BILL ANALYSIS
AB 1850
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Date of Hearing: May 12, 2010
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Felipe Fuentes, Chair
AB 1850 (Galgiani) - As Amended: April 27, 2010
Policy Committee: Public Safety
Vote: 7-0
Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program:
Yes Reimbursable: No
SUMMARY
This bill requires, as conditions of probation or parole for
registered sex offenders whose victims were under the age of 18,
or who have been deemed to pose a high risk to the public for
committing sex crimes, as determined by the State Authorized
Risk Assessment Tool for Sex Offenders (SARATSO), that the
offender be prohibited from using the Internet to do any of the
following:
1)Access pornography.
2)Access a social networking site.
3)Communicate with others for the purpose of promoting sexual
relations with minors.
4)Communicate with a minor, provided the court or parole
authority may permit the offender to use the Internet to
communicate with a minor if the offender is the parent of the
minor and is not otherwise prohibited from communicating with
the minor.
FISCAL EFFECT
1)Though parole and probation may currently establish such
conditions, to the extent mandating such requirements result
in additional probation and parole violations and revocations,
resulting in additional state prison commitments, there will
be significant annual GF costs, potentially in excess of $1
million if, for example, only an additional two percent of
high risk sex offenders on parole or probation are revoked for
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six months.
(There are currently about 2,650 high risk sex offenders on
state parole and about 160 on probation. Neither the CA
Department of Corrections (CDCR) nor probation tracks the age
of the victim. About 1,000 sex offenders are paroled monthly,
including about 400 so-called high-risk sex offenders.)
2)By creating mandatory probation and parole conditions, this
bill also creates significant fiscal pressure, easily into the
tens of millions of dollars, on CDCR parole and local
probation departments to dedicate additional resources to
effectively comply with the required conditions. Such
dedicated resources could include special Internet forensic
teams, richer staff ratios, and increased training regarding
Internet forensics. County probation costs would not be
state-reimbursable.
COMMENTS
1)Rationale. The author contends this bill will provide
additional protection from known sex offenders.
2)Questionable Efficacy . While probation officers and parole
agents currently may apply such conditions, and indicate it is
common practice to check a sex offender's computer for
inappropriate use, these officers do not generally have
neither the in-depth computer skills, nor the time necessary
to detect inappropriate usage. Moreover, offenders can simply
use a computer at a different location and use a number of
user profiles.
Is it appropriate to mandate conditions of probation and
parole when the courts and CDCR can already do so, based on
facts and circumstances?
3)Questionable Nexus . Conditions of parole can only be imposed
if they have a nexus to the offender's criminal history. The
justification must be present for the condition to be valid.
If the condition is overly broad, or applied to a class in an
overly broad fashion, the Board of Parole Hearings will
dismiss the charge and order the condition removed and/or the
condition will be challenged in court.
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This bill does not appear to establish a clear nexus between
an individual offender and the proposed ban on pornography and
social networking sites (which are not used only by minors).
4)California Sex Offender Management Board
(CSOMB)Recommendations . On May 1, CSOMB released a report that
underscores issues addressed by this bill and made two
relevant recommendations:
a) Parole conditions should be narrowly drawn and relate to
the conviction offense. CASOMB stated, "The parole
restriction must either have a relationship to the crime of
which the offender was convicted, or be related to that
offender to deter future criminality.
"In order to ban belonging to a social networking site
as a condition of parole, there may need to be a factual
nexus to the offense or offender, such as a record of
seeking victims through newspaper or Internet ads, or
through social networking or dating web sites.
b) Parole needs to develop guidelines for checking parolees
banned from Internet use. According to CASOM, "When a ban
on Internet use is properly imposed as a parole condition,
such as communicating with minors over social networking or
other Internet web sites, the issue becomes how to enforce
the condition?. it should be understood that there are so
many social networking sites of various types that it may
be virtually impossible to enforce such conditions,
especially when the parolee uses a computer not at his or
her own home, or has a common name which makes searching
other databases impractical."
5)Related Legislation .
a) AB 2208 (Torres), also before the committee today, would
make it a misdemeanor for specified sex offenders on parole
or probation to access social networking sites, if the
Internet was used in the commission of the crime.
b) SB 1204 (Runner), pending in Senate Appropriations,
would require sex offender registrants to inform law
enforcement of all online addresses, e-mail addresses, and
instant messaging user names.
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Analysis Prepared by : Geoff Long / APPR. / (916) 319-2081