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HB 15-1072 – Interactive Electronic Harassment

Sponsors: House: Fields | Senate: Newell
House Committee: Judiciary |Senate Committee: TBD

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Purpose:

• This bill protects Coloradan youth by expanding the harassment statute to include interactive electronic harassment, or cyber bullying. This expansion will help defend the over half of adolescents and teens that have been bullied online.

 

Background:

• One in three young people have experienced cyber threats online.

• Cyber bullying has increased over the past decade due to new mediums.

• Over 80 percent of teens use a cell phone regularly, making it a common medium for harassment.

• Online bullying is typically unreported. New surveys have revealed that the problem of cyber bullying, also called trolling, is apparently worse than was initially feared, because majority of cyber bullying incidents go unreported.

• Knowthenet.org revealed that only around 37 percent of the young cyber bullying victims have ever reported the incidents to the social network on which such incidents have occurred.

• Merely 17 percent of the young victims of cyber bulling told their parents about the incidents; and only about 1 percent victims talked to their teacher about these incidents.

• Kids that are bullied are likely to experience anxiety, depression, loneliness, unhappiness, and poor sleep.

 

What this bill does:

• Under current law, harassment may include communications intended to harass, threaten bodily injury or property damage, or make obscene comments, requests, or suggestions that are made by telephone, telephone network, data network, text message, instant message, computer, computer network, or computer system.

• The bill modifies this existing statute on harassment to include harassment that occurs through an interactive electronic medium (ex: accessing a social media computer site through a cell phone).

• This bill revises the harassment statue to cover both direct and indirect communications and language directed toward a person through electronic methods (indirect ex: posting harassing messages about an individual on a third party source)

• Through 15-1072, Colorado will join the eight other states that have specific laws referring to cyber bullying and classifying it as at least a misdemeanor.

 

Funding:

• This bill creates minimal state expenditure increases and will provide less than $5,000 in revenue per year. This revenue will come from fines based on the amount of misdemeanor harassments that involve the use of interactive electronic media. Because this revenue will come from fines, it will increase the amount required to be refunded under TABOR.

 

 

 

Support:

• Sheriff’s Association

• Defense Attorney’s Council

• One Colorado

• Colorado Attorney General’s Office

• Chief of Police

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