Is it Excessive? New Law Requires Convicted Sex Offenders to List Criminal Status on Facebook

June 21st, 2012 - By Alissa Henry
"Facebook"

source: Hubze.com

Facebook tells all, and soon, the popular social media network will tell even more.

Louisiana lawmakers passed a new law requiring sex offenders and child predators to list their criminal status on Facebook and other social media websites.

The New York Daily News Reports:

While Facebook already bans registered sex offenders from creating accounts, State Rep. Jeff Thompson, who authored the legislation, says the new law will help ensure no one slips through the cracks.

“I don’t want to leave [it] in the hands of social network[s] or Facebook administrators. ‘Gee, I hope someone is telling the truth,’” Thompson, an attorney and father of two, told CNN. “This is another tool for prosecutors.”

The new law goes into effect August 1. Thompson says it’s the first of its kind in the nation, and hopes other states will follow suit.

Several already require sex offenders and child predators to register their email addresses and social network profiles with authorities, but Louisiana is the first to require they explicitly list their crimes on their profile pages.

The law mandates that child predators and sex offenders “shall include in his profile for the networking website an indication that he is a sex offender or child predator and shall include notice of the crime for which he was convicted, the jurisdiction of conviction, a description of his physical characteristics … and his residential address”.

Thompson says he drafted the legislation last year after a federal court rejected a different Louisiana law that totally banned sex offenders and child predators from using the Internet. He says the new law will help keep children safe.

I challenge you today to walk down the street to see how many people and children are checking Pinterest, Instagram and other social networking sites. If you look at how common it is, that’s 24 hours a day, seven days a week for somebody to interact with your children and your grandchildren.

Facebook agrees with the law, telling CNN: “We have consistently supported legislation to help strengthen law enforcement’s ability to find, prosecute and convict online sexual predators.”

It will be interesting to see if this law catches on in other states considering the increased usage of social media and the internet in general by young children. Right now, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act prohibits children under the age of 13 from using sites such as Facebook. However, shrewd kids, parents and older siblings or friends circumvent those rules and Consumer Reports says nearly 7.5 million children under the age of 13 are currently using Facebook.  Founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has said he’d like to challenge the law and find a way to legally allow children under 13 to access the site.

Of course, sexual offenders can be a threat to people well over the age of 13 and it doesn’t hurt to know who you’re talking to online. However, what’s the point of letting a person out of prison if he’s going to have to wear his crime like a banner for the rest of his life? I don’t want some sicko trying to contact me or anyone else, but if he is utilizing Facebook in a way that has nothing to do with his crime, it seems excessive to require him to list it. I can see where they’re trying to going with this law but is there anyone who is actually going to list this information on his social media page?  Probably not.

If Louisiana can find a way to enforce this law, it seems they have just found a way to effectively discourage sexual offenders from using Facebook. If not, it’s just more useless legislation.

What do you think about this law? Should sex offenders be required to disclose their criminal history on social media?

Alissa Henry is a freelance writer living in Columbus, OH. Follow her on Twitter @AlissaInPink

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  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_UVUSEIYZE7F37SVEDQKHTIAJNE Dude

    What about the millions of people preying on kids online that have never been convicted? Not one thing is being done by Thompson to truly protect kids. Must be an election year. We do not let kids drink, drive, smoke or own guns until a certain age… if the internet is so dangerous, why do we just throw our kids to the wolves online? Because we are too busy playing Angry Birds to care about what our kids are doing, thats why. Sex offenders have nothing to lose by ignoring this law.. if they post their status on their LinkedIn profile, they will lose their contacts and then their jobs, end up homeless and blow up police stations and go to prison, if they ignore the law and get caught, they go to prison, but at least until they caught, they can pay their bills, pay taxes and maybe be too busy WORKING to worry about trying to molest some fat kid from Louisiana who’s parents are too apathetic to actually parent for a change.

  • Amija James

    I don’t get it. So wouldn’t they just not have a Facebook page? I don’t have one and I’m not a felon, I just don’t want one.

  • lalatarea

    um ppl need to educate themselves there are SOOO many ways to end up on a sex offenders list that doesn’t involve pedophilia or forcibly rape! peeing in public can get u on there, a girl u meets at a club with fake i.d. can get u on there, etc. i might be able to get behind CERTAIN sex offenders having to put that on their page but NOT ask of them lumped together.

  • GM_I

    This is stupid and is gonna lead to a lot of drama, especially if this law goes nation-wide smh…so, what would happen for a guy (cuz we all know barely if any convicted sex offenders that are female will have to put that on their profile pages since many of them who are registered get taken off the list anyway) such as Brian Banks who spent 5yrs in prison for a rape he never committed & had to register as a sex offender, as well as, wear an electronic ankle bracelet after gettin out for such a long time…ppl who are falsely accused of sex crimes will suffer the most from this crap as many of them already are…what about all the ppl who hack facebook account??? They can easily make ur page say ur a rapist or sex offender out of spite & cause a lot of problems for inoccent ppl becuz they can possibly be judged by a false perception…I doubt these lawmakers have stated how they will regulate this to assure innocent ppl wont be falsely accused or how to stop hackers from posting false information such as being a sex offender on someone elses page who’s never even seen the inside of a police station smh…this is a bad idea nd a bad law all around IMO.

  • victoria

    You do the crime you do the time. A paedophile’s info should be available online. Good

  • Charla

    I think in theory it sounds good, but where do we draw the line. These people can already be located on online sex offenders list. So where do we draw the line for them to move on. Don’t get me wrong, sex crimes are repulsive, but some of these people could have been convicted for being 18 and sleeping with their 16 year old girlfriend. But next are we going to require people with assault charges to list it too? This coming from someone with no police record…

    • Ladybug94

      I don’ see it as the same, people with assault charges don’t use the internet to troll for new prey. I think the idea is good but folk can always make up new email addresses.

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