A federal appeals court has ruled that juvenile offenders in California can be required to register as sex offenders for at least 25 years. According to the 9th US Circuit Court Of Appeals in San Francisco, a law passed in 2006 that excluded sex offenders aged 14 and above from juvenile law confidentiality protections did not violate the persons’ constitutional rights.

The ruling came in a case involving 3 Montana youths, who were accused of forcible sex crimes on Indian reservations. These persons were aged between 14 and 17 at the time. Because the crimes occurred on American Indian reservations, the 3 were subjected to federal prosecution.

Now, the court has held that the men must register as sex offenders for 25 years after their release from custody. They must register within a month after being released, and must keep authorities aware of their whereabouts.

Their lawyers argued that requiring a potentially lifelong registration requirement for the offenders was cruel and unusual punishment and violated their constitutional rights. However, the Appeals Court has disagreed.

The persons will now be required to register as sex offenders for the rest of their lives. They will be subjected to all requirements of lifelong registration including informing officials about their whereabouts, and entering their names in the federal government registry, a government database that is accessible to the public.

Conviction of a sex crime is a serious matter, dramatically impacting the rest of a person’s life. As California sex crimes lawyers find, a person who has been convicted of a sex crime may be subjected to penalties that continue long after his prison term has been concluded. Inclusion in a sex offender registry is just one of those penalties. A registrant is required to inform local law enforcement officials about changes in name and address, and also faces restrictions on where he or she can live and work.

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A rule change by the FBI will soon extend the definition of rape to include male victims. The change comes after calls from victims’ advocates who have long protested the narrow definition of rape that only includes female victims.

Currently, rape as defined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and employed by California criminal defense lawyers, refers to the ‘carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.’ The change will modify that definition to define rape as the ‘penetration of another person regardless of the gender of the person, without the person's consent.’ The new definition of rape will also include penetration of other persons, both males and females, using a variety of objects.

The need for a new definition of rape that takes into consideration crimes against male victims too, has been felt for several years now. In September, a survey that included police chiefs of major cities found that 80% of them believed that the old definition of rape was not adequate in modern times. The FBI director has already approved the new rule change, which is expected to be phased in over the next 3 years.

Victims’ groups have strongly supported the new definition of rape, saying that this will allow for more accurate tracking of sexual assault crimes across the country. Because the current definition of rape does not include male victims and certain types of assault, there has been a discrepancy in the number of sexual assault crimes that are actually committed across the country, and the numbers that are reported to the federal agency.

This difference in the definition of rape has led to discrepancies in federal data. For instance, while the FBI recorded 84,757 rapes in 2010, the National Crime Victimization Survey by the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics recorded a total of 188,380 sexual assaults that year. A more inclusive definition will help bring more victims into the fold, delivering more accurate tracking results, and helping prevent such crimes.

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