Issues in Criminal Law
By Attorney Tonya D. Cromartie

A policy reserving the right to admit anyone convicted of a sex crime into an amusement park carries little legal weight and is mostly grandstanding.

Practically speaking, there is no way to enforce an anti-sex offender policy in an amusement park unless officials checked every single person’s record upon entry. If anyone, man, woman, or child is doing some activity in the park that the park owner’s do not agree with, the park has the absolute right to tell that person to leave regardless of criminal history, etc.

In a recent article reported by the Associated Press, the park is just trying to make their customers feel safer about bringing their kids to the park, and it may lessen their civil liability if something happens on their grounds. In the end, the policy is just not enforceable and could be challenged in courts.

Maybe the customers would feel safer knowing that most convicted sex offenders serve lengthy prison sentences, or are on some sort of supervised probation for years and years, and a standard condition of that probation is not to have any contact with children. If they violate, they can be sent back to prison.

The policy also prevents people like Mr. Levan from going to the park, and it sounds like he is someone who has done his time and been clean since then, while the other person in the article, the 19-year-old, is probably someone who had no prior record and was not a registered sex offender, but more dangerous to the children.

With the recent sensational stories of registered sex offenders committing murders and other crimes, the public has really gone on a witch hunt for the sex offenders. How do you account for what you don’t see or don’t know? Quite often, the unknown can be more dangerous.

Tonya D. Cromartie serves as a criminal defense lawyer in Daytona Beach, Fla., and was admitted to the Florida Bar in 1997. Her practice focuses exclusively on criminal defense in both Volusia and Flagler Counties.