AURORA | As state lawmakers work to craft new laws on teens sending graphic images to each other, Aurora lawmakers are working on their own revisions.
The goal, city officials say, is to give police more flexibility when they investigate cases of teen “sexting.”
Assistant City Attorney Nancy Rodgers said that under the current law, police and prosecutors have no options beside a felony charge, which is often too harsh.
“It’s not always the appropriate enforcement response,” she said.
City Council’s Public Safety committee signed off last week on a proposal that would allow for filing misdemeanor charges in municipal court.
The debate in Aurora mirrors similar discussions at the state Capitol in Denver and other states around the country.
Most states consider sexually explicit images of minors to be child pornography, meaning even teenagers who share nude selfies among themselves can — in theory — face felony charges that can carry heavy prison sentences and require lifetime registration as a sex offender. Many authorities consider that overkill, however, and at least 20 states have adopted sexting laws with less-severe penalties, mostly within the past five years. Eleven states have made sexting between teens a misdemeanor; in some of those places, prosecutors can require youngsters to take courses on the dangers of social media instead of charging them with a crime.
Hawaii passed a 2012 law saying youths can escape conviction if they take steps to delete explicit photos. Arkansas adopted a 2013 law sentencing first-time youth sexters to eight hours of community service. New Mexico last month removed criminal penalties altogether in such cases.
At least 12 other states are considering sexting laws this year, many to create new a category of crime that would apply to young people.
But one such proposal in Colorado has revealed deep divisions about how to treat the phenomenon. Though prosecutors and researchers agree that felony sex crimes shouldn’t apply to a pair of 16-year-olds sending each other selfies, they disagree about whether sexting should be a crime at all.
Colorado lawmakers last week delayed a vote on creating a new misdemeanor crime of “misuse of electronic images” by teens.
Still, Aurora City Councilwoman Barb Cleland, who chairs the public safety committee, said she is confident the state law will eventually pass.
Colorado’s bill was prompted by a scandal last year at a Canon City high school where more than 100 students were found with explicit images of other teens. The news sent shockwaves through the city of 16,000. Dozens of students were suspended, and the football team forfeited the final game of the season.
Fremont County prosecutors ultimately decided against filing any criminal charges, saying Colorado law doesn’t properly distinguish between adult sexual predators and misbehaving teenagers.
Aurora’s law will differ slightly from state laws being considered. In Aurora, there is no requirement that the juvenile defendant be within four years in age of the juvenile who is depicted in the image.
“The (police) wanted to have discretion for each circumstance and did not want to be limited by a four year age requirement,” city staff wrote in a memo detailing the new law.
And while a defendant who tries to delete the images within 72 hours can use the deletion as an affirmative defense against the crime, in Aurora that deletion would not be a deciding factor.
The city’s law is set to go before the full city council in the coming weeks.
— The Associated Press contributed to this report.