Take Home Exam #2 1. Autonomy is the right that individuals have to make decisions about their own lives. For an individual to be fully autonomous, they must have all the information regarding the decision and understand all possible outcomes from making the decision. An individual must all be free from coercion and pressure from outside sources. 2. Confidentiality is the professional obligation that a professional has to their client that does not allow the therapist or the social worker to reveal information without the client’s permission. The only time confidentiality is able to be broken is during mandatory reporting. Privacy is the innate right of a person to disclose information when and to whom they want to. Privileged …show more content…
If a social worker does choose to engage in these behaviors, the consequences include being charged with battery, malpractice, fines, jail time, and loss of license. 4. There are two major laws that protect community members against sexual offenders. Megan’s Law requires there to be a public database for sexual offenders. These databases show the offenders address and picture. The Adam Walsh Protection Act expanded on Megan’s law and streamlines the tracking of sexual offenders. This act created a three tier system. The tiers are based on the severity of the crime and lay out how often an offender has to register and for how long. It also set up a punishment system and if the offender does not register, they face 10 years in prison and they have three days to report a move. Finally, this act requires offenders to report their entire crime history and give DNA and finger prints to the police department. Although these laws are put in place to protect community members, it opens a lot of doors to unethical treatment towards the offender. Due to the fact that these laws make their home address, picture, and crime public information it decreases their beneficence, non maleficence, quality of life and human dignity. It also goes against the principles of least harm, confidentiality, protection of human life. The biggest reason it goes against all these principles is the fact that this database puts a target on them, opening the doors to abuse or even death.
In the year of 1994, the New Jersey Legislature passed a law known as Megan’s Law. The law was named after Megan Kanka, a seven year old girl who was raped and killed in Hamilton Township, New Jersey, by a known child molester who had moved across the street from the family. Megan’s Law, in short, created a registration and notification procedure to alert law enforcement, schools, community organizations and neighbors to the presence of a sex offender who authorities believe may pose a risk to the community (Morris County Office of the Prosecutor, 2015, p. 1). States must provide relevant information about these sex offenders to their communities in order to enhance public safety
Megan’s law was enacted in 1994 after a sexual predator newly released from prison lured this young child into his house and assaulted her and killed her. The basic premise behind this law was to require sex offenders to register and for people to be informed after they get out of a prison. The core requirement calls for public notification whenever a sex offender is released from prison in the community (Doerner & Lab, 2012). The law has three levels of offenders from low to high and based on which level they determine what course of action the community is warned. There are mixed returns on the practical of this law reducing recidivism in sex crimes. Like most policies, it was put together rather quickly and had the best of intentions, but overall it looks to be not living up to the promise. Despite broad community support for these laws,
States control how long they must register for, what types of crimes make them a sex-offender, and what all information must be made public. Juveniles can also be considered sex-offenders, these records are often expunged, but according to the state they can be registered until they are eighteen or even longer (2011). A law with so many layers is bound to cause controversy among the public; although enacting Megan’s Law was done with good intentions it has caused a negative social stigma towards sex offenders with low risk of
Sexual assault occurs every two minutes in the United States. Sexual violence against women is still endemic in the United States. Statistics show nearly one in five women have been sexually assaulted. Managing sex offenders is still an issue in the criminal justice system. Repeat offenders are extremely difficult to monitor. The national legislature monitoring system contains an absence of effective research in monitoring sex offenders. Sexual offender registration and notification Act (SORNA) operates in all the US states and territories. The objective is to monitor and track sex offenders by law enforcement. Also they provide information to the public and the communities about the offenders. For example, the National registry allows the public to be informed of a registered offender and their demographics.
When people think of their neighbors, do they think of violent sex crime offenders? Many people have to deal with this every day of life. There are now laws that inform people of a community when a sex crime offender moves into their town. These laws are said to keep violent sex crime offenders from striking again, but do these laws really work is the question that many people ask? The answer all depends on the opinion of the person who is being asking. Many supporters say that the law is keeping sexually violent predators from striking again, but many critics say that the law is unethical and breaks many amendments. This is another question proposed when the topic of Megan’s Law is brought up, is it breaking any of the
California enacted the first sex offender register law in 1944. However, sex offender registers in the United States did not become widespread until the 1990s. The Jacob Wetterling Act 1994 was named after 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling who was abducted and to this day has never been found. The Jacob Wetterling Act implemented the first nation-wide sex offender register. Originally, the concept of a sex offender register was intended to for use solely by law enforcement; it was not an intention for the sex offender register to be public. However in 1996, Megan’s Law was added to the Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act 1994 and made it a requirement for the information on sex offender registers to be accessible by the public. Megan’s Law was enacted as a result of a heinous crime where 7-year-old Megan Kanka was raped and murdered by her neighbour, who had two previous convictions for sexually assaulting young girls. In 2006, Congress passed the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act. This Act required states to enact stricter registration requirements, including an increase in the penalty for not registering and more frequent verification of sex offenders’ locations. Since 2006 public access to sex offender registers has been accessible on the Internet in most states. On these websites you can search for an offender by name or location, and find information such as their photo, convictions, address,
Additionaly, the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act is seen as a positive as well by law enforcement, “…believing it leads to improved community surveillance of sex offenders and deters them from reoffending” (Lasher & McGrath 9). The downside to this concept is the cost of implementing the notifications. It is a concern for law enforcement that the public could overreact, which would result in the need to allocate funds due to harassment (Lasher & McGrath 9). It has an impact on the economic system because people believe it needs to be implemented to keep everyone safe, and do not take into consideration the large amounts of money needed to put this act in place. An article tiled, “Sex Offenders Registration and
Sexual offenders are the most vilified type of offenders within public opinion and the criminal justice system. The American precedent cases of Jacob Wetterling, Pam Lyncher, Megan Kanka, and other notorious crimes perpetrated by sexual offenders with a prior history of conviction have demanded a response from the criminal justice system to increase public safety. In 1994, the Jacob Wetterling Crimes against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Program was passed (Scholle, 2000), the first piece of legislation to advocate for the development of state-maintained registries of convicted sexual offenders. The legislation has been amended numerous times since then; in its present state, the law requires all states to maintain a registry, the mandatory registration of convicted sex offenders after release, community notification laws in place, and public access to the registry (Burchfield and Mingus, 2012; Lees and Tewksbury, 2006; Petrunik, Murphy, and Fedoroff, 2008; Scholle, 2000; Tewksbury and Lees, 2006; Wagner, 2011).
The number of registered sex offenders have increasingly grew over the years. Every day you see a man or women added to the registry for crimes against women and mostly children. The sex offender registries biggest and main focus is to keep the people in the community in each city and state informed and protected. ”Sex offenders and sex crimes provoke a great deal of anxiety in our society.” Baker, J, Brannon, Y, N., Fortney. , Levenson, J.S. (“Public Perceptions about Sex Offenders and Community Protection”). The sex offender registry is based solely on protecting the public from being a victim
I believe there should be a law requiring registration for convicted sex offenders. This includes the convicted sex offenders to check in with police when they move and submit details about their living arrangements. Law enforcement agencies with parole officers, mental health and medical professionals, and other applicable agencies should be working together to supervise convicted sex offenders. The registry should be mandatory and for official criminal justice purposes only.
Autonomy is the capacity of self-determination. Sometimes this may be difficult to achieve for the elderly, many of whom may be cognitively impaired or have multiple physical needs. Sometimes professionals who think they are helping the elderly may in fact impede autonomy (Guido).
Self-governance is an important attribute of autonomy and it encompasses the method of laws and principles. “It is the right to keep control over self, make decisions as to one’s profession” (Dayani, 1990). Other
This system however does not take into consideration arrests for sexual offenses, only convictions, and as discussed by Sandler et al., 2014, the amount of arrests is disproportionate to actual convictions. The lack of convictions is due in part to lack of evidence, especially for younger victims where evidence may be hard to obtain, and then there is the power held by people with wealth that are not persecuted properly, along with lack of rape kits being processed, discussed below, and other underreporting measures. Following this, there was a concern that sex offenders were evading the monitoring system, though it is questionable that it took so long to reach that conclusion; the 2006 Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act (AWA) was then developed with the purpose of greater uniformity within the SORN system (Harris et al., 2014).
Enforcing stricter laws on sex offenders will ensure better protection for the people of America. The laws of sex offenders have evolved due to the high number of sexual offenses that could have been prevented if the sanctions of sex violators were stricter or at least had underwent some rehabilitation. Warning people about the level of crimes in the area. In argument, laws have been effective in reducing rate of sexual offenses and increased public safety of the residents.
Knowing the difference between privacy and confidentiality can be confusing. Privacy is the right of individuals to keep information about themselves from being disclosed; that is, people (our patients) are in control of others access to themselves or information about themselves. Patients decide who, when, and where to