WV: New law requires registrants to pay annual fee
A new law going into effect in West Virginia this week requires people on the sex offender registry to pay an annual fee of $125. The law, which can be found here, will hopefully be challenged.
Since the registry is supposed to be non-punitive, it is questionable whether a fee imposed as part of a criminal sentence or as a consequence of a criminal conviction can be considered anything but a punishment.
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As I have stated before, the fee is unconstitutional. The penalty for not paying the fee in Florida is arrest and jail time. Since our legislature left it to the counties to decide upon the fee many counties have opted out of charging one. Hernando County for instance where they love to violate for any and all reasons doesn’t charge a fee. The reason for this is that they are aware that it is unconstitutional to put a person in jail for being in debt.
The US Constitution strictly forbids “debtors prison”. In essence this means that a person cannot be incarcerated for being poor. Exceptions have been made and found to be constitutional when the debt was a fine that the Court imposed after due process. Retroactive fees do not have this standing nor do regular fees imposed by the legislature.
If my County does decide to begin imposing a fee, I will not pay it. They will have to take me to Jail and I will immediately file a writ of Habeas Corpus along with a civil rights lawsuit. Yes I will end up sitting in jail for a while however I will fight that fight all the way up through the Courts on their dime. The majority of Sheriffs in our State know that this is unconstitutional and know the type of black mark it will put on their record.
Always remember that they will always take as much as they believe they can get by with and they will continue to punish as long as they think they can get away with it. While they can hide behind the law and blame it on “We were only following the law set by the Legislature” they also know that they are in the wrong.
Now you know how black people feel living life while black in America, being targeted for a cheap arrest. Being harassed by the Karen’s and Darens of the world just for simply being in a place and space they think we shouldn’t also occupy. Hmmmmmmmmmmm
dorsey
do not play race card please, it happens to white people as well I can give you Million examples.
sooooo. They take your career. Make you unemployable, homeless, lose all assets, and then add a fee. No wonder we’re not allowed to buy g-u-ns they wouldn’t have anyone else to fleece and cry for more federal funding. What a joke lol
Greetings from Louisiana.
The city of Sulphur, Louisiana, requires a newly registered persons to pay a $600 fee, plus an annual $200 renewal fee. Also, parish (county) that Sulphur is in requires an annual fee of $60.00.
So, a new PFR must pay $660, followed by $260 each and every year after that.
The city of Sulphur claims that these fees are used to offset the cost of police overtime for compliance checks.
Yet, there is NO legislative requirement in the state of Louisiana for compliance checks.
Hmmmm… how can this be?
@MIG
Sounds like time to get the Hell out of that place. I have been registering since 1997 and never paid a dime to the registry. (Ok I will hush now as I do not want to jynx myself)
I get a small food stamp allowance and if they tried to make me pay a fee, they would just have to arrest me because you cannot get water from a stone nor money from the poor.
I get free phone, free internet, food stamps and some free medications.
I have not bought a new pair of clothes in over 10 years, that is how poor I am. If I go to church, I wear the same suit I got 40 years ago. I am not a cheapskate, just someone who waits every 30 days to get $23 a month in food stamps. Amazing how far you can stretch that with store brand canned foods.
Finally, I wonder if you cannot or do not pay the fee, you get a registry violation. Savages they are.
Here is why you pay…to offset the administrative costs of maintaining the registry and monitoring registrants. These costs can include:
Staff salaries for registering individuals, maintaining records, and conducting verification visits.
Technology and software to manage the database and facilitate information sharing between law enforcement agencies.
Electronic notification systems to inform communities about registered individuals. Very simple…don’t do crime
False. They get federal funding to maintain the registry.
Mrs Daksha
Every tax payer in the U.S pays for registry upkeep. That proves our point that they are stiffing us by charging registration fees because that is already being paid from taxes and fees that most Americans pay for and do not even realize.
If you knew all the double dipping the Government does, we would all be protesting in front of the U.S capitol.
Respectfully…. you are 100% wrong.
The city of Sulphur, LA, publicly proclaimed that the reason for their fee of $600 per first time registrant, and $200 thereafter, was imposed in order to deter PFR from living in Sulphur.
Your opinion of the money going to offset law enforcement costs lacks logic when you consider
that the cities that border Sulphur do NOT charge $600. Actually, Lake Charles charges $60.00…
one-tenth the fee that Sulphur imposes.
Also, I didn’t do the crime. One does not have to be guilty of a crime in order to oppose
bad laws, bad punishments, bad retroactive punishments, etc.
There are plenty of people that did not commit murder that oppose capital punishment.
It would indeed be a mystical fantasy world if no one ever committed a crime, but laws are broken.
Should a person that drives one mile per hour over the posted speed limit be forced to pay for that infraction for decades? Technically, one mile over the speed limit IS illegal and a crime.
Should many of the people that visit this website be forced to continue to be punished for something that they have seen?
It is a crazy world where it is perfectly legal for a person to view a video of an actual murder taking place, yet that same person could be imprisoned for years if he saw a pic of a 17 year old topless.
And the government does NOT care if that person wanted to see the pic or not. The only thing that matters is that the person saw the pic. People get put in jail for what they have seen.
Does that make sense to you?
@MIG
Sometimes it takes for a family member or even the person themselves that are bashing us, to understand what we are going through. It is sort of like when a cop who treats people they arrest badly, gets arrested themselves. Hopefully, that turns on the red light of “Ahhh, now I get what you and your family is going through”.
Doing your time is all well and good if you/me/we deserved it. But at what point do we get to re-gain our lives and move on? Apparently, in Florida, the answer is never. On top of that, each session, the law makers come up with more and more new sanctions, bills, laws and legislation to punish us, but they turn around and state that “NONE” of it is punitive and not punishment but administrative.
Please walk a mile in our shoes and say that none of it is punishing us. And, on a side note, it also punishes our families. Vacations we cannot go on, not being able to be in a park to have a picnic with our families, not being able to pick up our kids/grandkids from school and many other restrictive measures.
One final comment is, I have been let go by three different doctors. I did nothing wrong but once when the doctor stepped out, I opened my file and there was my registry page printed out and stapled to the inside of my chart. I did nothing wrong other than being on a lifetime registry that I cannot control.
Mrs. Daksha:
The state law in question states “The circuit clerk shall compile and maintain a record of any payment made by a registrant to which the State Police shall have access. The circuit clerk shall remit the entirety of a payment made pursuant to this subsection to the state treasurer who shall deposit these funds into the State Treasury and credit said funds to the account of the State Police. The State Police is hereby authorized to utilize the funds collected from these annual fees, first to enhance mental health services for current and former employees of the West Virginia State Police, including but not limited to hiring, or contracting, mental health professionals, conducting periodic educational seminars, meetings, training or conferences addressing mental health issues that affect persons that are, or have been, employed as law enforcement, and then for any other use essential to the general operations of the State Police. ” Nowhere does this fee help maintain the registry.
Michigan has been retroactively charging for years. Once yearly then when they realized they could get away with it even started quarterly fees. the government never holds itself accountable for the crimes it commits.
Don’t states already make enough of the registry via the grants from feds for each person they have on their respective registries?