Laws are rapidly changing everyday! In fact on November 4, 2013 a landmark ruling for Pennsylvania, York County Court of Common Pleas Judge John C. Uhler ruled that Pennsylvania's recently enacted law requiring that juveniles convicted of sexual offenses be subjected to lifetime sex offender registration violates their rights under various provisions of the Pennsylvania and United States Constitutions, as well as Pennsylvania's Juvenile Act. he Pennsylvania legislature hastily passed the law in order to come into compliance with the federal Adam Walsh Act. The Adam Walsh Act is a federal statute that was signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush on July 27, 2006. The Walsh Act organizes sex offenders into three tiers and mandates that Tier 3 offenders (the most serious tier) update their whereabouts every three months with lifetime registration requirements. Tier 2 offenders must update their whereabouts every six months with 25 years of registration, and Tier 1 offenders must update their whereabouts every year with 15 years of registration. Failure to register and update information is a felony under the law.
The Act also creates a national sex offender registry and instructs each state and territory to apply identical criteria for posting offender data on the Internet (i.e., offender's name, address, date of birth, place of employment, photograph, etc.).
In doing so, the legislature incorrectly treated youthful offenders the same as adult sex offenders. As such, youthful offenders would be subject to the same requirements as adults under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act .
Programs for juvenile sex offenders