It had been a policy of Facebook and certain other notable social media sites that they would remove sex offenders from their network. However, identifying and filtering out sex offenders is not a fool-proof system. Now, a new Louisiana law binds the sex offenders that they must list their criminal status on social media sites so that others would know about their legal status.
In a way, this is a great move since huge hoards of youth are hooked up to social media sites these days. And many of these are very vulnerable, using these sites without the supervision of an elder. The result is that they may fall prey to criminals online.
The new law, which has been proposed by State Rep. Jeff Thompson, will be effective from August 1 and it requires that sex offenders “shall include in his profile for the networking website an indication that he is a sex offender or child predator and shall include notice of the crime for which he was convicted, the jurisdiction of conviction, a description of his physical characteristics… and his residential address.”
Sex offenders already require to follow a number of other laws in different states. For instance when they move to a new neighborhood, the must make the authorities aware of their conviction as sex offender.
Thompson’s concerns are indeed justified. He says, “It provides the same notice to persons in whose home you are injecting yourself via the Internet. “I challenge you today to walk down the street to see how many people and children are checking Pinterest, Instagram and other social networking sites. If you look at how common it is, that’s 24 hour a day, seven days a week for somebody to interact with your children and your grandchildren.”
Source: CNN
