The two men running to be Montana’s next attorney general have recently announced plans aimed at protecting children, particularly in an age of Internet predators.

Republican Tim Fox’s plan focuses specifically on Internet predators and the state’s sexual and violent offender registry, which he has said is inadequate.

Democrat Steve Bullock’s plan also addresses the offender registry and Internet predators, but includes an expansion of the pilot project “Children’s Justice Center” to better coordinate prosecution of all crimes against children.

Fox’s plan has several main points:

He would seek to make it illegal for a person to “groom” a child over the Internet for the purposes of later victimizing the child. For example, Fox would seek to outlaw adults misrepresenting themselves as children or otherwise trying to gain the trust of a child through social networking Web sits like Facebook or Myspace.

Fox, who has one daughter in high school, would seek to ban traveling to meet a child whom an adult has met over the Internet for the purpose of abusing the child.

Finally, he would change the state’s existing sex offender registry to make it more accessible to the public and would include e-mail updates to all interested parties when a sexual or violent offender moves into their neighborhood.

“Technology has changed the face of the earth in many ways,” Fox said.

Unfortunately, it’s also changed the way pedophiles find and meet potential child victims and Montana’s current laws haven’t kept up, Fox said.

The Montana Department of Justice, which the attorney general leads, also needs another employee to keep up with the state’s violent and sexual offender registry. Fox said that until recently the registry lacked required photos of sex offenders. He also thinks it needs to be more public so parents, teachers and others know where sex offenders and can better protect their children.

Bullock, father of three young children, said he would put two more investigators at the Justice Department focusing on Internet crimes involving children. And he would try to find more people and money to keep the current registry up to date. But Bullock said most Montana child crime victims are abused by someone they either already know or meet in person, not over the Internet. The state still fails to do an adequate job protecting children from traditional predators and prosecuting the perpetrators of such crimes.

To that end, Bullock said he would expand the Children’s Justice Center within the Justice Department. The center, already active in Missoula, Helena, Butte and Ravalli County, deals with children victimized in every capacity, including by Internet predators.

“You’re dealing with a very unique witness and a very unique victim,” Bullock said, adding that prosecutors, particularly in smaller counties, may not always have experience in this unique section of criminal law.

Since the pilot centers have been running in just four communities, some 500 children victims have already been referred there, Bullock said.

He also said he would assign a Justice Department prosecutor to focus full-time on crimes against children.

Both men said their child crime initiatives would be at the top of their priority list, if elected.