Megan's Law

Sign at the limits of Wapello, Iowa; sex offender-free districts appeared as a result of Megan's Law.

Megan's Law is an informal name for laws in the United States requiring law enforcement authorities to make information available to the public regarding registered sex offenders. Individual states decide what information will be made available and how it should be disseminated. Commonly included information includes the offender's name, picture, address, incarceration date, and nature of crime. The information is often displayed on free public websites, but can be published in newspapers, distributed in pamphlets, or through various other means.

At the Federal level, Megan's Law is known as the Sexual Offender (Jacob Wetterling) Act of 1994, and requires persons convicted of sex crimes against children to notify local law enforcement of any change of address or employment after release from custody (prison or psychiatric facility). The notification requirement may be imposed for a fixed period of time - usually at least ten years - or permanently.

Some states may legislate registration for all sex crimes, even if no minors were involved. It is a felony in most jurisdictions to fail to register or fail to update information.

Megan's Law provides two major information services to the public: sex offender registration and community notification. The details of what is provided as part of sex offender registration and how community notification is handled vary from state to state, and in some states the required registration information and community notification protocols have changed many times since Megan's Law was passed. The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act supplements Megan's Law with new registration requirements and a "three-tier" system for classifying sex offenders according to their risk to the community.

Legal origins

Megan Kanka

Megan's Law began with state level attempts to protect communities from sexual offenders. Prior to formal legislation, private citizens groups sometimes distributed information regarding specific offenders in their areas. In 1990, Washington adopted one of the first statewide laws, the Washington State Community Protection Act of 1990.

The law is named for seven-year-old Megan Kanka, who was kidnapped, raped, and murdered by Jesse Timmendequas, a repeat violent sexual offender. Timmendequas was found guilty and was on New Jersey's death row. In December 2007, New Jersey ended the death penalty. Timmendequas will now serve life without parole.^[1]

Timmendequas had recently moved into the Kankas' neighborhood, in a home across the street from the Kanka household, where he lived with two other convicted sex offenders. The Kanka family claims not to have known this information, though the majority of their immediate neighbors were at least aware of the criminal history of one of Timmendequas' roommates, Joseph Cifelli, who had lived in the house for six years.^[2] Maureen Kanka maintains that, had she known about Timmendequas' prior conviction, she would have warned Megan to stay away from him.

Megan's parents, Richard and Maureen Kanka, began the Megan Nicole Kanka Foundation with the belief that "Every parent should have the right to know if a dangerous sexual predator moves into their neighborhood."^[3] The Kankas circulated a petition demanding immediate legislative action. The petition garnered over 400,000 signatures, and the law was passed in approximately 89 days.^[4]

Megan's home state of New Jersey passed the first so-called "Megan's Law" in 1994.^[5]

Federal legislation followed in 1995. 42 U.S.C. § 13701, entitled Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 and amended May 17, 1996, included provisions requiring community notification. Authored by Congressman Dick Zimmer, it required every state to develop a procedure for notifying the public when a person convicted of certain crimes is released near their homes. The law has been amended several times since the original bill, and different states have different procedures for making the required disclosures.

Effectiveness of Megan's Law

A December 2008 study by Kristen Zgoba Ph.D., Philip Witt Ph.D., Melissa Dalessandro M.S.W., and Bonita Veysey Ph.D. found that Megan’s Law has no effect on community tenure (i.e., time to first re-arrest), showed no demonstrable effect in reducing sexual re-offenses, has no effect on the type of sexual re-offense or first time sexual offense (still largely child molestation/incest), and has no effect on reducing the number of victims involved in sexual offenses. Moreover costs associated with the initial implementation as well as ongoing expenditures continued to grow over time. Start up costs totaled $555,565 and current costs (in 2007) totaled approximately 3.9 million dollars for the 15 responding counties in New Jersey according to the study. The authors feel that given the lack of demonstrated effect of Megan’s Law on sexual offenses, the growing costs may not be justifiable. Philip Witt is a psychologist and the co-principal author of the study who helped implement Megan's Law in New Jersey.^[6]

See also

• Sex offender registration
• Sarah's Law

References

Further reading

• Levenson, Jill S.; Cotter, Leo P. (2005). "The Effect of Megan’s Law on Sex Offender Reintegration". Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 21 (1): 49–66. doi:10.1177/1043986204271676. 
• Zgoba, Kristen; Dalessandro, Melissa; Veysey, Bonita; Witt, Philip (December 2008), Megan’s Law: Assessing the Practical and Monetary Efficacy, http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/225370.pdf 
• Levenson, Jill S.; D'Amora, David A.; Hern, Andrea L. (2007). "Megan's law and its impact on community re-entry for sex offenders". Behavioral Sciences & the Law 25 (4): 587–602. doi:10.1002/bsl.770. 
• Welchans, Sarah (2005). "Megan’s Law: Evaluations of Sexual Offender Registries". Criminal Justice Policy Review 16 (2): 123–140. doi:10.1177/0887403404265630. 

External links

• Recidivism of Sex Offenders Released from Prison in 1994 (USDOJ government study)
• Facts about Megan's Law and Sex Offenders in New York State (Summary of NY Dept. of Corrections study)
• The Angry Offender (Integrates Megan's Law effects with data from USDOJ and NYDOC studies)
• Megan's Law Official Website for California
• Megan's Law ineffective, study says (by Andrew Vachss, Inquirer Trenton Bureau, February 7, 2009)
• Megan's Law Turns 10
• http://www.helping-people.info/articles/lotke_frame.htm Politics and Irrelevance:

Community Notification Statutes

• Sex Predators Can't Be Saved (opinion piece by Andrew Vachss, The New York Times, January 5, 1993)
• How Many Dead Children Are Needed to End the Rhetoric? (opinion piece by Andrew Vachss, New York Daily News, August 12, 1994)