[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 100 (Thursday, July 21, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1569]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    INTRODUCING THE SEXUAL PREDATOR EFFECTIVE MONITORING ACT OF 2005

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                         HON. ALCEE L. HASTINGS

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, July 21, 2005

  Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce the 
Sexual Predator Effective Monitoring Act of 2005. I am pleased to 
introduce this bill with Florida's senior Senator Bill Nelson, and I 
pledge my full commitment to helping communities throughout the country 
take the necessary steps to protect the vulnerable from sexual 
predators.
  A recent report done by my hometown newspaper, The South Florida Sun-
Sentinel, discovered that more registered sex offenders live in a zip 
code located completely in my district than any other zip code in 
Florida. The fact that no one living in the area knew the magnitude of 
the problem until the story was written is beyond troubling; it's 
absolutely scary.
  In 2003, the Justice Department completed a report on recidivism 
rates of sex offenders. The report provided some very disturbing 
statistics. The Department of Justice tracked 9,691 male sex offenders 
released from 15 state prisons, including Florida. They tracked them 
for a 3-year period and found that 40 percent of the sex offenders who 
re-offended did so within the first year, and within 3 years of their 
release from prison, 5.3 percent of those sex offenders were rearrested 
for another sex crime. Even more, half of the sex offenders tracked in 
this study included men who molested children, and within the first 3 
years of their release from prison, 3.3 percent of these convicts were 
rearrested for another sex crime against a child.
  Even more, there are more than 30,000 registered sex offenders in the 
state of Florida alone. Nationwide, there are more than 300,000 
registered sex offenders, of which the victims of some 70 percent of 
all the men in prison for sex crimes were children.
  It is these statistical realities combined with The Sun-Sentinel's 
report that led me to co-host a community forum with the Broward County 
Urban League. At that meeting, our community had an opportunity to 
discuss how to best protect our children from those who prey on the 
vulnerable. The forum provided law enforcement, civic leaders, elected 
officials, and community residents the opportunity to voice their 
concerns and chart a path toward making our neighborhoods safe from sex 
offenders.
  The legislation which I am introducing today expresses Congressional 
support for the tracking of sex offenders on probation through the use 
of Global Positioning Systems. The Sexual Predator Effective Monitoring 
Act also establishes a grant program that will allow states to improve 
their ability to track and monitor the movement and activities of 
sexual predators. The bill authorizes a total of $30 million over 2 
years to assist states in accomplishing this critical task.
  Mr. Speaker, I can think of no greater mechanism by which Congress 
can assist states in protecting children from sexual predators than to 
provide them with the financial assistance to develop and implement 
effective tracking tools to monitor these sick individuals. I ask for 
my colleagues' support for this legislation, and I urge its swift 
passage.

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