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Louisiana has enacted a new law requiring sex offenders and child predators to disclose their criminal status on their Facebook and other social networking profiles.
The law — a first of its kind in the U.S. — says sex offenders must include the crime for which they were convicted, the jurisdiction of their conviction, a description of their physical characteristics and a residential address within their profile. It will go into effect August 1.
Facebook already refuses to let registered sex offenders create profiles, according to its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. But this new law, according to State Rep. Jeff Thompson, a Republican who sponsored the bill, is meant to catch any predators who slip through the cracks.
“It provides the same notice to persons in whose home you are injecting yourself via the Internet,” Thompson told CNN. “I challenge you today to walk down the street to see how many people and children are checking Pinterest, Instagram and other social networking sites. If you look at how common it is, that’s 24 hour a day, seven days a week for somebody to interact with your children and your grandchildren.”
Violators of the law face imprisonment with hard labor for a term between two and 10 years without parole, and a fine of up to $1,000. A second conviction will carry a maximum penalty of imprisonment with hard labor for a term between five and 20 years without parole, and a fine up to $3,000, CNN reports.
The law also comes at a time when Facebook is considering changing its regulations to allow children under the age of 13 to create profiles on the site.
Do you think a law like this should be enacted in every state? Or is it unnecessary political showboating? Let us know in the comments below.
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Can’t they just put a “pedobear” next to their image?
Question. If Facebook’s ToS strictly prohibits the use of Facebook by sex offenders (Section 4.6 “You will not use Facebook if you are a convicted sex offender.”) and sex offenders are still using Facebook, how can they enforce such a law? And, if sex offenders are not “allowed” to create and account on or access Facebook, why the need for the law? Another legislative action wasting tax dollars.
Exactly.
used for legal action against sex offenders that do have a FB account. Would you want the job of checking daily all FB users against a sex offender list
Terms of Service (TOS) are hardly followed. If that were the case, then kids would follow it. But, I do agree that other states need to do something to curb the sex offender problem, and I think it should be publicly displayed on the profile.
Ok, so how do you monitor such a law? Facebook has nothing in place to monitor the use of Facebook by sex offenders. And how do you vet someone as not being a sex offender when they, and possible 20 other people, have the same name as someone who is in the registry. It’s a nonsense law that can never be enforced. The only way is to require everyone over the age of 18 to provide photo ID and their social security number to verify their identity when using or creating an account. Is that something you would do? I know I wouldn’t – why should you or I be penalized for someone else’s crime? The responsibility shouldn’t lay on Facebook, but instead the Probation and Parole Officers responsible for monitoring sex offenders.
As already mentioned, how do you enforce such a law? Also, Facebook is of course, international, and so are sex offenders, and systems of checking and I.D vary around the world.
This law is to be used for legal action against sex offenders that do have a FB account. Would you want the job of checking daily all FB users against a sex offender list?
They could always come up with some sort of automated checking system however in saying that it wouldn’t be hard to set up a new Facebook profile under a fake name.
All this does is make it harder for them to try to fix their life
What a great way for them to meet each other and form paedophilia rings.
Of course not all sex offenders are pedophiles, but this would seem to give them a ‘heads up’ in terms of making it easier to identify each other.
ohh wow!! its really great news
But is it possible to strictly prohibits the use of facebook sex offenders
Perhaps this is not the best way to reduce sexual exploitation but yes it may have a psycological impact on the offenders, then again it also depends on how important facebook is for them and the network that they are a part of, because with this decision the only effect would be that a person may refrain from doing such acts fearing the humiliation they may need to face within their community. But the question is – Are such kind of criminals really worried about what others think about them??
They care what the kids think… they love them
Sex Offenders should only be controlled by their States,Countries or government, never by the people themselves. Public Justice is not right or conscious.
Waste of time and money, Louisiana. They aren’t supposed to have one anyway, so Facebook would just delete the ones that were flagged.
I think it’s a horrible and pointless law–it seems like a huge violation of privacy.
Amazing!!
Haha, if you post your sex offender status on FB wouldn’t they just have to delete your account for the terms violation? Silly.
This is ridiculous and targets all offenders (some of whom are guys who made a mistake once by not checking the ID of a young mini-teen-whore).