Sex Offender Registration and Notification (H 5557)

In July, the House passed legislation overhauling the state’s sex offender registration and community notification laws, replacing them with federal standards so costly that few states have chosen to implement them.  The federal Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA) includes draconian public notification requirements, lifetime sex offender registration even for juvenile offenders, as well as retroactive registration for persons whose offenses may have occurred decades earlier. ACLU volunteer attorney Katherine Godin testified that notification laws hinder rehabilitation and ignore the reality of sex offenses, which is that over 90% of them are committed against victims whom the perpetrator knows, not by strangers. A Senate study commission has been evaluating the feasibility of implementing SORNA, but had made no determination by the time the legislative session concluded.  The legislation passed by the House died in Senate committee.