WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 (UPI) -- State legislatures across the United States are becoming even more eager to crack down on child molesters.
Stateline.org reports that 100 new laws aimed at sexual predators who target children were passed last year, double the total for 2004. One popular new measure is the use of Global Positioning Satellite technology to track released molesters.
Florida last year adopted a law named after Jessica Lumsford, a young girl killed by a released sex offender. The law authorizes lifetime electronic monitoring and makes killing someone during a sexual assault a specific capital crime.
Jessica's death, like that of Megan Kanka in New Jersey more than a decade ago, has been the impetus for some of the legislation. But some analysts say that child molesting is actually less common now.
David Finkelhor of the Crimes Against Children Research Center in New Hampshire said that the number of substantiated cases has dropped 40 percent since the early 1990s.
