Jessica's Law

In 2005 Florida passed the Jessica Lunsford Act after the brutal rape and murder of a white girl by 47-year-old John Couey. Despite the fact that existing law was sufficient to give John Couey the death penalty in this case, legislatures around the country have decided that existing laws against sex offenders were not stringent enough, and many states have passed the JLA or versions of it.

What the Act primarily does is enforce lifelong monitoring for sex offenders and assign mandatory minimum sentences for lewd and lascivious acts against children under 12 and for sexual battery and rape against young children. I have two problems with this law. First, 'sex offender' may be too broadly defined, including acts such as urinating outside or consenual sex with a minor in some cases. It seems unfair to me to condemn a homeless person to a lifetime of electronic monitoring because they don't own a home with a bathroom to pee in.

Second, mandatory minimum sentences tie judges' hands. The whole point of having the system of judges, juries and trials is that not every circumstance can be adequately anticipated by legislation, hence judges have (or should have, they increasingly have less) the power to interpret the law in the light of the facts of any particular case.

In any event, the upshot of all of this is that, in order to take a job where I'll be tutoring through the public school system, I have to go downtown on a weekday during a very narrow range of business hours (8:30-12 and 2-4, Monday through Friday) and pay over 80 bucks to get fingerprinted and run a criminal background check.

John Couey wasn't a certified teacher, he never applied to work at a day care or tutoring company or as a teacher's aide. He worked at a freaking truck stop and grabbed a child out of her own home at 3am and because of that I have to pay 80 freaking bucks? I'm a broke young professional just out of college who is working hard to scrape together rent on a part-time teacher's pay. We have a shortage of good teachers in this state. Why am I and every other educator in this state penalized for the actions of one monster? Next time the FL legislature decides to throw a hissy fit over sex offenders, could they at least pay for the fingerprints themselves?