[Congressional Bills 105th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 3729 Introduced in House (IH)]







105th CONGRESS
  2d Session
                                H. R. 3729

 To ensure that prisoners are not permitted unsupervised access to any 
                     interactive computer service.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                             April 23, 1998

Ms. Pryce of Ohio introduced the following bill; which was referred to 
                     the Committee on the Judiciary

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
 To ensure that prisoners are not permitted unsupervised access to any 
                     interactive computer service.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``Stop Trafficking of Pornography in 
Prisons Act of 1998''.

SEC. 2. PRISONER ACCESS.

    Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no agency, officer, or 
employee of the United States shall implement, or provide any financial 
assistance to, any Federal program or Federal activity in which a 
Federal prisoner is allowed access to any interactive computer service 
without the supervision of an official of the Government.

SEC. 3. RECOMMENDED PROHIBITION.

    (a) Findings.--Congress finds that--
            (1) a Minnesota State prisoner, serving 23 years for 
        molesting teenage girls, worked for a nonprofit work and 
        education program inside the prison, through which the prisoner 
        had unsupervised access to the Internet;
            (2) the prisoner, through his unsupervised access to the 
        Internet, trafficked in child pornography over the Internet;
            (3) Federal law enforcement authorities caught the prisoner 
        with a computer disk containing 280 pictures of juveniles 
        engaged in sexually explicit conduct;
            (4) a jury found the prisoner guilty of conspiring to trade 
        in child pornography and possessing child pornography;
            (5) the United States District Court for the District of 
        Minnesota sentenced the prisoner to 87 months in Federal 
        prison, to be served upon the completion of his 23-year State 
        prison term; and
            (6) there has been an explosion in the use of the Internet 
        in the United States, further placing our Nation's children at 
        risk of harm and exploitation at the hands of predators on the 
        Internet and increasing the ease of trafficking in child 
        pornography.
    (b) Sense of Congress.--Congress strongly urges State Governors, 
State legislators, and State prison administrators to prohibit 
unsupervised access to the Internet by State prisoners.

SEC. 4. SURVEY.

    (a) Survey.--Not later than 6 months after the date of the 
enactment of this Act, the Attorney General shall conduct a survey of 
the States to determine to what extent each State allows prisoners 
access to any interactive computer service and whether such access is 
supervised by a prison official.
    (b) Report.-- The Attorney General shall submit a report to 
Congress of the findings of the survey conducted pursuant to subsection 
(a).
    (c) Definition.--For the purposes of this section, the term 
``State'' means each of the 50 States and the District of Columbia.
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