Sex offender registries

SIGNIFICANCE: The practice of registering released sex offenders has been adopted in all fifty states and represents a major law-enforcement attempt to reduce recidivism.

The recidivism threat posed by sex offenders has long been a focus of concern. California established the first sex offender registry in 1947. The motivation for the subsequent spread of these systems has been a concern that most released sex offenders are not rehabilitated in any meaningful sense. Recidivism studies have shown mixed results, but prison overcrowding and budgetary pressures have increased the number of offenders released from incarceration. Registration requires that released offenders give local law-enforcement authorities their names, descriptions of their crimes, and their new addresses. There is also usually a requirement that released offenders must regularly update their address information.

Laws establishing sex offender registries frequently include provisions for various forms of public notification, based on the belief that the registration process by itself does not suffice to protect the public. Some notification systems require citizens to apply to local police departments for information on file there, while others post it on the Internet.

Megan’s Law

The first major piece of legislation requiring notification was New Jersey’s 1994 Megan’s Law, which was enacted in response to the rape and murder of a seven-year-old child named Megan Kanka by a paroled sex offender who lived in Megan’s neighborhood. The man’s legal history was unknown to his neighbors. Besides registration and notification procedures, the New Jersey law included provisions for involuntary civil commitment and a DNA database. In 1994, the federal government got involved in sex offender registration when Congress passed the Jacob Wetterling Act. This federal law requires states to establish registration systems for child molesters and other sexually violent offenders. Most offenders had to register for ten years, while those in the most serious “sexually violent predator” category were registered as long as they were still so designated. The law also contained a provision allowing the release of registration information to the police and the public. A federal version of Megan’s Law, passed by Congress in May 1996, required release of this data when necessary for public safety. Finally, the Lyncher Act in October 1996 required the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to establish a national sex offender registry and stiffened registration requirements. Aggravated offenders and recidivists as well as sexually violent predators had to register for life.

Later federal legislation and US Supreme Court decisions concerning registration and notification have reinforced the earlier federal laws and expanded their scope. For example, the Protect Act of 2003 gave states three years to establish offender websites. Meanwhile, convicted sex offenders were naturally anxious not to have their names publicized and some undertook legal action to prevent having their names placed on websites. Several cases reached the Supreme Court. In the court’s Connecticut Department of Public Safety v. Doe (2003) decision, offenders were not required to have “dangerousness” hearings before being included on state websites. Decided on the same date, the court’s Smith et al. v. Doe et al. ruling upheld Alaska’s inclusion of offenders whose convictions occurred before the state’s registration law took effect. The court held that Alaska’s law was a nonpunitive civil public safety measure.

In 2006, President George W. Bush signed the Adam Walsh Act into law. It became the most comprehensive legislation regarding sex offender registries up until that point and has remained the governing law into the 2020s. The law expanded the categories of crimes included for registration, increased the length of time and frequency of registration, demanded that some adult offenders who had already served time on the list be retroactively reregistered, and required the registration of juvenile offenders who had previously been exempt. The Adam Walsh Act set up the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), which made it a federal crime to knowingly fail to register or update one's registration and designated a time frame by which each jurisdiction needed to comply with the act's standards.

Possible Effects of Public Shaming

A more ominous concern is the possibility that the public shaming and ostracizing effects of registries and notification requirements may actually serve to strengthen the “deviant” identities of offenders, driving wedges between them and support sources in their communities. Moreover, the stress and threat of public exposure can discourage offenders from seeking treatment during incarceration and after release, thus leading to increased recidivism.

Some critics of the Adam Walsh Act's standards for sex offender registries have especially taken issue with the requirement for juveniles to appear on the list, possibly for their entire lives. Parents have grown more concerned that young people could have to deal with the stigma of being registered as a sex offender due to the increased prevalence of the Internet and dating sites, which can lead more easily to inappropriate encounters fostered by misunderstandings or false appearances. Additionally, others argue that the original premise for establishing the registries, which was that sex offenders would most likely repeat the crime, is not accurate, and that a large percentage of sexual abuse crimes are in fact committed by individuals familiar to the victim rather than a stranger, rendering the consequences and punishments involved with the registries unnecessarily harsh.

Among recommendations made for combating sex offender recidivism are increased cross-jurisdictional sharing of registry information. This can lessen possible crime “displacement” effects but may require revision of current state statutes. There is also a need for more evaluation research, especially regarding recidivism and possible vigilantism. There have been some preliminary analyses but not enough studies with robust sample sizes and vigorous methodologies.

Bibliography

Bosman, Julie. "Teenager's Jailing Brings a Call to Fix Sex Offender Registries." The New York Times. The New York Times, 4 July 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/07/05/us/teenagers-jailing-brings-a-call-to-fix-sex-offender-registries.html. Accessed 11 July 2024.

Edwards, William, and Christopher Hensley. “Contextualizing Sex Offender Management Legislation and Policy: Evaluating the Problem of Latent Consequences in Community Notification Laws.” International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology 45.1 (2001): 83–101. Print.

Grinberg, Emanuella. "5 Years Later, States Struggle to Comply with Federal Sex Offender Law." CNN. Cable News Network, 28 July 2011, www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/07/28/sex.offender.adam.walsh.act/index.html. Accessed 11 July 2024.

Holmes, Ronald M., and Stephen T. Holmes, eds. Current Perspectives on Sex Crimes. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1993. Print.

Lussier, Patrick, Stephanie Chouinard Thivierge, Julien Frechette, and Jean Proulx. "Sex Offender Recidivism: Some Lessons Learned from Over 70 Years of Research." Criminal Justice Review, 2023. DOI: doi.org/10.1177/07340168231157385. Accessed 11 July 2024.

"Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA)." US Department of Justice, 11 Aug. 2023, www.justice.gov/criminal/criminal-ceos/sex-offender-registration-and-notification-act-sorna. Accessed 11 July 2024.

Stillman, Sarah. "The List." New Yorker. Condé Nast, 14 Mar. 2016. Web. 31 May 2016.

Wright, Richard. “Sex Offender Registration and Notification: Public Attention, Political Emphasis and Fear.” Criminology and Public Policy 3.1 (2003): 97–104. Print.