e-STOP Legislation targets sex predators

Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, Kings County District Attorney Charles Hynes, Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown, Bronx County District Attorney Robert Johnson and Richmond County District Attorney Daniel Donovan have announced their support for Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s new e-STOP legislation and its protections against sexual predators online.
The Electronic Security and Targeting of Online Predators Act (e-STOP), introduced last week with bipartisan support in the Senate and Assembly is the nation’s most comprehensive legislation to deal with the threat of sexual predators on the Internet. It also creates the country’s first mandatory ban on sexual predators from social networking web sites.
Passage of e-STOP would prohibit sexual predators from accessing social networking sites and restrict their Internet usage in a variety of other ways. It would require sex offenders to register all of their instant message screen names and any other online identifiers, and would give access to that information to companies with social networking Web sites. Those companies would then be able to prescreen and block access by convicted sex offenders.
Sex offenders have been shown to have recidivism rates far higher than those who commit other types of crimes.
According to the state Division for Criminal Justice Services (DCJS), there are 1,070 registered sex offenders in Queens.