No more registration requirements for certain sex offenders?

2-26-2010 Arizona:

PHOENIX -- A proposed law that would erase registration requirements for certain sex offenders convicted of less violent crimes will likely go no further this legislative session.

House Bill 2569 was pulled from consideration Thursday during a Judiciary Committee meeting after lawmakers decided the legislation needed more work.

"This is important," said the bill's creator, Rep. Cecil Ash, R - Mesa. "When you deal with a law concerning sex offenders, you want to make sure everything is right.

"My goal was to get discussion started on this," he said. "But some language in this version may be too broad."

As written, the bill allows sex offenders to stop registering if they've finished jail and probation and can prove to a judge that they're no longer a public safety threat.

Hummm, there is a problem here. If the law says, once you finish jail and probation, you are free to go, where in the law does it say "you are still a danger to society?" This is backwards, the state must prove the registrant is a danger, not that the registrant must prove he isn't....Are other crimes this way too?

Ash said he will convene a panel of lawmakers, prosecutors and others to re-craft the bill, fine tuning it for later this legislative session or next.

Just a few hearings into the bill, he was faced with opposition from several groups, including N.A.I.L.E.M., a group that tracks state laws.

"Let me tell you, if once a sex offender, always a sex offender," said Diane Neill, the group's director.

But Ash and other lawmakers said that misses the legislation's main point.

"I was getting asked, 'How could you think about releasing child molesters and rapists back into the community?'" Ash said. "And that's not the intent - at all."

The bill has bi-partisan support. And lawmakers said sex offense laws in Arizona treat all cases virtually the same whether it's a 19-year-old having sex with a 16-year-old, a person caught urinating in public, or a child rapist.

"To fix this problem, we have to narrowly tailor the law," said Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, D - Phoenix.

That's why Ash said the intent of HB2569 is to draw a line between very serious sex offenses and less serious ones.

"There is a wide net that has been cast out," he said. "And it catches everybody in it."

In Arizona, there are more than 10,200 registered sex offenders. State requires them to register for life, including every time they change addresses. ..Source.. Dave Biscobing