"States are struggling both financially and philosophically in complying with well-intended federal legislation to create a national sex-offender registry.

It's unclear whether more than a handful of states will meet a July deadline to enact the mandates of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act. States that don't comply — and Colorado seems poised to be one of them — will see federal grant reductions that will hurt their ability to fund victim assistance and other court programs.

It's time to rethink the law.

The legislation, passed in 2006, is named for Adam Walsh, a 6-year-old abducted from a Sears department store in Florida in 1981 and later found dead. The law's aim is absolutely laudable, to create a uniform national tracking and registry system so sex offenders can't cross state lines to avoid detection. So far, just four states are in full compliance.

Efforts to create a national system would have had a much higher probability of success if states had been intimately involved in the creation of such a system."

Get the Story:
Editorial: Modify national sex offender act (The Denver Post 4/17)

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