Mediaboss Marketing

HUNTSVILLE, AL (WAFF) -

It's a part of Facebook, a listing that shows your marital status. Imagine seeing someone's status as sex offender. One state is about to put that law into effect. Louisiana will require sex offenders to document their status on social networking sites starting August 1st.

The state of Louisiana is trying to build on their existing sex offender registration laws by taking a new law to the World Wide Web. The law requires sex offenders and child predators to put their criminal status on their Facebook or other social networking page. Abuse survivor Allison Black Cornelius said that's information that children and parents need to know.

"I could absolutely see a benefit to it having to be mentioned on a Facebook page or any type of social media. I could see where that would make sense," Cornelius said. "I would want that on a social media site because social media is a requirement tool, but it seems to me that bad guys are so good at marketing and they are so good at reaching our kids, the good guys need to get that good. Instead of us figuring out how to shut them down, why don't the good guys start figuring out how to do as good a job?"

So, what would it take for a law like that to come to Alabama? According to the Alabama Department of Public Safety's web site, there are more than 11 thousand sex offenders in their registry. State house representative Dan Williams says if a bill like that were to be drawn up, it would probably pass.

"I do think it's probably a good idea to keep the child molesters and the people who have been convicted of those types of crimes from using the social networks," Williams said. "I think a lot of people we found out are using those particularly for that; pornography and child pornography. I would be all for something like that."

Athens Police Chief Floyd Johnson said knowing your new friend's criminal past could help them keep track of offenders.

"I think it's important that parents watch what their children are doing online and if the parents are able to see they are communicating with a sex offender, I think it would be to the benefit of the parent and the child and they could tell law enforcement," Johnson said.

Louisiana's law states that sex offenders and child predators "shall include in his profile for the networking web site an indication that he is a sex offender or child predator and shall include notice of the crime for which he was convicted, the jurisdiction of the conviction, a description of his physical characteristics and his residential address."

Alabama lawmakers said a similar bill could find its way to our states legislature in no time.

Link:
Social networking sex offenders