Proposal to scale back sex offender list revived
Lawmaker’s move bypasses committee that shelved the measure last week.
SACRAMENTO — A proposal to end the lifetime listing of many convicted sex offenders on a public registry in California was revived Friday when its author put the language in a separate bill, bypassing a committee that shelved the measure last week.
Sen. Scott Wiener (DSan Francisco) took a bill he authored that would extend the hours of bars in the state, gutted it of its old language and added the proposal to change the sex offender registry program.
The new bill, SB 384, would require that the names of those who committed lower-level, nonviolent sex crimes or who are judged to be low risks to reoffend be removed from the registry after 10 or 20 years.
The measure is supported by Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey because of concern that the registry has become too large, with 105,000 names, and is requiring criminal justice workers to spend a lot of time on paperwork for people who are unlikely to commit new offenses.
“Our current sex offender registration system is broken — it burdens our law enforcement with unnecessary work tracking and monitoring low-level offenders with little to no risk of repeat offense when these officers should be out monitoring high-risk offenders,” Wiener said.
The Assembly Appropriations Committee shelved a previous version of the bill because it would involve “significant ongoing cost in the tens of millions of dollars” for technology, according to an analysis by legislative staff.
The new bill will not have to go through the Appropriations Committee. Wiener said it will get a vote of the full Assembly before the Legislature adjourns Friday.