Crimes: minors., the official text

An act to add Section 288.6 to the Penal Code, relating to crimes.

LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST

Existing law makes every person who contacts or communicates with a minor, or attempts to contact or communicate with a minor, as specified, with intent to commit certain offenses, including any lewd or lascivious act, involving the minor, punishable by imprisonment in the state prison, as provided.
This bill would make any adult person who recruits, induces, coerces, or persuades a minor to commit an illegal act against another minor, or to solicit physical harm, sexual conduct, or images of an intimate body part, from another minor, or who utilizes a minor as a conduit of communication to facilitate any such acts guilty of a crime punishable either as a misdemeanor or a felony. By creating a new crime, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program.
The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement.
This bill would provide that no reimbursement is required by this act for a specified reason.

The people of the State of California do enact as follows:

SECTION 1.
This act shall be known, and may be cited, as the “Protecting Our Children from Online Extortion Act.”

SEC. 2.
Section 288.6 is added to the Penal Code, to read:
288.6.
(a) Any adult person who, via any method of communication, recruits, induces, coerces, or persuades a minor to commit an illegal act against another minor, or to solicit physical harm, sexual conduct, or images of an intimate body part, from another minor, or who utilizes a minor as a conduit of communication to facilitate any of the foregoing is guilty of a crime, punishable by imprisonment in county jail for one year, or by a fine of one thousand dollars ($1,000), or both, or pursuant to subdivision (h) of Section 1170.
(b) For the purposes of this section the following terms have the following meanings:
(1) “Conduit of communication” means a minor whose digital identity or physical presence is used as a medium to transmit, relay, or facilitate the delivery of communications to another minor for the purposes of engaging in the conduct described in subdivision (a).
(2) “Intimate body part” has the same meaning as in subparagraph (C) of paragraph (4) of subdivision (j) of Section 647.
(3) “Sexual conduct” has the same meaning as in Section 311.3.

SEC. 3.
No reimbursement is required by this act pursuant to Section 6 of Article XIII B of the California Constitution because the only costs that may be incurred by a local agency or school district will be incurred because this act creates a new crime or infraction, eliminates a crime or infraction, or changes the penalty for a crime or infraction, within the meaning of Section 17556 of the Government Code, or changes the definition of a crime within the meaning of Section 6 of Article XIII B of the California Constitution.