On March 18, the House Judiciary Committee approved, 18-2, legislation (H.R. 1104) that would expand the AMBER Alert communications network and provide tougher penalties for child abductions. The bill passed the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security last week (see The Source, 3/14/03).
The recent rescue of missing Utah teenager Elizabeth Smart focused national attention on the AMBER Alert system, which is used to track and rescue abducted children. The teen’s father, Ed Smart, called on Congress to swiftly pass the AMBER Alert provisions as a separate bill.
While the Senate passed a separate AMBER Alert bill in January (see The Source, 1/24/03), the House bill, sponsored by Committee Chair James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), includes the AMBER provisions in an omnibus bill that contains numerous other measures. In addition to providing $25 million in FY2004 to expand the AMBER Alert network, H.R. 1104 would mandate a minimum 20-year sentence for kidnapping, eliminate the statute of limitations for child abduction and sex crimes, and mandate life imprisonment for twice-convicted child sex offenders. Additionally, H.R. 1104 would deny pre-trial release for those who are accused of raping or kidnapping children, provide judges with the discretionary authority to require up to a lifetime of supervision for sex offenders, and expand the use of wiretaps by law enforcement personnel investigating child sex crimes.
“By addressing the serious deficiencies in the law, this bill ensures the public and police are armed with the best tools and resources to fight child molesters and kidnappers,” said Rep. Sensenbrenner. “This legislation will not only get the word out once a child kidnapping occurs, but will help prevent and solve child kidnappings,” he added. Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) disagreed. “Instead of the noncontroversial, bipartisan AMBER Alert bill, we have before us a bill that is a hodge-podge of get-tough, sound-bite-based provisions that sound good for about ten seconds but fall apart as soon as you try to explain how it would actually reduce crime,” he said.
The committee rejected, 5-17, an amendment by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) that would have eliminated all but the AMBER Alert provisions from the bill.
The committee approved, by voice vote, an amendment by Rep. Howard Coble (R-NC) that would remove statutory rape from list of crimes delineated in the bill. The amendment also would add two new crimes: rape of a minor in the production of child pornography, and coercion or enticement of a minor to engage in prostitution.
The committee approved, by voice vote, an amendment by Rep. Coble that would make a technical correction to the bill. Noting that the bill authorizes $20 million for the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) state matching grant program to enhance the AMBER Alert program, Rep. Coble explained that the DOT has been working on AMBER program guidelines since October of 2002, and that the current bill conflicts with the guidelines already developed by the DOT. “For instance, the current AMBER Alert program allows the federal share of any grant to be up to 80 percent,” he said. The bill “as currently drafted allows a federal share of up to 50 percent,” he continued. “Enactment of these provisions as currently drafted would have hindered these funds from getting to the states in a timely fashion,” he added.
The committee also approved, by voice vote, an amendment offered by Rep. Sensenbrenner that would “include a provision to alert pharmacies, doctors’ offices, health clinics, and emergency rooms all of which a kidnapper might visit when the abducted child is sick.”
