American courts have approved the practice of ever-increasing the punishment for sex offenses. Seemingly in every session of the Legislature, some new restriction or requirement is lopped into an already substantial set of notifications, registration, residential and employment restrictions, and other scarlet letters. In its last session, the Alabama Legislature passed such an additional requirement: Ala. Code § 15-20A-17:
(b)(1) No adult sex offender, after having been convicted of a sex offense involving a minor, shall enter onto the property of a K-12 school while school is in session or attend any K-12 school activity unless the adult sex offender does all of the following: (a) Notifies the principal of the school, or his or her designee, before entering onto the property or attending the K-12 school activity. (b) Immediately reports to the principal of the school, or his or her designee, upon entering the property or arriving at the K-12 school activity. and (c) Complies with any procedures established by the school to monitor the whereabouts of the sex offender for the duration of his or her presence on the school property or attendance at the K-12 school activity. For a public K-12 school, the local school board shall adopt a policy to effectuate this section. . . .Any person who violates … subsection (b) shall be guilty of a Class C felony.
A “K-12 activity” is defined broadly:
For the purposes of this subsection, a K-12 school activity is an activity sponsored by a school in which students in grades K-12 are the primary intended participants or for whom students in grades K-12 are the primary intended audience including, but not limited to, school instructional time, after school care, after school tutoring, athletic events, field trips, school plays, or assemblies.
This law is quite unnecessary. Any school board could pass whatever restrictions or regulations for a sex offender entering school board property. They own the land and can trespass any person from the premises just as any other land owner.
As I recently encountered, the prosecution of this statute may be stalled because the local school board has yet to pass “policy to effectuate this section.” Accordingly, its very possible that the statute is not in effect unless the local school board as passed policy “to effectuate” the statute. The statute employees the “effectuates” language in fact twice within the statute.
One, this is a perfectly normal mode of operation.
Second, the language is quite unambiguous. The term “effectuate” means “to make effective.” But if its not clear, then t
