Las Vegas Sun

March 19, 2024

Nevada implementing law on juvenile sex offenders

Juvenile Justice

Steve Marcus

Juveniles hold their hands behind their backs as they walk through the Clark County Juvenile Detention Center on Wednesday, May 25, 2011.

Counties are implementing a new law dealing with juvenile sexual assault cases, the latest effort in the state to legislate such crimes after the passage of the federal Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006.

Clark County Chief Deputy District Attorney John Jones spoke to the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee to Study Sex Offender Registration Laws on Thursday about changes under Assembly Bill 395.

Assistant Attorney General Wes Duncan, the committee’s chairman, said court stays have kept the Adam Walsh Act from full implementation.

“Every time it was about to be implemented there were other stays, litigants trying to work out what was going to happen with it,” Duncan said.

The new law creates aggravated sexual offenses for juveniles in Nevada, a designation for cases involving crimes committed using weapons or drugs, for example.

“Those types of offenses, you cannot remove those juveniles from the registration and community notification requirement like you can for certain other offenses,” Jones said, noting that some of those cases could also be bumped up to the adult court system depending on the severity.

“If it’s a serious enough crime, we can move to certify them to adult status where they wouldn’t have the ability to seek some of the protections … under AB395,” Jones said.

He said the committee will continue to study the new law’s effect on juveniles as well as the implementation of the Adam Walsh Act once the stay has been lifted.

The 2007 Nevada Legislature passed Assembly Bill 579 to implement the Adam Walsh Act, but the measure has faced legal challenges. The bill said juvenile delinquents who are at least 14 years old and have committed certain sexual offenses had to register alongside adult offenders.

Under the state’s new law, juvenile delinquents who are at least 14 years old and have committed certain sexual offenses can register separately from adults.

Committee member Susan Roske said this is a significant change. She said the previous rule required these teen children to go to the sheriff’s office every 90 to 120 days to update their information.

“This is a huge burden on a child, especially a child who’s not even old enough to drive,” she said.

“These children are on probation anyway. They have to report this information to their probation officer — it makes sense to have that be their registration component rather than sending them where adult sex offenders are registering, and put these children in (what) could be ... danger.”

Jones said this bill means there won’t be an intermingling of adult and juvenile offenders.

“Sending 14- and 15-year-olds to register at the same place as adult sex offenders did prove a problem,” he said.

Another attempt at implementing the Adam Walsh Act, Assembly Bill 99, was vetoed by the governor in 2015. Jones said that measure was tossed for reasons unrelated to the juvenile justice provisions, and AB395 leaves out those problem areas.

“Registration and community notification is still required under AB395, however there are some abilities for a juvenile to remove himself from both the community notification website and from community notification itself,” Jones said.

The new law also sets out two types of hearings, one that already exists called a release hearing, and another called an exemption hearing. Jones said kids above 14 who meet certain requirements can be exempted from community notification and an online listing.

Jones said exemptions do not apply to aggravated offenses.

“This was probably the biggest point of contention with the Adam Walsh Act, is putting juveniles themselves on a website where their neighbors and everyone can see what they were convicted of,” he said. “This basically gives us the option to do it if we have a situation where a kid does prove a particular danger.”

Clark County Deputy Public Defender John Piro supported the bill in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on June 2.

“This bill strikes a good balance between protecting youthful offenders who made grave mistakes but have reformed and protecting the community from youthful offenders who made very serious mistakes and have not reformed at all,” Piro said.

Juvenile sex offenders make up a relatively small portion of the criminal population. Brigid Duffy, director of the Clark County District Attorney’s Juvenile Division, said at the June 2 hearing that The Harbor, a juvenile assessment center in the 8th Judicial District, has served more than 1,300 children since Oct. 17, 2016.

The program diverted all but 38 of those cases from escalating to the juvenile justice system, she said. The new law also spells out funding for juvenile justice services.

“I believe all the law enforcement partners are in support of the funding portions of the bill in order to get us some diversion services,” Duffy said.