Bills increase penalties for sexual offenses in Florida
A sweeping bill approved Monday, by the Senate and approved by the House last week would dramatically increase penalties for child sex crimes and AI-generated material and add or increase mandatory sentences.
HB 1159, sponsored by Rep. Berny Jacques, R-District 59, increases penalties for adults using children in a sexual performance from a second-degree felony to a first-degree felony with a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years. If the child was under 12 at the time, it becomes a life felony offense with a minimum of 25 years.
Knowingly creating or distributing child sexual abuse material would become a second-degree felony, as would engaging in sexual contact with an animal. Ownership of a “child-like sex doll” would become a third-degree felony rather than the first-degree misdemeanor it is now.
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The Biden administration allowed millions of people into this country with no identification or visa. Many unacompanied children were allowed to be handed over to so-called relatives. These children were, and still are, victims of this heinous practice. Why don’t the legislators of Florida try to write a bill that would find and punish these evil characters. Judges are not holding them responsible, so they run free. And all the while, there are many so-called sex offenders who have served time in prision and are still being punished – possibly because the young man had consenual sex with a 17 year old girl and her mother convinced the judge it was rape. There should be categories for the punishment of these men. Now Florida is calling for the death penalty for sex offenders, without any caring of the charge. Shame on you.
Keep immigration out of this discussion. Just as both political parties have advanced legislation banning Registered Persons from many aspects of a functional society, both political parties have “allowed millions of people into this country with no identification or visa.” Both political parties created problems with their public policies on many issues.
Don’t give anyone in the government the idea that sex offenders can be deported like criminals.
I agree it doesn’t affect us, but I’m still disappointed by how much time educated people spend ignoring serious scholarship and legislation just to satisfy an uninformed public on this issue.
First, our sentencing standards seem badly misaligned. Whatever happens to be the political “flavor of the month” often receives harsher attention than crimes that are objectively more heinous. For example, a murderer with intent can receive a shorter sentence than someone convicted of sexual assault. That kind of imbalance makes the whole system feel disjointed.
Thurgood Marshall once wrote, “If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a state has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch.” Yet under current sentencing practices, courts commonly assign about three years of confinement for every illegal image freely downloaded from the internet. At some point you have to ask: how much punishment is enough?
Why cannot we solve the single greatest question in Corrections – punishment or rehabilitation. That question is unanswered today but was unanswered in Corrections’ textbooks 60 years ago.
Meanwhile, if you read the news, legislatures seem to spend more time inventing new ways to punish sex offenders who have already served their sentences than they do addressing real public problems—bridges that need replacing, electrical infrastructure, poverty, homelessness, ordinary crime, corruption, and the ongoing failure of bipartisan cooperation.
I continue to be shocked by how much political energy is devoted to making the lives of sex offenders—and their families—more miserable simply because it helps politicians stay elected. I propose a bill that politicians be required to write a business case justification for public scrutiny for every new tax dollar spent on adding new sex laws to the already overburdened system (you can exclude this one).
At the same time, many school systems have eliminated civics classes. A large portion of the younger generation now has little understanding of what the Constitution actually says or how the founders intended it to be interpreted.
Frankly, if a legislator or judge spent six months in jail, they would think twice before casually handing out 10-, 20-, or 30-year sentences in cases where a misdemeanor might have been sufficient—especially for first offenders. Excessively long sentences often do more harm than punish; they trap men and women in a habitual criminal lifestyle. Long sentences look good in the press but damage people and their families long after the intent of incarceration is accomplished.
As an F.A.C member stated before, it will NOT affect us, because we are not stupid enough to re-offend, I truly hope.