In 2006, the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act was signed into law by President George W. Bush. The act provides for the consolidation of state sex offender registries, giving law enforcement nationwide access to sex offender data and eliminating the possibility that predatory criminals can escape detection simply by moving across state borders. The data contained in the national registry is also be available for viewing by the public, enabling parents and school officials to keep abreast of threats to the children in their charge.

The act also hands down much harsher minimum sentences for sex crimes against children, especially in the arenas of child prostitution and sex trafficking. Internet predators also come under the scrutiny of the Act, which provides grants designed to fund local law enforcement in the creation of Internet Task Forces aimed at reducing the activity of sexual predators online. Finally, the act creates a National Child Abuse Registry, requiring adoptive services to check potential parents against the national database before releasing a child into their custody.

Some have objected to the Walsh Act’s requirements, arguing that its mandatory three-tiered sex crimes registry infringes on the rights of individual states to deal with criminals as they see fit. Additionally, critics accuse the government of strongarming states into compliance by assigning a 2009 deadline to have their registries online; states that don’t align themselves with the national registry are subject to a 10% reduction in federal grants—a significant portion of any state’s crime-fighting budget.

Many defense attorneys allege that the most egregious provision of the legislation is the requirement that states apply new laws regarding sex offender registration retroactively, meaning that criminals from decades past would become subject to a set of laws—and associated penalties— that didn’t exist when their crimes were committed. The controversy in this arena alone has been enough to keep sex crimes defense attorneys inordinately busy, further gumming up the works as states scramble to meet the 2009 federal deadline.

At this point, it’s difficult to see how much the Act may be affected, if at all. Only time will tell.