House Speaker Rusty Bowers is taking another shot at passing legislation making it easier for some people to get their names off the state’s sex offender registry.
House Bill 2674 would give some relatively low-level offenders an opportunity to end their lifetime obligation to register as sex offenders. People convicted of crimes including sexual abuse of a minor who is at least 15 years old, indecent exposure, sexual exploitation of a minor, sexual extortion and misrepresenting a person’s age for purposes of committing a sexual offense would be able to petition a judge to end their registration requirement.
There are fairly narrow criteria offenders would have to meet in order to qualify. They must be at least 35 years old to petition a judge. They must not have had any additional offenses for at least 10 years, and cannot have been convicted of more than one offense involving more than one victim. State law already requires offenders who are eligible to end their registration obligation to have been under 22 years old at the time of the offense, and victims must have been at least 15.
“It’s good policy for youthful offenders, been clean for a long time, done everything they’re supposed to do. I’d like to give them a life,” said Bowers, a Republican from Mesa.
Bowers sponsored an identical bill in 2019 with the support of then-Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery. That bill passed easily out of the House of Representatives and seemed likely to sail through the Senate as well, but became collateral damage as several GOP senators, led by Sen. Paul Boyer, defeated it in protest over legislative leaders blocking Boyer’s bill to give victims of childhood sexual abuse more time to sue their abusers and the organizations that sheltered them.
With two years passed and Boyer’s bill enshrined in law, Bowers decided to revive his old proposal, which he noted had plenty of support in 2019, when the House passed it 56-4.
“It still needs to be done and I think it’s good policy,” the speaker said.
The federal government has created a monster with IML now their trying to Backpedal by letting Thousands of people go free The real reason They’re Starting to let people go free is because their getting scared of the large numbers of sex ofenders on the registery if theses people rise up and start fighting back And peacefully protesting this could be a really big problem for the US government.
So I’m not surprised they wanna shrink the registery down so they can keep control over the situation.
Good luck
How is sexual exploitation of a minor, sexual abuse, or sexual extortion considered a “lesser” offense than looking at a picture of a minor (CP). Yet politicians will forgive those trespasses and not porn. It seems that the word ‘child’ is the key to a lot of the issues surrounding many of our offenses. If they were to re frame it as ‘minor pornography’ instead, I wonder how much air would be taken out of the Pedo Balloon.
While I do not generally argue against any new effort to reduce the number of registered people – I also deplore laws that base release conditions based on age. I get that if we must draw a line, it must be drawn somewhere. But, it is the wrong line. The registry is supposed to be about “public safety.” You could have a offender who was 20-years old and his victim 15-years old, but who is likely to do it again (we had a recent case in Utah like this). On the other hand you have a 40-year old with a 14-year old victim, who will never reoffend again.
Basing these things on the “acts” and not the “current threat” only shows the punitive intent of the law. The fact they are allowing certain “acts” off the list they think are less egregious also shows the punitive intent of the law. They should be required to show a likelihood of re-offense in court prior to listing on the registry and allow for removal if an offender can rebut that likelihood in the future.
I would argue that actual recidivism rates indicate that any given convict is unlikely to commit another sex crime absent some kind of proof to the contrary. The state/feds should have the burden of showing some indication outside of the instant offense in order for a court to find excessive monitoring is necessary. Even so, registration is not required as it is absolutely useless in its supposed purpose.
This proposal specifically doesn’t serve much purpose either, as after they revise the hell out of it, its provisions won’t apply to very many people.
Another tiny step in the right direction. If Rusty Bowers doesn’t get recalled or have to deal with political fallout: an even bigger step. Too bad a legislator couldn’t introduce data showing $ waste attached to the registry. Would billions of wasted dollars for a system which does not work speak to voters?