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The worth of a Facebook picture hinges on what it says. For a Phillipsburg man, one picture spoke volumes.

It was worth six months in the Warren County jail.

A picture of Brian Slack, 31, holding a beer on the other side of the Delaware River revealed that he broke three rules of his parole: no Facebook, no leaving the state without permission and no alcohol. Slack was sentenced in June for violating the conditions of a community supervision for a life sentence imposed for a 2001 sexual assault conviction, according to court documents.

Social network requirements in New Jersey, for the most part, stop there, but some lawmakers are seeking to expand restrictions to other offenders. Assemblywoman Donna Simon, D-Hunterdon, announced earlier this month plans to propose an identical version of Louisiana's recently passed law that requires Megan's Law offenders to identify themselves as such in their social networking profiles. Simon said the law would serve as an additional protection against offenders veiling their identity to prey on children.

"Anybody who's ever watched, 'To Catch a Predator' knows they don't come to the door anymore," she said.

The question of a sex offender's right to social networking sites has saturated national discussion in the past few months. The Supreme Court recently upheld an Indiana law banning registered offenders from the sites entirely, and Louisiana's law went live Aug.1. State laws tread in varying degrees of prohibition, which is changing as lawmakers address social networks as tools of supervision.

In New Jersey, lifelong parole is imposed on offenders convicted of aggravated sexual assault, endangering the welfare of a child and kidnapping. A ban on social networks or the Internet as a whole is sometimes a condition of probation but is rarely applied in Warren County, said Assistant Chief Probation Officer Brenda Beacham. It's a special condition considered in cases where a computer was used to commit the crime, she said.

The sites can also be useful tools for probation officers to monitor those in their care.

"There are times when it is helpful because you can see something that you can talk to them about," she said.

However, checking sites like Facebook and Twitter isn't, at this point, a major component of an officer's job, she said.

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Social networking and sex offenders: Pennsylvania and New Jersey approach bans differently