Lawmakers endorse proposal
Keeping some youth sex offenders off state registry could help turn their lives around
Colorado lawmakers advanced a proposal this week to place fewer youths who commit sexual offenses on the state registry, and to partially seal that registry from the public.
The proposed changes are informed by research showing that harshly penalizing juvenile sex offenders often does nothing to improve public safety or rehabilitate the offenders.
The proposed bill was endorsed Thursday by four of five voting members of an interim committee of state lawmakers convened to consider changes to how Colorado criminal and juvenile justice systems treat people with mental illness. The committee comprises members from both parties and both chambers of the legislature.
The draft that committee members voted to introduce next year expands significantly the discretion of judges not to require juveniles to register as sex offenders. It also allows people adjudicated — a synonym for “convicted” used in juvenile cases — for multiple sex offenses to petition to deregister, and for “lookbacks” by courts that may want to remove someone from the registry, or add someone, depending on new information that may surface.
As of April 2017, there were more than 2,000 people on the sex offender registry list in Colorado who were required to register as a result of an offense they committed as minors, according to Colorado Bureau of Investigation data. The entire registry, including people convicted as adults, has nearly 20,000 people on it.
The majority of sex offenses by juveniles are committed by 12- to 14-year-olds, and currently they can be forced to stay on the registry for their whole lives. Being on a sex offender registry severely limits job and housing options, among other consequences.
“Why are we stigmatizing children and preventing them from turning their lives around, and potentially ruining any productive and successful future they may have?” said state Sen. Robert Rodriguez, a Denver Democrat who chairs the committee. “We need to provide opportunities for change in behavior and a path to move forward.”
The draft bill proposes to privatize the juvenile offender registry. As it stands, anyone interested in seeing a list of registered offenders in their area can find that information through their local police departments. Under the changes, the public would still be allowed to request information about individuals — a parent could look up a potential babysitter, for example — but the complete record would no longer be publicly available. Some entities,
such as schools and law enforcement, would still have access to the full registry.
Democratic state Rep. Adrienne Benavidez of Commerce City agreed to champion the bill in the House next session, which begins in January. Rodriguez said he would do the same in the Senate. Benavidez and Rodriguez joined Rep. Jonathan Singer, D-Longmont, and former Weld County Sheriff Sen. John Cooke, R-Greeley, in voting to advance the drafted bill.
Sen. Rhonda Fields, a Democrat from Aurora, opposed the bill.