Proposition 35, if passed, will create harsher punishments for those who participate in the sex trafficking industry. These punishments include prison sentences up to 15-years-to-life and fines up to $1.5 million. Those who are convicted would also be required to register as sex offenders, receive limitations to Internet access and would be supervised by law enforcement. Full Article
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I have actually opined that the REAL intent of the law is to sneak in the Internet identifier requirement for all registered sex offenders. Twice the legislature has been presented with Internet and Facebook laws that would have restricted or monitored the use or identifiers of RSO’s, and twice the law was soundly defeated on justified fears of legal challenge.
But the proposition is insidious at its core. If you took out the email identifier rider, the bill would most probably pass muster in both the Assembly and the Senate. On the surface, laws that create harsher sentences may have their dissenters, but what cannot be denied is that the laws are based upon prospective crimes that have no bearing on current registrants’ actions. The cost to investigate and enforce such laws are another factor, but in general I don’t have a problem with such actions.
The line in the sand, however, is when they start heaping more restrictions on RSO’s out of the court system. This law will create havoc in the registrars’ offices, as now they have to take in more information that other states are having problems with. It creates gotcha laws as opposed to laws that protect the children and the community.
Finally, what is a registrant works for a company? If he enters his email into the registry, that email account associates the company with a registered sex offender, and could affect the company’s social networking capabilities. In addition, what about Internet marketers? I know of one registrant in California who has 400,000 email accounts, and tens of thousands of social media accounts. How will THEY be entered into the system?
This is one law that is either going to be unenforceable, or will create gotcha points in which there will be numerous and expensive legal battles, both criminal and civil. How bad? One only has to look at North Carolina where they aren’t even bothering enforcing laws against many of the offenders; they simply tell them to drop the account rather than arrest them. If they arrested everyone, while the sheeple may look at it as a huge positive, the court system would have to be brought into it sooner.
Which leads me to think that this will be the NEXT major CA RSOL issue to defend.
As so eloquently put by my namesake: “The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly. —Abraham Lincoln”. Or adhere to it – strictly.
Thank you for your thoughtful comment. There has been discussion on this topic on another post – https://all4consolaws.org/2012/10/proposition-35/ – which already touched on some of the ‘gotcha’ aspects, as well as some practical impossibilites.
Assuming this passes, if all 100,000 people affected in the state of California played the game, the whole system would be brought to a grinding halt. Ha ha – 400,000 records to be entered by hand! But even one per week per person would do the trick.
Sometimes the worst possible thing is to get what you ask for.
Thank you, Eric and Abe, for your insightful comments. Yes, there will be a legal challenge to Prop. 35 after it passes and California RSOL will be an active part of the challenge. The legal complaint and supporting documents are being finalized as I write this. California RSOL cannot and will not stand by while this essential consitutional right, Freedom of Speech, is violated! California RSOL was created in order to protect the constitutional rights of registrants and this is just one of many hills to climb before we reach that ultimate goal.