BILL ANALYSIS
SB 1204
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Date of Hearing: August 4, 2010
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Felipe Fuentes, Chair
SB 1204 (Runner) - As Amended: May 6, 2010
Policy Committee: Public
SafetyVote:4-3
Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program:
Yes Reimbursable: No
SUMMARY
This bill requires all registered sex offenders to inform the
law enforcement agency with which he or she last registered of
all online addresses, including e-mail addresses, and instant
messaging (IM) user names, by December 31, 2011, and thereafter
at the time of original registration and within 30 days of
establishing a new online account. This information may, upon
request, be shared with the Department of Justice (DOJ) or other
law enforcement agencies. Specifically, this bill:
1)Creates a misdemeanor, punishable by up to six months in the
county jail and/or a fine of up to $1,000 for a registered sex
offender to fail to register online or e-mail addresses or
instant messaging user names within the specified timeframe.
2)Includes in the statement of notice registered sex offenders
must sign, an acknowledgment the person is required to notify
law enforcement of all online or e-mail addresses and instant
messaging user names.
FISCAL EFFECT
1)Potentially state-reimbursable local law enforcement costs,
likely in the low hundreds of thousands of dollars, for
increased duties related to sex offender registration -
collecting and updating the online, e-mail, and instant
messaging addresses of about 100,000 registered sex offenders.
Though this cost has not been keyed as a reimbursable state
mandate by Legislative Counsel, the sheer number of offenders
and information may cause a local law enforcement agency to
file a test claim with the Commission on State Mandates.
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2)Unknown, likely minor annual non-state reimbursable local law
enforcement and incarceration costs as a result of expanding
sex offender registration requirements, violation of which is
a misdemeanor, punishable by up to six months in county jail.
These costs would be offset to a degree by increased fine
revenue.
3)No direct costs to DOJ, as the bill only authorizes local law
enforcement to share the online address information with DOJ.
To the extent, however, that the existence and availability of
this information encourages DOJ to pursue such information
sharing, DOJ would require staff and software to store and
analyze the information. These costs, while unknown, would
likely be in the range of several hundred thousand dollars.
COMMENTS
1)Rationale . The author contends social networking sites and
e-mail "create a virtual shopping mall for sex offenders" and
that requiring convicted offenders to register online
addresses provides law enforcement a tool to employ against
predators who attempt to misuse the Internet to find potential
victims.
2)Support. According to Facebook , "Facebook goes to great
lengths to keep bad actors-including registered sex
offenders-off of our site. While the current text of SB 1204
would not allow for the sharing of collected online
identifiers with social networking sites like Facebook, we
believe that collecting this information and sharing it with
the California Department of Justice is an important first
step. Facebook terminates all accounts of registered sex
offenders as we are made aware of them. Facebook is more
proactive In this regard than many sites and we invest
significant resources to facilitate this self-policing; other,
smaller companies lack resources to engage in self-policing.
All self-policing, however, is largely dependent on current
and accurate data from state registries. We hope that in the
future this information can be shared with all types of
Internet companies and application developers so that we may
all more rapidly purge our sites of offenders registered in
California."
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3)Concerns regarding efficacy and fiscal efficiency . There is
nothing that prevents a registered sex offender from simply
changing an e-mail address. Nor is there any reason to assume
that a potential offender, intent on using an Internet site
for conversing or meeting potential victims, would register
the e-mail address used for this purpose. Assuming a
registrant changes e-mail addresses occasionally, or uses
different e-mail addresses for different purposes, all of the
e-mail addresses, and all of the changes, must be reported to
the registering law enforcement agency. Do local governments
have the personnel and capacity to obtain, process, and
potentially transmit all of this data? Given the ease with
which a person may change an e-mail address, given that many
registrants have been crime-free for years, and considering
the oft-stated estimate that 90% of child abuse victims know
the perpetrator, is this bill an efficient use of limited law
enforcement resources?
According to the California Public Defenders Association,
"This legislation is fiscally imprudent and will do nothing to
make our communities safer."
4)In 1996, California enacted "Megan's Law," allowing the public
to access an address list of registered sex offenders. Before
2003, the public could only obtain the information on the
Megan's Law list by calling a 900 number or visiting
designated law enforcement agencies. In 2003 DOJ put the
Megan's Law list of offenders on a public access website with
the offender's address, photo and list of offenses. For some
offenders with less serious offenses, only the ZIP code is
listed. Today anyone can peruse the website and see where
registered sex offenders are living in the community.
5)Related Legislation.
a) AB 179 (Portantino), 2009, required registered sex
offenders to report all e-mail addresses and IM identities
at the time of registration. AB 179 was significantly
narrowed to address costs in this committee and ultimately
amended into a tax bill.
b) AB 841 (Portantino), 2007-08, required registered sex
offenders to provide all e-mail addresses and IM addresses
to local law enforcement. AB 841 was significantly narrowed
in this committee and ultimately into a health care bill.
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c) AB 1850 (Galgiani), 2010, required a person required to
register as a sex offender to register Internet accounts
and identifiers, defined to include e-mail addresses and
designations used for the purposes of chatting, IM, social
networking, or other similar Internet communication. AB
1850 was held on this committee's Suspense File.
d) AB 2208 (Torres), 2010, prohibited specified sex
offenders from accessing an Internet social networking Web
site. AB 2208 was held on this committee's Suspense File.
Analysis Prepared by : Geoff Long / APPR. / (916) 319-2081