Ever since the passing of Florida’s Jessica Lunsford Act in 2005 and the Federal Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act in 2006, states have been working to update their sex offender databases, track parolees with GPS ankle bracelets and inform the public of the whereabouts of offenders in their communities. But, like the implementation of any new program, the process is more easily said than done and can lead to more questions.

“It appears that the intent of the law is right on target,” said Scott Denton, transportation director at Durham Public Schools, located northwest of Raleigh, N.C. “I guess my question would be, what about bus stops? Children gather at bus stop daily, but I don’t know that the law includes bus stops.”

Last July, North Carolina’s General Assembly passed HB933, or “The Jessica Lunsford Act for North Carolina.” Lunsfund was a 9-year-old girl who was abducted from her home in Homosassa, Fla., and later raped and killed by a convicted sex offender living nearby. As part of the new law, which took effect in December, sex offenders who are convicted of crimes against children under the age of 13 are restricted from congregating in areas “intended primarily for the use, care, or supervision of minors, including, but not limited to, schools, children’s museums, child care centers, nurseries, and playgrounds.” The law also restricts these same offenders from being within 300 feet of anywhere minors gather for either regularly scheduled educational, recreational or social programs. However, the law does not define school bus stops as one of these areas. And this is an issue that crisscrosses the nation.

“The problem for me has been that we find, sometimes, one of these offenders will rent a place that is very close to school bus stops,” said Lynne Torzilli, transportation supervisor for Sonoma Valley Unified School District, located just north of San Francisco. “I think that school transportation departments should get a list of those locations so we can take any necessary precautions, including notification to proper authorities of these stops.”

California recently completed a state-wide program to tag paroled sex offenders with GPS ankle units to help keep track of their whereabouts. As part of California’s version of Jessica’s Law, almost 7,000 offenders are now being monitored via GPS. The program initially cost close to $10 million and will cost another $14.5 million per year to track parolees around the clock. The price breaks down to $6 per parolee, per day compared to $96 a day to house the offenders in prison.

“I see advantages in GPS tracking of offenders but am concerned about the door that the procedure opens in other areas and especially in the right to privacy,” said Kent Kinion, Summerville Elementary School in Tuolumne, Calif. “We already are seeing abuse of personal rights through the national security act, so we do need to keep our eyes open to this and tread very carefully in the tracking area while still doing our best to protect the children.”

Some states, like Georgia, are in the midst of defining what constitutes an infringement on rights of residents who are listed in the state sex offender database. On July 1, 2006, a law went into effect that restricts offenders from living within 1,000 feet of schools, churches, parks and school bus stops. The residency restrictions made it impossible for newly-released offenders to find housing, and the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union took notice.

“When they passed this law, they threw out a wide net, and they brought in people that were one-time, low-level offenders to now be punished for the rest of their lives,” said Debbie Seagraves, executive director of the Georgia Chapter of the ALCU. “It made it difficult for law enforcement to properly monitor real offenders.”

The Southern Center for Human Rights (SCHR), an Atlanta-based group that fights to protect the human rights of people in the criminal justice system, took the lead and filed a lawsuit after law enforcement began trying to evict sex offenders from their homes. According to Sarah Geraghty, senior attorney for the SCHR, the judge in the case defined bus stops as only those that had been specifically designated by members of the local school board for purposes of the sex offender law. After the clarification, counties like Bulloch, Chatham and Columbia began classifying all of their bus stops this way.

“We filed an injunction and got consent orders from the Sheriffs of those three counties agreeing to stop enforcement of that specific provision pending the outcome of our lawsuit,” said Geraghty. “We are pushing for a speedy resolution.”

At this writing, a decision was still pending, although all other residency restrictions included in the law were being enforced.

Reprinted from the March 2009 issue of School Transportation News magazine. All rights reserved.