Ohio is Only State to Adopt Sex Offender Rules
Posted on 02. Dec, 2009 by Shera Crossan in Hidden Crimes, Opinion, Politics
More than three years after Congress ordered stepped-up monitoring of sex offenders, only one state has adopted the government’s strict new requirements, and some others are weighing whether to ignore the law and just pay a penalty. So far, Ohio is the lone state to meet the new federal standards. Elsewhere, efforts have been hampered by high costs and legal challenges from the nation’s 686,000 registered sex offenders.
“This means more of the same — that we’re losing sex offenders when they cross state lines and disappear,” said Erin Runnion, who lobbied for the law after her 5-year-old daughter, Samantha, was kidnapped and killed in 2002. “It’s incredibly frustrating. How many children do we have to lose to repeat sex offenders before we start taking these guys seriously?”
The initial deadline for states to comply was in July. Then the deadline was extended to July 2010, although several states have signaled they may still be unable to meet it. States that do not adopt the mandates risk losing millions of dollars in federal grants. Last year, a federal judge in Nevada declared the law unconstitutional because it would subject offenders to additional penalties after they have served their time. The Ohio Supreme Court heard similar arguments this month from more than 26,000 sex offenders who were convicted before the law was signed.
Critics have also complained that juvenile offenders would appear on registries in some states. And because the law requires offenders to register in person, it could unfairly burden people in rural areas who would have far to travel.
Congress tried to encourage states to adopt the measure by threatening to take 10 percent of their federal crime-prevention grants if they do not comply. The grants have swelled with stimulus funding but typically range from several hundred thousand dollars to more than $1 million each year, depending on the size of the state. California stands to lose a few millions dollars a year if it does not comply, state officials said.So lawmakers are locked in a dilemma: They must spend millions of dollars to adopt the system or back off a program that is designed to protect the public from some of society’s most dangerous criminals.more from fox8
Good for Ohio, now if they can only get into the driver seat about the illegals driving in their state.