Weekly Updates

Weekly Update #19 Dear Members and Advocates, On Monday March 18, CNET, a media outlet for news on technology and consumer electronics, published an article that scared the hell out of me. The article was about the use of facial recognition in different applications. Some of the applications completely obliterate any semblance of privacy, and for persons on the registry

Weekly Update #18 Dear Members and Advocates: This past week, the Florida Action Committee attended and exhibited at the 2019 Florida Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers Annual Conference and Membership Meeting. FATSA is the Florida affiliate of the international, multi-disciplinary, non-profit organization dedicated to making society safer by preventing sexual abuse. While most would think that an organization

Weekly Update #16 Dear Members and Advocates, In June of 2018, The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) announced that the total number of people listed on sex offender registries had surpassed the nine hundred thousand mark (900,202 to be exact) and had grown at a rate of 3.3% since the count done six months prior. As of

Weekly Update #15 Dear Members and Advocates, Earlier this month, I began our weekly update explaining why I was glad the Patriots won the Superbowl… because of their owner, Robert Kraft. I wrote about his dedication to criminal justice reform and how he and other celebrities created an alliance to lobby for changes to state probation and parole laws. I

Weekly Update #14 Dear Members and Advocates, Inconsistency is the topic of this week’s update. Laws governing persons required to register as sex offenders are plagued with inconsistencies, which make complying with and enforcing them a challenge. Take, for example, age of consent laws. In some states the age of consent is 16. In others it’s 18. According to NBC

Weekly Update #13 Dear Members and Advocates, This past week, I had to do a double take when reading court filings… Twice! On the 9th, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel filed an amicus brief arguing that Michigan’s sex offender registration and notification requirements are punishment and just yesterday, U.S. District Judge Keith Watkins wrote an order saying that “sex offenders

Weekly Update #12 Dear Members and Advocates, On Sunday we watched the New England Patriots beat the LA Rams in Superbowl 53. For reasons having nothing to do with football or an affinity for New England, I was rooting for the Patriots. My reason was purely for criminal justice reform. The Patriot’s Owner, Robert Kraft, is among a group of

Weekly Update #11 Dear Members and Advocates, On our site this week we featured some reminders to registrants. There is a distinction between ‘probation violations’ and ‘registration violations’. For one, conditions of your probation need to be complied with in addition to conditions of registration. Also, conditions of probation may differ from one registrant to another, while registration requirements are

Weekly Update #10 Dear Members and Advocates, As we begin a new year and the FAC family continues to grow, it’s a good time to remind all members of our Member Code of Conduct and some general principles for dealing with the public. The Member Code of Conduct can be found here (towards the bottom of the page) and is

Weekly Update #9 Dear Members and Advocates, Today, a new administration will be sworn in to govern our State. Ron DeSantis will become Florida’s 46th governor and his arrival will have an immediate impact on the State. Because three of our seven state Supreme Court justices are required by law to retire this week, he will be the one to