The Sex Offender Registration And Notification Act

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.

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,

There have been many federal acts passed in correspondence with sex offenses that illicit feat with the public. There are many different types of ways in which Levenson & colleagues’ (2007) describes the perceptions that the public has based on certain factors. For instance, in relation to the perception about the sex offender notification system, a survey produced results of around 80 percent in favor of these registries, because these individuals felt safer in their communities knowing who was in their neighborhood. Further, due to this fear that resonated in the early 1990’s communities do have tools such as residential restrictions, civil commitment, notification procedures, etc. that aid in the protection. However, there are myths associated with sex offenders, for example legislation often states that the reasoning for new laws and regulations is due to the high recidivism rates. However, sex offenders have significantly lower recidivism rates than believed. Also, there are countless people who do not believe that sex offenders can be assisted with techniques from a psychological standpoint. Most people think that these offenders cannot be treated, however, there is research being conducted that is promising. Finally, there is a common misconception that sex offenders kill their victims, especially children more often than other killers, however this is not true.

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).

Now what are the details of Megan’s laws? Require states to have convicted sex offenders who are no longer incarcerated to register where they live to the police of that town. In an article Megan’s Law assessing the practical and monetary efficacy written by Kristen Zgoiba the two main elements are registration and notification. Megan’s Law allows the states to establish criteria for private and personal information on registered sexy officer to be available to the public. (Zgoba,

Whilst it is appreciated that the offenders who will be subject to such legislation are in

The youngest person that can be place on the National Sex Offender Registry is age 6. Yes, a kindergarten and be found to be a sexual predator as society puts it. Individuals on the registry are all treated equal by the public no matter the details of their actual crime. Even though the sex offender registry is a positive tool in the protection of society, the registry needs to be evaluated because sexual assault is not the only form of child abuse, non-violent offenders are on the registry, and children are now required to register as offenders.

Registration of sex offenders is mandatory under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA). It provides the general qualifications of one to be registered as a sex offender. It requires registered sex offenders to give updated information on their addresses, place of work or school and to make physical appearances at legible offices to verify the updates. SORNA determines the information that a registered sex offender should submit and makes it available to the public (SMART).

With the sex offender’s registries controlled by each individual jurisdiction, maintaining a registry is time consuming and costly. The separate jurisdictions maintain their own registry is through the Justice Assistance Grant (JAG). The grant only deducts 10% of their budget if that jurisdiction in not following the minimal guidelines of SORNA. We see an issue with who to hold accountable when the inaccurate information and lack of information is projected to society. Take for instance an article wrote titled, Sex offender registration changes: not worth the cost? by Gunnarsson. In her article she states, “Estimates of how much Illinois risks losing for its noncompliance with SORNA range from $900,000 to $1.6 million. But the loss of Byrne

Sex offenders have been a serious problem for our legal system at all levels, not to mention those who have been their victims. There are 43,000 inmates in prison for sexual offenses while each year in this country over 510,000 children are sexually assaulted(Oakes 99). The latter statistic, in its context, does not convey the severity of the situation. Each year 510,000 children have their childhood's destroyed, possibly on more than one occasion, and are faced with dealing with the assault for the rest of their lives. Sadly, many of those assaults are perpetrated by people who have already been through the correctional system only to victimize again. Sex offenders, as a class of criminals, are nine times more likely to repeat their

It would change how cases are handled by ruling out crimes such as prostitution as evidence if the conduct can be proven that it was forced during the human trafficking of the victim. Currently, women charged with prostitution cannot be treated as victims of sex trafficking. This Catch-22 prevents the prosecution of the people who force victims into prostitution in the first place. The bill would also make the evidence of sexual conduct of the victim to attack the victim’s credibility or character unacceptable in court. Lastly, the measure would disallow certain defenses in court that have to do with minors such as stating you did not know that the victim was under the age of eighteen.

“Society and policy makers have long struggled with finding effective ways to protect the public from sex offenders. A sex offender is a person who has been convicted of certain sex offense crimes. Examples of sex offenses include:

In 1994, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act were passed and establishing new rights for victims of sexual assault, domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse. The federal Community Notification Act was enacted in 1996 to ensure community notification of the locations of convicted sex offenders. Additionally, the community notification laws were designed to give members of the community the right to know if there are any sex offenders in their community. Consequently, sex offenders cannot reside or work within a certain mileage within the school grounds and they must notify the authorities if their living arrangement changes (Alarid, 2015).

The publication of the sex offender’s information can bring not only consequences to them, but also to their family

According to the Center for Sex Offender Management “It is estimated that one in every five girls and one in every seven boys are sexually abused by the time they reach adulthood”. The United States has many laws aimed to reduce sexual offenders but the annual percentages for sexual offenses have stayed the same ever since the laws were established. This research is not intended to lessen the gravity of sexual offenses but to understand that our laws against sex offenders are not preventing the sexual offenses. The main problem with the laws against sex offenders, are the sex offender registries, the registries fail to act as a deterrent for sexual offenses and they encourage vigilante justice. Also, people convicted of a minor sexual offense face harsh punishments and sex offenders face many restrictions.