Laws must better protect children

It’s time to get serious about protecting the children of California. Too often the rights of criminals are put ahead of the rights of victims, including children who have been sexually abused. We need a major attitude change in the state Legislature, and we need to demand tougher laws to keep predatory child abusers and other criminals away from our kids.

It has become a sad, predictable ritual in the Capitol -- tough new laws are proposed, but then quickly disposed of without any real debate.

Here are some examples from earlier this year:

* Two bills to expand the information on the Megan’s Law online database (www.megans law.ca.gov) were killed by the Assembly public safety committee. I supported these bills, because I firmly believe that parents should have access to more complete information about child molesters in their neighborhoods. But I never had a chance to vote for them, because three members of the public safety committee stopped the proposals from reaching the Assembly floor.

* A plan to require alleged child molesters to wear electronic monitors when they’re out on bail was defeated by the same committee. The bill would have helped police keep track of perverts who may be loitering near our kids’ schools and parks.

* Another bill would have extended the time for the public to comment on any proposed release of sexually violent predators in their neighborhoods. Again, those who run the public safety committee killed the proposal and kept it from being heard on the Assembly floor.

Giving parents more information about child molesters; monitoring accused child molesters; giving the public more time to comment on the release of convicted deviants in their communities. These aren’t radical ideas. They are common-sense proposals that most Californians support.

Under the current makeup of the state Legislature, however, these proposals will never become law. Thanks to the votes of three ultraliberal lawmakers -- a tiny minority of the 80-member Assembly -- the public safety committee has become the graveyard for efforts to get tougher on crime. It might as well be renamed the public endangerment committee.

For the past several years, my Republican colleagues and I have asked Assembly leadership to exercise its power and make the committee more reflective of California’s population. We’re not trying to turn jaywalking into a death-penalty offense -- we just want to have a reasonable debate over reasonable proposals, especially those that would better protect children from the depraved actions of pedophiles.

Assembly leadership has refused to make any changes, so the committee is still chaired by the assemblyman who recently went on national television to proclaim that he’s “reluctant to make new felonies for just about anything” because he opposes California’s three strikes law. Never mind that nearly 6.3 million California voters rejected that view last year when they voted against an initiative that would have weakened the sentencing law.

To give you an idea of how bad the public safety committee really is, the chairman of that committee wrote legislation this year to reduce the punishment for possession of crack cocaine. That proposal to weaken our anti-drug laws actually passed the committee, but it was never brought up for a floor vote, so I didn’t get an opportunity to vote against it.

This is all fresh in my mind as I prepare for the legislative session that begins in January. I am a major supporter of Jessica’s Law, which would require sex offenders to wear electronic monitors and ban them from living within 2,000 feet of schools or parks, and this bill already is headed for the committee of no return.

I hope you’ll join me in fighting for this much-needed legislation. Working together, we can put the “public” back in public safety, and we will give our children the security and safety they deserve.

* Tom Harman is Huntington Beach’s Assemblyman. He represents the 67th District, which also includes western Anaheim, Cypress, Garden Grove, La Palma, Los Alamitos, Rossmoor, Seal Beach, Stanton and Westminster.

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