|
Gov. Jennifer Granholm recently signed a bill that returns a little sanity to Michigan's sex offender registry law. The law exempts teens who had sex with someone close in age - no more than three years difference and as long as the act was not violent and they are not considered predators - from being placed on the sex offenders list. Now, young teens are placed on the list when they hit age 18, and they are on for 25 years. We're not encouraging teen-age sexuality. But do we want to stain a life for more than 25 years if a 16-year-old boy has consensual sex with his nearly 16-year-old girlfriend? We don't think so. Where the bill didn't go far enough was keeping those currently on the registry there for at least 10 years, rather than the required 25. After Oct. 1, young offenders can petition to be kept off the list entirely. So if a teen is convicted now, on the list they go and it's 10 years of grief for them. Sen. Bill Hardiman, R-Kentwood, said the legislation strikes a fair balance between protecting the public and treating young people fairly. “We should be vigilant on these crimes, but we should also be wise to ensure the registry represents those persons likely to threaten the public again,” Hardiman said in an Associated Press story when the were bills passed and sent to Granholm. The Legislature created the registry in 1994 to allow police to keep tabs on potential predators in their communities. The list became public in 1996. Soon it was posted on a state Web site, and a federal court later upheld the legality of the posting on the Web. The problem with the list has always been it lists all sex offenders, so you have little idea if the person on the list was having consensual sex with a girlfriend, or is truly a sexual predator who should be feared by the community. It also returns a modicum of judicial discretion to the list, enabling judges to look at the teen before them and determining whether or not they should be on the list.
|
