys general from Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania asking for similar information.

A long list of states, including Kentucky, Virginia and Florida, have already signed bills similar to the KIDS Act into law.

An unfair net?

Michael Iacopino, co-chairman of the sex offender task force at the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, is concerned that the KIDS Act too broadly lumps a diverse range of sex offenders into one category. He noted that some states consider public urination and streaking indecent exposure and are deemed a sexual offense.

He also argued that there should be a distinction between an 18-year-old who commits statuary rape with an underage boyfriend or girlfriend and child molesters.

"These bills paint everybody with the same brush and don't recognize that there's a large difference when it comes to people who have been convicted of sex crimes," Iacopino said.

He also echoed Hess's take on sex-offender recidivism. He said laws like the KIDS Act distract the public from actually solving the problem.

"Sex offenders as a group are one of the most treatable convicts in the country," Iacopino said.

"The way to deal with them is through treatment, not through mandatory sentences and exposing them to ridicule in society, making them live in leper colonies, and putting them away for more time after they've done their time. Those ideas come from a need to get elected than any real intelligent consideration of these offenses."

But there's a reason politicians are able to tap the public's fear. If there's an issue that's easy to get behind, it's one that would make the lives of the Paul Shorts out there less comfortable. Few get worked up in their defense.

But difficult as it might seem to protect the rights of men like Paul Short, who in the chat excerpted from above openly admitted he was "looking for a younger girl to train to be a slave," Iacopino, Hess and others are still convinced it's the right thing to do for the public good.

Still others, such as Finklehor, are less concerned with sex offenders and more interested in promoting science and education as a means to prevent child molestation.

But all those who either don't believe the KIDS Act solves problems or go further to actively fight it, share Iacopino's view in one regard.

"The problem is that most of this sex-offender legislation is based on the 'get tough' model instead of the 'get smart' model." ..more.. by National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL)