National Amber Alert Faces Obstacles

The House is considering creation of a national child kidnapping notification network, but not in the form that Elizabeth Smart's parents pleaded for before being reunited with their daughter.

Later this week, the House could take up the popular Amber Alert legislation approved Tuesday by the House Judiciary Committee as part of a package of child protection measures. But that package is unlikely to win Senate passage.

Before his daughter was found last week, Ed Smart criticized House Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., for not letting the Amber Alert system be voted on separately.

But Sensenbrenner and other House Republicans say the bill's child protection measures are as important as the notification legislation, if not more so.

"I think prevention is much more important than notification, as important that is," Sensenbrenner as his Judiciary Committee sent the bill to the House on an 18-2 vote.

Democratic Reps. Robert Scott of Virginia and Melvin Watt of North Carolina voted against the bill. Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, D-Texas, voted present.

Scott said Sensenbrenner's insistence on his full package means the bill will get stuck in a House-Senate negotiating committee for months instead of going quickly to President Bush for his signature.

Sensenbrenner's bill "makes good sound bites, not good policy," Scott said.

In an open letter to the House that was read on the floor Wednesday by Rep. Martin Frost, D-Texas, Smart apologized for his "excitement" last week in criticizing Sensenbrenner. The letter, signed by Smart, his wife, Lois, and Elizabeth, urged the House to expedite creation of a national Amber Alert system.

The package could be considered by the full House as early as this week. It was overwhelmingly passed by the House last year, but was not considered by the Senate.

Amber alerts are named after Amber Hagerman, a 9-year-old girl abducted in Arlington, Texas, and later found murdered. Bulletins are distributed quickly through radio and television broadcasts and electronic highway signs about kidnapped children and their abductors. The alerts are credited with the rescues of at least 34 children since 1996, the Justice Department has reported.

The Amber Alert federal legislation would create a national child kidnapping notification network and provide matching grants to states and communities for equipment and training.

Sensenbrenner's bill would do many other things, among them: deny pretrial release for child rapists and abductors; eliminate the statute of limitations on child abductions and sex crimes; allow judges to extend the supervised term of released sex offenders to life and require life sentences for twice-convicted sex offenders.

It would double the money for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to $20 million a year through 2005 and mandate a 20-year sentence for a family member who kidnaps a child.

Several of those proposals have passed the House but not been taken up by the Senate.

"This legislation would not only get the word out after a kidnapping but takes strong steps to prevent them from occurring in the first place," Sensenbrenner said.

By Jesse J. Holland