First it was just available to those privileged Ivy League kids, then to all college students. Soon high schoolers got it, and then finally the general public. Facebook has been expanding rapidly lately. Who is the most recent to gain access to this online social network? According to New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, pederasts.
Last month, Cuomo’s office spearheaded the passage of a new state law restricting the ability of registered sex offenders to access social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, but the legislation’s effectiveness, and its implications for the criminal justice system as a whole, remain shaky.
“The Internet and popular social networking sites are the playground of choice for many young people, and for sexual predators,” Senator Joseph Bruno (R—N.Y.), one of the law’s co-sponsors, said in a press release. “This measure will ensure greater protections for kids, more control for parents, and more tools for law enforcement to better police the Internet and protect people from being victimized.”
The law, the Electronic Security and Targeting of Online Predators Act, or E-Stop, requires that sex offenders register all e-mail addresses and other Internet aliases with their probation or parole officer in hopes of keeping them off these networking Web sites.
But the main enforcement element of E-Stop is laissez-faire. The law provides for the release of sex offenders’ online aliases to social networking sites and other communication services, allowing such companies the ability to screen their users and report any dangers to law enforcement. Yet the law does little past providing this information, making any enforcement contingent on the actual sites taking action.
The reliance on networking companies themselves as the first line of defense stems from agreements last month between 49 state attorney generals and MySpace, and a September agreement between Cuomo’s office and Facebook which followed an extensive investigation into the site’s safety and security practices. Both sites agreed to more extensive safety controls and closer monitoring of users.
Yet many of those involved with the day-to-day monitoring of sex offenders have been quick to point out that the system ultimately hinges on offenders being honest about their web aliases and activity. E-Stop lacks substantial provisions for parole and probation officers to enforce offenders’ honesty in supplying this information.
Joe Abramo, supervising probation officer at Suffolk County’s sex offender unit, noted that once sex offenders are off their parole or probation time, there is virtually no network of support to back up spot-checking measures such as residential proof or Internet use. “I’m not saying you should put somebody on probation for life,” Abramo noted, “but there should be some agency that can continue to check in with these guys.”
“If they haven’t put some money into this thing, where there are going to be agents who are going to be able to check on these people, its not going to change what I do,” Abramo said, on states’ involvement in controlling sex offenders. He explained that, while the unit does have some capacity to do forensic computer work and other methods of ensuring that offenders are being truthful in their Internet whereabouts, more funding is needed to make something like E-Stop effective.
Others have complained that measures such as E-Stop further alienate potentially reformed offenders from society. Carla Shedd, a Columbia sociology professor with a particular interest in crime and society, said that this criticism revolves around “the idea in our prison system of reform and correction ... because here you have a population that no one believes can be rehabilitated.”
Shedd also noted that there continues to be a tension between the desire to punish in order to deter others from deviance, and punishment as a means of preventing the individual deviant from acting again. Restrictions of sex offenders’ activity, such as E-Stop, manifest both notions, but it is unclear which direction the measure will ultimately take.