9 States Leading The Fight Against Online Predators

     Online solicitation of children is a real problem, with an estimated 750,000 sexual predators on the internet at any given time. Luckily, there are states who are not content to sit idly by and wait for children to become victims. The 9 I especially admire are listed below, in no particular order.

     1. Florida: The Florida Sheriffs Association has launched its own program statewide to catch sexual predators, and over the years countless hundreds of people have been arrested and charged with felonies. Many of the men convicted were sentenced to a number of years in prison with lifetime registration as sex offenders.

     2. Ohio: Ohio does not have the strongest laws, with a number of notable legislative failures, a weak maximum jail sentence of around 18 months, and a sex offender registration that only lasts 10 years for all but the worst of the worst. However, law enforcement there has taken it upon themselves to arrest hundreds of men in a state with a relatively low population compared to others making this number of arrests. 

     3. California: I honestly do not understand the hatred toward this state. RSO status is lifetime for most offenders and publicly-available, and the jail terms given vary on the jurisdiction: in most places it is on par with the national average and in some places it is even better. They use their three-strikes law against sex offenders, which means a man who solicits a minor online could face life in prison. They are also very active, with a large population and thus thousands of convictions from sting operations.

     4. Arkansas: When Perverted Justice conducted their sting in 2006, the men convicted received an average sentence of 12 years in prison even after pleading down, likely because internet stalking is a class B felony punishable by up to 60 years. In Northwest Arkansas, a special task force was created to work with the group Truckers Against Predators to arrest men, and nearly a dozen arrests were made in a matter of weeks.

     5. Georgia: Georgia is ranked among the top 5 states for handling child sex trafficking, and their commitment to hunting online predators is noticeable. They have a program akin to Florida's as well as larger-scale busts that have led to hundreds of convictions and one of the longest average sentences in the country.

     6. New Jersey: The Garden State is weak when it comes to sentencing, and their RSOs are not public information. However, they have conducted a number of stings over the past year resulting in more than 100 arrests and boast a high conviction rate.

     7. Texas: The stings organized are usually against individuals, although at least one large sting is organized each year. The men arrested face large amounts of time in prison, and in some instances they even face life.

     8. Washington: "Operation Net Nanny" and other operations, mostly conducted by the Washington Highway Patrol, have led to the arrest of nearly 1,000 predators in 5 years, including a high number of school staff members.

     9. Pennsylvania: The attorney general's office has arrested dozens of men in the past year for a variety of online child sex crimes, and local law enforcement stings have brought the number close to several hundred. Pennsylvania also has a relatively strict RSO status.