January 24, 2015

New Oklahoma Bills affecting state sex offenders

Someday I'd love to be able to do this for all states, but today not possible. Reading and interpreting bills takes time.
1-24-2015 Oklahoma:

It appears there are 29 new bills affecting something to do with sex offenses and or offenders, of those 6 (six) are problematic. They are:
HB 1057 Prisons and reformatories; requiring payment of fee under certain circumstances; (This bill permits charging, effective 11-1-2015, a $25.00 fee for new registrations and also changes of addresses. Unclear is, will this be required of folks in prison?)

HB-2153 Driver licenses; directing the Department of Public Safety to include certain exemption provision on driver license and identification card applications; repealer. (This bill handles religious exemptions related to biometric identification. Something we are not familiar with, anyone can chime in on this and help in understanding this bill.)

SB-167 Restrictions on convicted sex offenders; modifying inclusions on residency restrictions. (This bill expands the scope of residency restrictions to include homeowner associations and towns; obviously missed when residency restrictions were first enacted.)

SB-537 Long-Term Care Security Act; removing certain requirement. (This bill extends background checks for employment in long term care facilities and permits termination or refusal of employment to folks convicted of certain offenses (see 1-1950.1) This may or may not be good as we are not aware of what it was before this bill.)

SB-578 Sex offenders; allowing Department of Corrections to initiate certain proposals; providing definitions. (The essence of this bill is establish a SEPARATE long term care facility for Level II-III sex offenders needing care and any incarcerated critically or terminally ill offender. The main pro0blem here is it would be run by the Dep't of Corrections and not the State Dep't of Health, which likely means it would be prisonlike. Level II-III offenders normally are in the community so this would clearly affect their freedom. We would oppose handling Level II-III offenders in such an environment.)

SB-671 Violent sex offenders; authorizing certain chemical treatment for certain offenders. (There is nothing scarier than lawmakers and DOC personnel mandating any form of castration without a medical doctor intervening to protect the life of the person affected; and what about women convicted of the offenses mentioned. This bill is a train wreck in the wrong hands, hopefully there will be someone to put the kibosh on this bill before it kills someone.)
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