US Senate approves online sex offender database

The US Senate has voted to set up a national sex offender database available on the internet and for strict monitoring of high-risk sex offenders for a year after the leave prison.

The legislation, sponsored by Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, is known as “Dru’s Law” for Dru Sjodin, a 22-year-old University of North Dakota student who was abducted from a shopping mall and killed in 2003.

Senators approved the Bill by voice vote. An identical version is pending in the House Judiciary Committee.

The man charged with abducting Sjodin and killing her, Alfonso Rodriguez, was a sex offender who had been released from prison six months before she disappeared.

The Bill is designed to compensate for a patchwork of state laws that have hindered searches for sexual predators who cross state lines. It would create a national sex offender registry that would allow the public to search across state lines.