Strengthening laws regarding sex offenders on college campuses will be debated in the coming legislative session.
Prefiled House Bill 13 would require faculty and student sex offenders to register with campus police departments.
Current law requires sex offenders to register with law enforcement in the city and parish where they live, work, or go to school, according to the bill.
Currently, the University runs background checks on staff members when they are hired but has no way of keeping up with students or faculty who may be registered, according to LSU Police Department Det. Kevin Scott.
“The problem is LSU is a city within a city,” Scott said. “LSU has a lot of part-time employees and students who are not full-time residents of the area.”
Scott said LSUPD currently doesn’t have the manpower to keep track of every student who may be a sex offender.
Scott said the proposed law would make the task much easier and lead to a safer campus but isn’t practical because of the cost.
“LSU has a day care, elementary school and a lab school nearby. There are also a lot of juveniles on campus,” Scott said. “We think it is a great thing, but we couldn’t currently bear the cost.”
Current law requires sex offenders to pay an annual registration fee of $60 to the city or parish law enforcement agency with which they register. The fee is meant to defray the cost of maintaining the record of the offender.
The new law would maintain the current fee but would not add a new fee for sex offenders registering with campus police.
Scott said devoting the manpower to filing the sex
offenders and then maintaining the database is not possible given LSUPD’s current budget situation.
“It’s a great idea, but there are some financial costs we couldn’t absorb,” Scott said.
It’s unclear as to why a new fee wasn’t proposed in the legislation. The author of the bill, Rep. Jerry Gisclair, D-Larose, couldn’t be reached for comment at press time.
The 2011 regular session begins April 25. House Bill 13 has been assigned to the House Committee on Criminal Justice.
 
 
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Contact Xerxes A. Wilson at [email protected]