California, which has the largest sex offender registry in the United States, has received the news from the California Sex Offender Management Board that their registry is not working. The board reported that the fast-growing registry included too many unnecessary people and that it did not help law enforcement or the public differentiate potentially risky offenders from those who would likely not reoffend.

The board reported that about 95 percent of solved sex crimes are committed by people who are not on the registry, and said that the registry was created, in part, on assumptions that have since been proved to be wrong. The board called for an overhaul of the registry.

The board recommended to the California legislature that only high-risk offenders, such as violent predators and kidnappers–that is, offenders whose offenses are also characterized by something other than sex–should be required to register for life.

The list currently has 100,000 offenders registered, and is growing. California requires lifetime registration of all sex offenders. The nature or circumstances of the offense are not usually relevant to registration.

When the board reported earlier this year, they had found that the registry included many offenders “who do not necessarily pose a risk to the community.” Nine hundred such registered offenders last offended more than 55 years ago.

The registry is also used for Megan’s Law, a tool of law enforcement used to notify the public about sex offenders. It offers the public a searchable website of what are considered the most serious registered sex offenders. However, around 80 percent of all of California’s 100,000 registered offenders are posted on the Megan’s Law website.

In 2011, the California Sex Offender registry was audited. The audit found that the government department responsible for the state’s prison and parole system, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, had been illegally abusing the sex offender registry by forwarding all offenders for examination as possible sexually violent predators rather than using discretion. That is, anyone convicted of any sexual offense was forwarded to be considered for classification as a violent offender and so registered. The law did not permit this.

Not only that, since 2005, the audit found that although 59 percent of released sex offenders violated parole, only 1 percent committed a new offense. That one percent represented 134 convicts. Of those 134, only one committed a new sex offense.

California State Auditor

SFGate

On The Media

NPR

Pop Sugar

Freakonomics

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Orsainville Detention Centre

Three Hell’s Angels who escaped from a Canadian prison by helicopter–Canada’s second such helicopter prison escape–received relaxed security benefits in their prison just one day before the escape. The three convicts are the subject of a massive manhunt in the province of Quebec.

The three men–in prison on charges of murder and drug offenses–were not confined to handcuffs when they made their break. Questions have also been raised as to how three men could escape from a prison within the space of a minute by helicopter and remain missing.

Quebec Public Security minister Lise Thériault stated that the suspects had requested a loosening of their imprisonment conditions prior to the escape. The request was handled by an unnamed judge on Friday.

“The judge accepted the prisoners’ request,” Ms. Thériault said. “There will certainly be legitimate questions to ask ourselves about that.”

The helicopter is said to have been able to evade radar easily by flying into mountains nearby Quebec City and right beside the prison. “It wouldn’t take much to hide inside a valley,”  said the base manager of a helicopter flight school near the prison, Guy Dupont.

The SQ was largely silent about the search, but a former agent did comment. “If they’re in a forested area, locating them is like finding a needle in a haystack,” stated retired Sûreté du Québec lieutenant François Doré. “They could be in a chalet waiting to be picked up, keeping a low profile.”

The three men are Yves Denis, Denis Lefebvre and Serge Pomerleau, and are considered by Sûreté du Québec to be dangerous. 

A previous helicopter escape took place only 15 months earlier also in Quebec, prompting questions about Quebec’s prison security. “Prison directors have received orders to implement plans everywhere,” Ms. Thériault said. “I’m not going to make the plans public. That would be like telling the crooks that I’m giving them the keys so they free themselves.”

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Senator Anthony Cannella of California has announced new amendments for January to the current anti-revenge-porn laws of that state, legislation currently framed under the blanket cyberbullying category. The amendments will broaden the criminalization of revenge-porn, applying it to self-shot images, so that anyone distributing revenge-porn will be liable. Cannella intends to present the amendments to the upcoming session

Under the current law (bill SB 225), passed in October 2, 2013, distributing sexually explicit photos taken of SOMEONE ELSE with the intent to cause harm or humiliate is illegal (misdemeanor). Currently there is no legal protection for people who take pictures of themselves when those pictures wind up online. There is no protection for people who give photos of themselves to others and later regret it, as those photos are the legal property of the recipient. There’s no legislation against posting any explicit photos if the subject is over 18 years old. Currently, most revenge-porn is not illegal.

Currently, an estimated 80 percent of revenge-porn victims take the pictures themselves, according to Cyber Civil Rights Initiative.

The SB 225 California law–a law brought by Cannella–was the first revenge-porn specific law in the U.S. Critics have argued against the perceived loopholes in the law. Notable among these “loopholes” are that the poster must be proven to have intended to cause serious emotional distress and the victim must be proven to have suffered such distress.

Sen. Anthony Cannella announced the amendments to the current revenge-porn law and proposed further amendments. Cannella wants to remove the loopholes as well: the burden of proving intent to cause emotional distress and that the victim actually suffered. This amendment is sometimes called the “Selfie Amendment.” This was left out of the original bill because, it was reasoned, self-shots implied consent. If Cannella’s amendments pass, it would be illegal to knowingly distribute explicit images of a person who has not consented to such distribution.

The laws being considered touch upon the First Amendment–the freedom of speech–which currently protects pornography, and so the laws must be written carefully so as not to violate constitutional rights.

A key argument against such laws is that making it a crime to distribute private images with the intent to harass or annoy might end up in charges against a person who leaks information that the public needs to know or has an interest in, because it was sent with a malicious intent, such as the case of ex-congressman Anthony Weiner, who denied sharing lewd photos of himself, which denial was later proved a lie.

Cannella’s announcement comes after Christopher Kevin Bollaert, creator of a revenge porn website called ugotposted.com, was arrested and charged December 11 in Sand Diego. Bollaert was charged with 31 felonies, including extortion and conspiracy, but most of the charges were for identity theft. There were also allegations of “child pornography.” Bollaert started the website in December 2012. He faced up to 22 years in prison.

Bollaert’s site was set up so that posters could include the victim’s personal information: phone number, location, and Facebook. Bollaert later put up a second site called changemyreputation.com, catering to victims who wanted their images removed from his site. The ugotposted.com site was taken down as a result of the criminal investigation.

The Guardian reported that Bollaert responded to these victims by offering to remove their images for 300-350 dollars (extortion). The site’s PayPal account showed payments in the tens of thousands of dollars.

At least two victims have said that they were under 18 (child pornography).

Bollaert has also been charged in civil suits in Illinois, Ohio and Michigan. Since Bollaert did not respond to the lawsuits, the judge entered default judgements, ordering Bollaert to pay three hundred thousand dollars to a Michigan woman and the same amount to an internet company Bollaert used to display nude photos. Bollaert has ignored these charges.

Bolleart’s trial, if it succeeds, may be the first major revenge porn prosecution.

Bollaert’s partner in the website, Eric Chanson, was also named in the lawsuit. Chanson attests that the two businessmen always removed user content with a subpoena and cooperated fully with authorities when contacted.

Some legal scholars doubt the case against Bollaert. The current California revenge-porn law does not apply to Bolleart’s case. The current law is not designed to apply to a site operator. Identity theft is a questionable charge because the site operator isn’t pretending to be or passing himself off as the people in the pictures.

Currently, only California and New Jersey have any law applicable to revenge porn. New Jersey’s law is not targeted at revenge-porn at all; in New Jersey it is illegal to distribute graphic images of a person without consent. Other states considering are legislation, such as Florida, Wisconsin, Maryland, New York, and Rhode Island. In the absence of such laws, victims are left to pursue civil litigation, commonly torts like invasion of privacy, stalking, or harassment. These charges are usually struck down immediately because sites are immunized from liability for user-generated content by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Anti-revenge-porn advocates are pushing for federal level legislation.

Other people interested in stopping revenge-porn, such as Amanda Levendowski, NYU Law student, are looking at how copyright law might be able to combat the problem. Since around 80 percent of revenge-porn victims took the pictures of themselves, they own copyright to those images, which copyright is infringed whenever initial, interim, and subsequent copies and displays of those self-shot images are made.

If successful, the new amendments to the California law targeting revenge-porn would be introduced to the state legislature and take effect in January 2014.

By Day Blakely Donaldson

Sources:

UT San Diego
KPBS
Star-Telegram
NBC-10
Onthemedia.org
NBC Connecticut
KFBK
Elite Daily

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