Combating Child Molesters: A Step Forward

A few days ago, President Bush signed The Adam Walsh Child Protection And Safety Act Of 2006 into law. The new statute has four chief objectives:

Expanding The National Sex Offender Registry. The bill will integrate the information in State sex offender registry systems and ensure that law enforcement has access to the same information across the United States, helping prevent sex offenders from evading detection by moving from State to State. Data drawn from this comprehensive registry will be made available to the public so parents have the information they need to help protect their children from sex offenders.

Strengthening Federal Penalties For Crimes Against Children. The bill imposes tough mandatory minimum penalties for the most serious crimes against children and increases penalties for crimes such as sex trafficking of children and child prostitution. It also provides grants to States to help them institutionalize sex offenders who have shown they cannot change their behavior and are about to be released from prison.

Making It Harder For Sex Predators To Reach Our Children On The Internet. The bill authorizes new regional Internet Crimes Against Children Taskforces that will provide funding and training to help State and local law enforcement combat crimes involving the sexual exploitation of minors on the Internet.

Creating A New National Child Abuse Registry And Requiring Investigators To Do Background Checks Of Adoptive And Foster Parents Before They Are Approved To Take Custody Of A Child. By giving child protective service professionals in all 50 States access to this critical information, we will improve their ability to investigate child abuse cases and help ensure that vulnerable children are not put into situations of abuse or neglect.

Now we'd be taking a giant step forward if we could just get the courts to throw away the key when they do convict somebody for sexually molesting childen. ----------------------------See our latest EduPosts here.