Anthony Weiner is about to become one of the more than 900,000 Americans on sex offense registries for the rest of his life (only Level 1 offenders in New York are removed after 20 years). We’ve spent decades now adding people to these lists without thinking hard about whether the ostracism it engineers is effective or humane.
When is enough enough?
FAC NOTE: Kudos to Emily Horowitz for writing this Op-Ed! One note of correction. The statement “if he travels to Florida for five days or longer, he’ll also be on their registry for life” is no longer accurate. Now, if he travels to Florida for THREE (3) days or longer, he’ll be on our registry FOR LIFE! Thanks to Lauren Book.
I’ve spent probably more time that is healthy trying to sort out the insanity around the state registration rules, especially when visiting another state other than my own. Since this is a continuing thread of conversation, if I may be allowed to vent for a moment over its insanity.
So FL’s registration rules is anything greater than three days. Now I haven’t read the minutiae of the law, but on the surface, what if I traveled to FL and stayed for a total of 71 hours, walked across the state line, had lunch and then came back. Am I allowed another 71 hours before I have to register? What if I live in Georgia or Alabama, but work in Florida? I technically would spend every working hour in the state, but because I’d go home each night I would never violate the 3 day rule. In fact, I would spend MORE time in FL than I would in my home state, but never violate the rule of law.
Other states are trickier about this such as CA, where it’s 14 days or a total of 30 days annually. So what if I traveled to CA on the 19th of December? Would I be able to stay until the 13th of January because technically I wasn’t violating the 14 day rule, but I was in-state for a consecutive of 27 days.
And who exactly verifies the time in-state? If I drive in on a car, fly in on a private airplane or take a boat in, there’s no “you must check in” when you stop out of the car/small airport/boat dock. It’s an honor system. yes I’m taking my freedom at risk since if I get caught I “could” get into trouble – but they’d have to prove my time in-state. I could just say I hitch-hiked in and any possible reference to my time in the state is obscured by having someone else on any hotel registration and/or pay for meals. It’d be almost impossible to prove.
This is just insanity and yes – I’m very angry at myself for being stupid 20 years ago, but even angrier that I am effectively marginalized by the law.
Florida is actually THREE OR MORE days (not greater than 3 days).
It’s in the aggregate, so if you visit your family in Florida three times a year for one day, you have to register.
The only “good” thing is a day (according to FDLE, which came out during a lawsuit) must be a complete day. So if you arrive at 11:59PM (or 11:59AM for that matter) that day does not count.
To answer your question about “who exactly verifies”. It’s fair to say that unless all of us are under 24 hour surveillance, nobody is monitoring each one of us. That said; I am careful to make sure we encourage everyone to follow the laws and not facilitate discussions on ways to circumvent them, because it’ll be used against us in some Bill that will propose all registrants be implanted with a chip or something in order to “verify” we are where we say we are.
Also I think you are required to report with in 48 hours of being in the sate of Florida. Check F.S.
That is incorrect
Thank the State when Coolly told them not to let him out.