Revised Sex Offender Flow Chart (October 2015 Edition)

With the General Assembly done for the year, it’s time to post an updated sex offender registration and monitoring flow chart. A major reorganization of the sex crimes in Chapter 14 necessitated more changes than usual. The revised chart is available here. As always, sex offender registration issues are on the front and satellite-based monitoring (SBM) issues are on the back. Here is a summary of the changes. Reorganization of sex crimes. Earlier this year, in a case called State v. Hicks, the court of appeals “strongly urge[d] the General Assembly to consider reorganizing, renaming, and renumbering the various sexual offenses to make them more easily distinguishable from one another.” __ N.C. App. __, 768 S.E.2d 373 (2015). In S.L. 2015-181, the General Assembly did just that. Among other things, the legislation divides rapes and sexual offenses into separate, renumbered statutory sections, and more clearly identifies offenses as either forcible or statutory. For example, first-degree rape in existing G.S. 14-27.2 is recodified into G.S. 14-27.21, first-degree forcible rape, and G.S. 14-27.24, first-degree statutory rape. The bill then goes on to make conforming changes throughout the General Statutes, including major portions of the Juvenile Code and, of course, the sex offender registration and monitoring laws. The newly codified crimes, all made effective for offenses committed on or after December 1, 2015, are added to the left-hand column of the front page of the flow chart. I continued to list the replaced crimes, identifying them as the “former” version of the law, because [...]