New Jersey Lawmaker Wants To Apply Megan’s Law Online

Maureen Kanka is reflected in a file photo of her daughter, Megan, at her home in Hamilton Township, N.J. A state lawmaker is seeking to have convicted criminals identify themselves on social networking sites under Megan’s Law. (AP)

State Senator Christopher Bateman wants sex offenders in New Jersey to be required to disclose their convictions in their personal profiles on social networking sites or be fined or imprisoned.

The proposal mirrors restrictions that Louisiana recently adopted, but it doesn’t go as far as Indiana, which faces a legal challenge over its law that bans convicted sex offenders from social networking sites. The proposal in New Jersey would essentially apply Megan’s Law online. That law, named after a New Jersey girl killed in 1994 by a repeat sex offender in her neighborhood, requires sex offenders to register with police and for authorities to notify neighbors when a sex offender moves in to a community. It has been adopted by all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Guest:

Matt Friedman, state house reporter for the Newark Star Ledger

We welcome comments from all of our listeners. Post below. Please stay on topic and be civil. Comments may be moderated by us, but you are solely responsible for the content of your comments.

Thomas W Gear

This is exactly the opposite from what should happen. I just listened to a radio program about how social networking keeps tabs on people, gathers information about them, normally for the purpose of selling our private information to advertisers. Facebook should not be prohibited from sex offenders, it should be mandatory. They could be monitored to make sure their posts are factual. They could be made to check in all the time, specifying where they are and what they are doing. They could have public accounts, not private, so that when they go to the swimming pool, I can be sure not to take my kids. Facebook is big brother, it could be used this way.
Mathews_marie

My son is a sex offender. He watched child pornography on the internet. He just finished 3.5 years in prison. Although he never stalked, or touched anyone he has the same status as a person who actually made contact with a child and did some horrific deeds. All the time in prison he received no mental health. now that he is out he isn’t allowed to sleep at home because there is a home childcare business within 1000 ft. He isn’t allowed on line and because most businesses hire through online sites these days i do all the job hunting and applying for him. He, we, have probably applied for at least 100 positions on line along with my son going from business to business, walking in and asking about work. He has found two jobs. One he worked at for about 3 weeks and the owner decided that he was to much of a liability to keep on, this past Friday a privet payroll company sent him to a big hotel as a bus boy and on Monday after his 4th shift they told him he couldn’t work at that job because of his record. Keep in mind, both these employers knew about his offence and hired him anyway. So now that he is out of prison since March he has fees to pay; probation fees, monitoring fees, a fine of about $800. or $900. . He also has to pay for mental health, rent, utilities including a phone so his probation officer can be in touch with him and ya know what else? He can’t find a job to pay for all this. So, when are sex offenders going to separated by the degree of their crime? At what time does he pay for his crime? He will have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. Do murders or Wall Street felons have to do the same? It is like he got a life sentence in reality. Maybe they should have just put him in prison for life or given him death. He is 37 and has never done anything illegal before. He was hoping he could start a new life but it appears he isn’t going to get that opportunity.
- The_Emperor
  
  Just so you know, you’re son can tell the state to go F themselves in
  response to his fees. Look up Bearson v. Georgia. A ruling made by the
  US Supreme Court states that a ex-con’s probation/parole can not be
  revoked for failure to pay fines and fees if they are unemployed but are
  making a good faith effort to pay them.
  
  If the state wants him to be miserable and unemployed, they should foot the costs of monitoring him….not you or him.
http://about.me/peterjohn411 Peter John

I found some of the guest’s remarks stunningly uninformed for someone making laws in one of the states which has proven the ineffectiveness of sex offender registration (SOR) -(see links below). Independent studies in New York and New Jersey looked at sex offender recidivism for 10 years before SOR and 10 years after. Each study considered the entire populations of those convicted, not just samples.

Each study found that in the decade before SOR only 5 percent of all new sex offense convictions involved offenders previously convicted. In the decade after only 5 percent of all new sex offense convictions involved offenders previously convicted. Both studies concluded the laws expensive and pointless.

Regarding the Online access issues, particularly concerning protecting children, the law simply needs to make it illegal to assume a false identity on Social Networking sites. Offenders approaching child victims online frequently represent themselves as an appropriate age for their intended victims before a meet in real life. Victims also sometimes represent themselves as older to use age restricted sites.

Enforcing an online ban could prove more expensive than the onerous cost (see final paragraph below) of enforcing real world SOR laws. It would make more sense to require offenders confidentially self-identify to social networking site operators and to make monitoring activity of those listed the legal responsibility of the sites. Then the private sector could absorb the cost and taxes would not have to pay for it.

WHY SOR LAWS ARE INEFFECTIVE
Two reasons likely explain the disparity between the findings of ineffectiveness above and the common media impressions of sex offender recidivism. First, the media present grossly imbalanced exposure of both news and fiction involving predatory strangers as offenders. In fact few offenders are predatory, and most come from within the victim’s own family and social circles.

Second. the media often regurgitate the commonly cited comparative figures of sex offender recidivism to recidivism among other offenses without examining them in detail. In fact, these figures compare apples to oranges. For other offenses they cite rates of subsequent convictions for the same class of offenses. Statistics citing sex offender recidivism as high as 40 percent include subsequent convictions for any offense. For example, in those figures someone convicted of statutory rape subsequently convicted of marijuana possession gets counted as a recidivist sex offender, while a convicted cocaine user later convicted of tax fraud does not count as a recidivist drug offender.

In short, getting tough on sex offenders in this way gives lawmakers a banner to wave in election cycles (check when these laws are emphasized) that a media conditioned electorate feels it must cheer. In fact their continued pursuit constitutes merely a dangerous and expensive campaign distraction. They are dangerous because they can actually place offenders in positions that make them more dangerous (living under viaducts, etc.), and because they divert funding from efforts that could make a real difference (community and family education, extensive treatment for victims — since most offenders were victims first).
�
WHERE THE EXPENSE STANDS NOW
Regarding the expense, the newest federal laws have been a waste of taxpayer money and congressional time. The cost of implementing them is so high that most states have decided it costs less to accept the federal funding penalty for failure to substabtially implement them.

About 20 states have specific concerns about retroactive registration requirements — requirements for those convicted before the laws existed to register. The legal precedents allowing this date from the 1990s when registration terms at the time were found insufficiently severe to constitute punishment, thus not violating ex post facto provisions of Article One of the Constitution. Now the requirements of registration actually exceed the terms of probation many offenders received under formal sentencing — even if they were off probation decades ago. The Ohio Supreme Court has been the first to formally rule the current federal laws punitive.Voters need to be as aware of these facts as legislators are when they exploit media exagerrations.

When legislators begin carrying this banner it is to garner support for campaigns they have an otherwise difficult time justifying. It will cost a lot less to work toward actually fixing the problem than applying an expensive high-profile symptomatic treatment — but it will take a lot more work.

————
The New Jersey Study by the US Department of Justice
https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/225370.pdf

The New York Study
http://www.rethinking.org.nz/images/newsletter%20PDF/Issue%2078/C%2002%20watchedpot.pdf

New York Times Analysis
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/opinion/sunday/sex-offenders-the-last-pariahs.html?pagewanted=all

State SORNA Compliance Analysis — DOJ Justice Policy Institute
http://www.justicepolicy.org/images/upload/08-08_FAC_SORNACosts_JJ.pdf
Fair-minded parent

Here we go again! Another desperate political attack against sex offenders! How many more restrictions are we going to impose on the already overburdened lives of these men and women who are striving to embrace their post-prison existence with a renewed sense of optimism? How many more laws is it going to take until their meaningful rehabilitative efforts become virtually unattainable? The proposal of this pretentious smokescreen is redundant because the vast majority of Megan’s Law registrants are already prohibited from having access to social networking websites, which is actually counter-productive, in that it deprives them from having an adequate social life and the possibilities of moral development which that life affords. It has been proven time and time again that laws do very little to vindicate the protection of our children, yet these egotistical hypocrites continue to campaign these irrational untested theories into law so as to garner as many votes as they can. The only effective solution to this problem is for our state government to methodically educate the parents and teachers of our communities about the perils of sexual predators, so this information can be properly conveyed to their children. Facebook already has several safety options that enable it’s underage members to keep their profiles private. And there is a plethora of affordable computer monitoring and filtering programs that safeguard kids on their computer.
Jason

In 2007 all NJ sex offenders were banned from using any type of social media. This law would have no effect because sex offenders are already banned from social media so how would they disclose their conviction? I am wondering if this bill if passed would require all sex offenders to disclose or just teir 2 & 3 who are on the registry? Teir 1 sex offenders dont have to notify the public only law enforcement.