On March 10th, the Subcommittee on Crime of the House Judiciary Committee of the U.S. Congress, chaired by Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (D. VA), held a hearing to receive testimony regarding the request by the Adam Walsh Act Working Group (AWAWG) to delay implementation, from July 2009 until July 2011, for states’ compliance with the registry portion of the act. The stated reasons for the delay are to allow the most efficient blending of already existing state registrations with the federal registry, and to ensure that such registration does not violate the privacy rights of citizens, nor the issue of double jeopardy.

The AWAWG is comprised of a large number of service providers, defense attorneys and prosecutors, organizations concerned with sexual crimes, and state and Native American government representatives.

“The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act (Pub.L. 109-248) was signed into law by President Bush on July 27, 2006. The legislation organizes sex offenders into three tiers, and mandates that Tier 3 offenders (the most serious tier) update their whereabouts every three months with lifetime registration requirements, Tier 2 offenders update their whereabouts every six months with 25 years of registration and Tier 1 offenders (which includes minors as young as 14 years of age) update their whereabouts every year with 15 years of registration. Failure to register and update information is made a felony under the law. It also creates a national sex offender registry and instructs each state and territory to apply identical criteria for posting offender data on the Internet (i.e., offender's name, address, date of birth, place of employment, photograph, etc.)” (From Wikipedia’s description of the Adam Walsh Act.

Tier levels are assigned on the basis of the crime committed, without any consideration of the likelihood of reoffending or mitigating circumstances. For instance consensual sex among teenagers can be classified as a Tier 3 offense, just like a forcible stranger rape. Additionally, there are numerous concerns that this federal level registry will violate constitutionally protected privacy rights while doing nothing to enhance public safety, according to several studies from different states. As well, 87% of sex crimes are committed by first time offenders, who would not be registered prior to the offense. Further, the federal government has not provided funding for the burden of states’ compliance, and yet penalizes the states through loss of justice grants for failure to comply. A full discussion of the problems with the federal registration system is found in a letter from William Leahy of the Committee for Public Counsel Services. This letter was sent several weeks ago to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in support of AWAWG’s request. Leahy’s letter and that of the AWAWG are both posted elsewhere on this website.