Political Quotes

“I seek recognition today to introduce and speak in favor of the Finding Fugitive Sex Offenders Act of 2011, which would give administrative subpoena authority to the Director of the U.S. Marshals Service for the investigation of sex offenders who have failed to register as required by the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act. The language of the bill is the product of bipartisan negotiations during the last Congress, which was included in a broader child crimes bill last year that passed both the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate, but did not become law. To understand the need for this bill, it is important to understand the history of recent child crimes legislation in Congress. When the Adam Walsh Act, which I cosponsored, was enacted in July 2006 to create a more uniform and enforceable sex offender registry system, over 150,000 convicted sex offenders were believed to be unregistered and missing from the various state sex offender registries. A key component of the Walsh Act, one requested by John Walsh himself, was to give the U.S. Marshals Service primary enforcement authority to locate and arrest unregistered sex offenders who had crossed state lines or had earlier been convicted under federal law. The Walsh Act, however, did not provide the Marshals Service with administrative subpoena authority to perform these investigations, which can span jurisdictions and move quickly.…”