The Sisyphus Comments

Sex Offender E-mail Registration is “Feel Good” Legislation

Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell recently announced that he will propose legislation to require convicted sex offenders in Virginia to register their e-mail addresses and IM names in the Sex Offender Registry. The purpose of this legislation is to provide a method for social networking sites like MySpace.com to cross check their member rosters for the presence of know sex offenders.

In a press release, Hemanshu Nigam, the Chief Security Officer for MySpace.com, said that MySpace.com applauded the Attorney General’s leadership on this important issue and looked forward to this legislation becoming law. Of course I am sure that the folks over at MySpace.com would applaud anything that would cast a positive light on their much criticized website.

Here is the deal, I did a quick inventory of the e-mail addresses that I currently maintain. In addition to my work e-mail address, I have six other active addresses and probably at least four others that I use when I have to provide an e-mail address to a site that I think may generate a bunch of unwanted (spam) e-mail messages. My point is, with a quick visit Yahoo, Hotmail or Google, I can have as many e-mail addresses as I desire and there is no identity verification required. I can register using any alias I choose – no one cares. This is flaw number one in the Attorney General’s plan to register sex offender e-mail addresses.

Flaw number two is that the type of sick individuals who prey on our young people do not sit around and rationally assess the types of charges or the penalties they will face if they are caught and convicted. They either don’t believe they will be caught or they simply can’t control the urge to sexually abuse kids. I find it very difficult to believe that the threat of an additional charge for failing to register an e-mail address will deter these people when our existing laws are having little or no impact on them.

Here are a few of our existing laws and their penalties:

• § 18.2-63. Carnal knowledge of child between thirteen and fifteen years of age – Penalty: Class 4 felony
• § 18.2-64.1. Carnal knowledge of certain minors – Penalty: Class 6 felony
• § 18.2-370.2. Sex offenses prohibiting proximity to children – Penalty: Class 6 felony
• § 18.2-374.3. Use of communications systems to facilitate certain offenses involving children – Penalty: Class 5 felony

Get the picture? A conviction of any of these offenses potentially carries time in the big house. I am all for enacting any type of meaningful legislation that has the potential to deter these perverts. I just don’t think that we should delude ourselves into thinking that the legislation being proposed by the Attorney General is anything more than another piece of “feel good” legislation. I applaud the Attorney General’s intentions but let’s go back to the drawing board – we can do better than this.

(Check out the follow-up article, Virginia Attorney General Serves Up The Beef)