Adam Walsh Reauthorization Act of 2012

Mr. Speaker, the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, enacted in 2006, is landmark legislation intended to keep our communities--and most importantly our children--safe from sex offenders and other dangerous predators.

This bipartisan bill strengthened sex offender registry requirements and enforcement, extended Federal registry requirements to Indian tribes, and authorized funding for several programs intended to address and deter child exploitation.

The centerpiece of the Adam Walsh Act is the national Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, or SORNA. SORNA's goal is to create a seamless national sex offender registry to assist law enforcement efforts to detect and track offenders. SORNA provides minimum standards for State sex offender registries and created the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Website, which allows law enforcement officials and the general public to search for sex offenders nationwide from just one Web site.

H.R. 3796, the Adam Walsh Reauthorization Act of 2012, reauthorizes two key programs from the original Adam Walsh Act--grants to the States and other jurisdictions to implement the Adam Walsh Act sex offender registry requirements, and funding for U.S. Marshals to locate and apprehend sex offenders who violate registration requirements. These programs are crucial to efforts to complete and enforce the national network of sex offender registries, particularly in light of the already-passed July 2011 deadline for the States to come into compliance with SORNA. H.R. 3796 reauthorizes both these programs at levels commensurate with their fiscal year 2012 appropriations.

The bill also makes changes to the SORNA sex offender registry requirements in response to feedback from the States. The bill changes the period of time after which juveniles adjudicated delinquent can petition to be removed from the sex offender registry for a clean record from 25 years to 15 years, and provides that juveniles do not need to be included on a publicly viewed sex offender registry. Instead, it is sufficient for juveniles to be included on registries that are only viewed by law enforcement entities. The bill, as amended by the Judiciary Committee, also reauthorizes grants for the treatment of juvenile sex offenders. I believe these provisions strike an appropriate balance between being tough on juveniles who commit serious sex crimes but understanding that there can be differences between adult and juvenile offenders.

The Adam Walsh Act has already been a public safety success. To date, the Justice Department has deemed 50 jurisdictions substantially compliant with the SORNA requirements, with two Indian tribes meeting this goal in just the 2 weeks since the Judiciary Committee considered H.R. 3796 at markup.

I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the Adam Walsh Reauthorization Act of 2012 (H.R. 3796). I would like to recognize Representative Sensenbrenner for a career spent protecting our nation's children, including this bill before the House today.

Six years ago I stood with my then 15-year old son and 13-year old daughter in the Rose Garden at the White House when President George W. Bush signed into law the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006.

Title V of the Adam Walsh legislation contains my bill, the Child Pornography Prevention Act. My bill set forth new findings to protect children against so-called ``home pornographers'' to better enable federal prosecutors to proceed with cases against them. It also provided increased protection to victims of child pornography and strengthened the hand of law enforcement in investigating and bringing charges in obscenity and child pornography cases. Finally, it closed a loophole that allowed pornographers to exploit children by using them in productions with simulated sexual activity or lascivious sexually explicit content and then claim that they believed the children to be over age eighteen.

The Adam Walsh legislation had many other good initiatives that have protected our nation's children by improving sex offender registration and providing local law enforcement officials with tools needed to track those who prey upon children. Some of these provisions require reauthorization, and I am pleased today that we are moving forward with this reauthorization, especially of the two key programs that fund the U.S. Marshall's fugitive apprehension program and the grants that help states comply with the national sex offender registry requirements, in a fiscally responsible manner.

I consider myself fortunate to have been able to contribute to the Adam Walsh bill, as well as the 2003 Child Abduction Prevention Act (later renamed the PROTECT Act), which setup the Amber Alert system. That legislation also included the Truth in Domain Names Act that I authored. The Truth in Domain Names Act made it a criminal act to knowingly use a misleading domain name with the intent to deceive a child into viewing harmful material on the Internet, and it has made a difference in protecting children from Internet pornography.

Congress over the years has faced many very difficult issues, but we always have kept the best interest of children at the forefront of our work. As we move to reauthorize these important programs in the Adam Walsh bill today, I want to thank my colleagues for coming together to put our children first.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 3796) to reauthorize certain programs established by the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous materials on H.R. 3796, as amended, currently under consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act was enacted in 2006 to honor the victims of several violent crimes against children, including Adam Walsh, a 7-year-old boy who was abducted from a store where his mother was shopping in July 1981 and found murdered just 2 weeks later.

This important legislation is primarily known for its efforts to create a national sex offender registry.

The Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, or SORNA, created a more uniform system of sex offender registries throughout the country by providing minimum standards that each State must meet.

In addition to SORNA, the Adam Walsh Act made the U.S. Marshals Service responsible for the apprehension of both Federal and State fugitive sex offenders, as well as for the investigation of sex offender registry violations. The Marshals Service apprehended over 11,000 fugitive sex offenders in 2010 alone.

H.R. 3796, the Adam Walsh Reauthorization Act of 2012, introduced by Crime Subcommittee Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner, reauthorizes the two key programs created by the Adam Walsh Act. It provides funding for the U.S. Marshals' sex offender apprehension activities and gives grants to States and other jurisdictions to implement the national sex offender registry requirements. These two programs are reauthorized for 5 years at amounts that reflect the fiscal year 2012 appropriation levels.

The original Adam Walsh Act contained over 20 different programs and was scored at approximately $1.5 billion over 5 years. By contrast, H.R. 3796 is targeted, fiscally responsible legislation that only reauthorizes the act's most primary programs at an estimated cost of less than $300 million over the same period.

I thank Mr. Sensenbrenner for his leadership on this bill, and I urge my colleagues to join me in support of H.R. 3796.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner), former chairman of the Judiciary Committee and the sponsor of this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in regard to H.R. 3796, the Adam Walsh Reauthorization Act of 2012. H.R. 3796 authorizes various grant programs originally established pursuant to the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006.

While I support reauthorizing these programs, I am concerned about what is missing from H.R. 3796. Unfortunately, the bill fails to address the many problems that the States and Indian tribes have encountered in implementing the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, known as SORNA, which is one of the provisions of the original Adam Walsh Act. So far, only 15 States have been found by the Attorney General to be in compliance.

Years before SORNA became law, many States had developed their own sex offender registries and dedicated substantial resources and research to develop effective sex offender management systems. To ignore these efforts in favor of SORNA'S prescriptive ``one size fits all'' system is not only wasteful, but it could adversely affect public safety. I offered 10 amendments in the full committee markup of the bill seeking to provide States and tribes with more flexibility to cost effectively manage sex offenders and to more fully comply with SORNA. Despite the committee's failure to adopt all of these proposed improvements, there are several positive aspects of H.R. 3796 that make changes to the underlying bill which will assist States in this regard.

For example, the bill, as amended, ensures that provisions of the Byrne JAG grant funding, intended for distribution to local governments and entities, are not penalized by the States' noncompliance with

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.