The SORNA-Compliance Dog That Didn't Bark

Back in April I wrote this post about a pending bill (H 772) that was intended to bring North Carolina into compliance with the federal Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA). In its initial form, it appeared the bill would have done all the things North Carolina needed to do (and then some, perhaps) to substantially implement SORNA—increase registration periods for certain offenders, require registrants to provide some additional information to the sheriff (like their passport number and a description of their car, for example), and treat certain serious juvenile adjudications like convictions for registration purposes. The bill moved along for a couple months, but after an early June committee meeting in the House of Representatives it was gutted and replaced with a new edition establishing a joint legislative committee to study and report on what legislative changes are truly necessary under SORNA. The committee would have been charged with weighing the costs to State and local agencies of implementing those changes against the potential loss in federal grant funding if the changes were not made. (A 2009 report on that issue by the non-profit Justice Policy Institute, an organization whose mission is to “reduce the use of incarceration and the justice system,” suggested North Carolina’s $14 million compliance tab would far exceed lost grant money of less than $1 million.) But even that new edition of the bill never made it through the Senate. It was still in committee when they adjourned, and it’s not one of the items [...]