JESSICA’S LAW, HOW BENIFICAL IS IT?

“In 2005, 45 states passed more than 150 sex-offender laws, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. That was the most ever passed in a single year and twice the amount of legislation in 2004” (Arlidge, 2006). These are staggering statistics showing just how fearful society is of sex offenders related to child sex crimes. Jessica’s Law is one of the many pieces of legislation enacted to protect the public. Officially known as the Jessica Lunsford Act, Jessica’s Law, was named after a nine-year old Florida girl who was abducted, raped and murdered in February 2005. Jessica’s Law has some specific components: tracking serial pedophiles who have been released, longer mandatory sentences for serial pedophiles, use of non-removable global positioning devices (GPS), and residency restrictions (Jessica’s Law Proposition 83). The residency restrictions component prohibits sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a park, school or any place where children regular congregate. There have been unexpected consequences and many believe the law should be less all in companying of sex offenders. On the other hand, Jessica’s Law has a strong base of support from the public.

The rates of sex crimes against children have dropped over the last 15-20 years, but the public still believes sex offender laws, like Jessica’s Law, are needed and work. The public perception of sex offenders running rampant in their neighborhoods and children at risk on every corner played a role in Jessica’s Law being passed. People in congress pass laws in a knee jerk reaction because of a horrific crime highly published in the media; they don’t want to be considered a “supporter of sex offenders.” According to Arlidge (2006), “Tough, new sex-offender laws tend to pass unanimously, or nearly so. If there are flaws in some of the approaches, advocates for the get-tough approach say, that is only more reason to keep working to strengthen them.” Supporters of Jessica’s Law believe that mandatory sentencing needs to be in place because it removes judicial discretion. For example, in Vermont a judge gave a light sentence to a man who confessed to repeatedly raping a girl over a 4 year period (Arlidge, 2006). With mandatory sentencing in place, for sex offenders, this judge would have not have the ability to decide the man’s sentence but it would be based on his criminal act. Some statistics help to assure supporters that Jessica’s Law is working. A study done by Florida State University found that out of more than 75,000 offenders placed on home confinement, those who were tracked by GPS were 90 percent less likely to abscond or re-offend, compared with those who were not electronically monitored (Arlidge, 2006).

Jessica’s Law also has its strong base of critics who believe the law has had a lot of unforeseen consequences. Opponents against Jessica’s Law have a problem with there being no type of differentiate between truly serious sex offenders and others convicted of lesser charges such as urinating in public, or teenagers having consensual sex, or kids who expose themselves as a prank (Peirce, 2008). Instead all sex offenders are lumped in one huge category and receive the same punishment no matter how disproportionate it may be. The component of Jessica’s Law that is having the largest backlash is the residency restriction component. Most have criticized residency restriction laws because it creates problems for sex offenders to find a place to live and in the end makes it harder to track sex offenders. Since sex offenders cannot live within 2,000 feet of a park, school, or any place where children regular congregate, it makes living within any city boundaries virtually impossible. It also causes sex offenders to not register so they can remain in their homes, become homeless and ultimately makes it harder to keep track of them. Approximately 100,000 of the 550,000 known sex offenders nationwide have absconded, or gone missing (Arlidge, 2006). Jessica’s Law is banishing individuals who have already been punished by the law and many believe this violates constitutional rights (Peirce, 2008).

Another argument against residency restrictions is it takes away the sex offender’s support system which may lead to more crimes. “Critics say, offenders who comply but are forced to move because their homes are located too near to schools or other facilities that serve children often must go to rural areas with fewer support services. ‘We know that for people who have a tendency to violence, if they have no support or basic comforts, that really creates an incredibly heightened risk for re-offense,’ says Klein of the Association for the Treatment of Sex Offenders” (Arlidge, 2006).

Jessica’s Law also seems to make the case that most children are being sexually abused by someone they don’t know. However this is not what statistics show. The so called “Stranger Danger” is overly feared by the public without much statistical backing. Strangers are responsible for only 7 percent of reported cases of juvenile sex crimes, according to the Justice Department. Thirty-four percent are victimized by their own families, and 59 percent of cases occur among friends and only about 115 out of 260,000 children kidnapped each year are snatched by strangers (Arlidge, 2006). These statistic are completely opposite of what the average citizen believes when it comes to protecting their children. Parents need to be protecting their children from people they know, not the strange man down the street.

There are obviously major problems with Jessica’s Law as it stands today but there can be things done in order to create a more efficient and lower consequences law. For example, there is a Minnesota model which mandates, restrictions should be based on a careful evaluation of the offender’s personal and family situation by a panel of law enforcement, victim advocacy and specialized treatment providers (Peirce, 2008). I feel this is a good model that has been put in place in Minnesota and would help with the problem of Jessica’s Law being all encompassing. This would also help to reduce the price of monitoring so many sex offenders who do not pose a risk for the public. Another solution that has been discussed in Colorado is creating a separate town for sex offenders. I think this could be hard to implement but could solve the problem of sex offenders disappearing and not being able to track. Law enforcement agencies would be able to monitor sex offenders and I think this solution could even help with treatment. On the other hand this could be discriminatory and very expense. Whatever the government decides to do, Jessica’s Law needs to be reformed.

So I leave it up to you, how beneficial is Jessica’s Law?

References

Arlidge, C. (2006). Should California voters approve Jessica's Law? no. CQ Researcher, 16(31),

737. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.

Peirce, N. (2008, February 11). Celebrated Sex Offender Laws Doing More Harm Than Good.

Nation's Cities Weekly, p. 2. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.

http://www.personal-injury-info.net/jessica-lunsford-act.htm

Megan’s Law: Sex Offender Registration

People convicted of sex crimes are looked on by society as dangerous people especially when convicted of sex crimes done to children. The federal government enacted a law requiring convicted sex offenders to register addresses with law enforcement agencies notifying citizens, and allowing offenders to be monitored and tracked. The original legislation came in 1994, the Jacob Wetterling Act and was later modified in 1996. Megan’s Law modified the Jacob Wetterling Act allowing registry information to be disclosed to the public (Levenson et al., 2007). The goal of notification is to inform both the public and past victims in order to protect themselves. Megan’s law was established after the murder and rape of a seven-year-old girl named Megan Kanka in New Jersey. The crime was committed by a previously convicted sex offender. Her parents led the way making it mandatory for the public to have access to sex offender registries. Registration was the beginning, paving the way for notification and housing restrictions.

Megan’s Law has had positive results with the public and the public perception of safety. One positive, significantly fewer sexual offenders have been paroled after implementation of Megan’s Law (Zgoba et al., 2008). Megan’s Law has allowed community members to take precautions to protect family members. Studies found that community notification did increase altruistic behaviors to protect members of their households, although the findings are inconsistent with regard to self-protection (Zgoba et al., 2008). The positive effects of Megan’s Law have been so good; England has proposed a similar law “Sarah’s Law.” Sarah’s Law is intended to reduce the 21,618 alleged sex crimes involving children between April 2008 and March 2009 (BBC News). According to BBC news, “Under the measures, families will be able to ask police if someone with access to a child has convictions or has been previously suspected of abuse.” Citizens of England have had positive responses to the new Law. One person saying, “This is an excellent scheme to protect children. It is extremely important for parent to know background of people who are around their children” (BBC News).

On the other hand Megan’s Law has its flaws. Convicted offenders are confronted with finding and sustaining affordable housing, negative effects on family members and some sex offenders have to register based on minimal seriousness of a sex crime. According to Meloy et al., (2008), “Residence restrictions exemplify a moral panic over ‘stranger-danger’ and a widespread fear of ‘sexual predators’ that are based on a plethora of faulty assumptions. Most of the reasons used to justify the need for residence restrictions are either in direct contradiction to empirical data or, at best, associated with equivocal research findings.” Family members also suffer from registration laws. Studies have found 86% of family members experience stresses, 77% feel isolated and 45% feel afraid for their own safety because of their relation to the registered offender. Family members often reported persistent feelings of hopelessness, depression, and frustration as they adjusted to life with a registered sex offender (Levenson & Tewksbury, 2009). Megan’s Law does not discriminate against any sex crimes. An offender has to register whether his crime was rape or a teenager caught sexting. Is it right that a teenager be braded for like as a sex offender for committing such a small crime? Should he be placed in the same bracket as a rapist or child molester? There are obvious flaws to Megan’s Law, but what do the statistics say. Does Megan’s Law work to reduce recidivism and protect children?

There have been studies done that find Megan’s Law does not reduce recidivism or first time sex offenders. Megan’s Law does have a positive effect on the community’s state of mind but does not match up with actual statistical findings. According to Zgoba et al., (2008), Megan’s Law has not effect on first time offenders, shows no demonstrable effect reducing sexual re-offenses, has no effect on the type of sexual re-offense or first time sexual offense and Megan’s Law has no effect on reducing the number of victims involved in sexual offenses. Also costs associated with Megan’s Law have gone up. This may be based on the lack of effect on recidivism and prevention. “Costs associated with the initial implementation as well as ongoing expenditures continue to grow over time. Start up costs totaled $555,565 and current costs (in2007) totaled approximately 3.9 million” (Zgoba et al., 2008). So if Megan’s Law is ineffective why do we still use it? Do all we care about is our state of mind, forget the statistics?

References

BBC News. Offender Alerts Maybe Expanded. http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/

Levenson, J., Zgoba, K., & Tewksbury, R. (2007). Sex Offender Residence Restrictions:
Sensible Crime Policy or Flawed Logic?. Federal Probation, 71(3), 2-9. Retrieved from
Academic Search Premier database.

Levenson, J., & Tewksbury, R.. (2009). Collateral Damage: Family Members of Registered Sex
Offenders. American Journal of Criminal Justice: AJCJ, 34(1/2), 54-0_7. Retrieved
March 1, 2010, from Criminal Justice Periodicals. (Document ID: 1711533721).

Meloy, M., Miller, S., & Curtis, K.. (2008). Making Sense out of Nonsense: The Deconstruction
of State-Level Sex Offender Residence Restrictions. American Journal of Criminal
Justice : AJCJ, 33(2), 209-222,309-310. Retrieved March 1, 2010, from Criminal Justice
Periodicals. (Document ID: 1866825981).

Zgoba, K., Witt, P., Dalessandro, M., & Veysey, B.. (2008). Megan’s Law: Assessing the Practical and Monetary Efficacy. http://soissues.d2g.com/SODocuments