Megan's Law is the name for a
federal law
Federal law is the body of law created by the federal government of a country. A federal government is formed when a country has a central government as well as regional governments, such as subnational states or provinces, each with constituti ...
(and informal name for similar state laws) in the United States requiring
law enforcement
Law enforcement is the activity of some members of the government or other social institutions who act in an organized manner to enforce the law by investigating, deterring, rehabilitating, or punishing people who violate the rules and norms gove ...
authorities to make information available to the public regarding registered
sex offender
A sex offender (sexual offender, sex abuser, or sexual abuser) is a person who has committed a Sex and the law, sex crime. What constitutes a sex crime differs by culture and legal jurisdiction. The majority of convicted sex offenders have convi ...
s. Laws were created in response to the
murder of Megan Kanka, who was raped and murdered by her neighbour, Jesse Timmendequas, who was a previously-convicted child sex offender. Federal Megan's Law was enacted as a subsection of the
Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act of 1994, which merely required sex offenders to register with local law enforcement.
Because only a few states required registration prior to Megan's death, the state-level legislation to bring states in compliance—with both the ''registration'' requirement of Jacob Wetterling Act and ''community notification'' required by federal Megan's Law—were crafted simultaneously and are often referred to as "Megan's Laws" of individual states. Thus, the federal Megan's Law refers to ''community notification'' (making registry information public), whereas state-level "Megan's Law" may refer to both ''sex offender registration'' and ''community notification''.
Individual states decide what information will be made available and how it should be spread. For example, they spread the information via social media platforms such as Facebook. Commonly included information is the offender's name, picture, address,
incarceration
Imprisonment or incarceration is the restraint of a person's liberty for any cause whatsoever, whether by authority of the government, or by a person acting without such authority. In the latter case it is considered " false imprisonment". Impri ...
date, and offense of conviction. The information is often displayed on free public
website
A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, educatio ...
s, but can be published in
newspaper
A newspaper is a Periodical literature, periodical publication containing written News, information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as poli ...
s, distributed in
pamphlet
A pamphlet is an unbound book (that is, without a Hardcover, hard cover or Bookbinding, binding). Pamphlets may consist of a single sheet of paper that is printed on both sides and folded in half, in thirds, or in fourths, called a ''leaflet'' ...
s, or through various other means.
At the federal level, Megan's Law 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.
Together, the Wetterling Act and Megan's Law provide two major information services:
sex offender registry for law enforcement, and community notification for the public. 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
The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act is a federal statute that was signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush on July 27, 2006. The Walsh Act organizes sex offenders into three tiers according to the crime committed, and mand ...
supplements Megan's Law with new registration requirements and a three-tier system for classifying sex offenders according to certain listed offenses requiring registration.
History
Before Megan's Law, the federal
Jacob Wetterling Act of 1994 required each state to create a registry for sexual offenders and certain other offenses against children. Under the Wetterling Act, registry information was kept for law enforcement use only, although law enforcement agencies were allowed to release the information of specific persons when deemed necessary to protect the public.
[ After the high-profile ]rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault involving sexual intercourse, or other forms of sexual penetration, carried out against a person without consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or against a person ...
and murder
Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification (jurisprudence), justification or valid excuse (legal), excuse committed with the necessary Intention (criminal law), intention as defined by the law in a specific jurisd ...
of seven-year-old Megan Kanka in Hamilton Township, Mercer County, New Jersey
Hamilton Township is a Township (New Jersey), township and the most populous municipality in Mercer County, New Jersey, Mercer County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It is the largest suburb of Trenton, New Jersey, Trenton, the state's capi ...
by Jesse Timmendequas, a sex offender with two previous convictions of sex crimes against small child
A child () is a human being between the stages of childbirth, birth and puberty, or between the Development of the human body, developmental period of infancy and puberty. The term may also refer to an unborn human being. In English-speaking ...
ren who resided across the street from Megan, her parents Richard and Maureen Kanka worked to change the law by demanding mandatory community notification of sex offenders, arguing that the registration required under the Jacob Wetterling Act was not a sufficient protection measure. They said that Megan would still be alive had they known of the criminal history of Timmendequas. Paul Kramer sponsored a package of seven bills known as Megan's Law in the New Jersey General Assembly
The New Jersey General Assembly is the lower house of the New Jersey Legislature.
Since the election of 1967 (1968 session), the Assembly has consisted of 80 members. Two members are elected from each of New Jersey's 40 legislative districts f ...
in 1994.[ 89 days after Megan was murdered, ]New Jersey
New Jersey is a U.S. state, state located in both the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. Located at the geographic hub of the urban area, heavily urbanized Northeas ...
enacted Megan's Law, which required sex offender registration
A sex offender registry is a system in various countries designed to allow government authorities to keep track of the activities of sex offenders, including those who have completed their criminal sentences.
Sex offender registration is usual ...
, with a database tracked by the state, and whereabouts of '' high-risk sex offenders'' moving into a neighborhood to be made public. Before Megan's death, only five states required sex offenders to register with local law enforcement as required in Jacob Wetterling Act.[
The New Jersey law became model for federal legislation, introduced in the House of Representatives by Congressman Dick Zimmer.][ On May 17, 1996, President ]Bill Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton (né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician and lawyer who was the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, ...
signed federal Megan's Law, an amendment to the Jacob Wetterling Act, that set the guidelines for the state statutes, requiring states to notify the public, although officials could decide how much public notification is necessary, based on the level of danger posed by an offender.[
]
International Megan's Law
International Megan's Law to Prevent Child Exploitation and Other Sexual Crimes Through Advanced Notification of Traveling Sex Offenders was signed into a law by President Obama on February 8, 2016. International Megan's Law requires the notification to foreign governments when a citizen of the United States who is registered as a sex offender for sexual offense involving a minor is going to be traveling to their country. The law requires a visual "unique identifier" to be placed on the passport
A passport is an official travel document issued by a government that certifies a person's identity and nationality for international travel. A passport allows its bearer to enter and temporarily reside in a foreign country, access local aid ...
s of covered registrants and requires offenders to notify law enforcement 21 days before traveling abroad. The law was challenged shortly after being enacted.
Public notification
States differ with respect to public disclosure of offenders. In some states all sex offenders are subject to public notification through Megan's Law websites. However, in others, only information on high-risk offenders is publicly available, and the complete lists are withheld for law enforcement only. Under federal SORNA ''tier I'' registrants may be excluded from public disclosure, with exemption of those convicted of "specified offense against a minor." Since SORNA merely sets the minimum standards the states must follow, many SORNA compliant states disclose information of all tiers.[ These disparities have prompted some registrants to move into states with less strict rules.
]
Criticism
Evidence to support the effectiveness of public sex offender registries is limited and mixed. Majority of research results do not find statistically significant shift in sexual offense trends following the implementation of sex offender registration and notification (SORN) regimes. A few studies indicate that sexual recidivism may have been lowered by SORN policies, while a few have found statistically significant increase in sex crimes following SORN implementation. According to the Office of Justice Programs
The Office of Justice Programs (OJP) is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that focuses on crime prevention through research and development, assistance to state, local, and tribal criminal justice agencies, including law enforc ...
' SMART Office, sex offender registration and notification requirements arguably have been implemented in the absence of empirical evidence regarding their effectiveness.[
Opponents of Megan's Law, like Women Against Registry, National Association for Rational Sexual Offense Laws, and ]Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Headquartered in New York City, the group investigates and reports on issues including War crime, war crimes, crim ...
,[Raised on the Registry: The Irreparable Harm of Placing Children on Sex Offender Registries in the US]
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Headquartered in New York City, the group investigates and reports on issues including War crime, war crimes, crim ...
2013 have called the law overbroad and an invitation to vigilante violence.
Treatment professionals such as ATSA criticize the lack of evidence of the laws' effectiveness, the automatic inclusion of offenders on the registry without determining the risk of re-offense (by applying scientifically validated risk assessment tools), the scientifically unsupported popular belief in high recidivism, and the counter-effectiveness of the laws, which can actually undermine, rather than improve public safety by exacerbating factors (e.g. unemployment, instability) that may lead to recidivism. In addition, civil rights and reformist organizations highlight the adverse collateral effects on the family members of registrants, and question the fairness of the registries as indefinite punishment, and when applied to certain offender groups, such as juveniles and young adults engaging in consensual acts.[ Some victims' rights advocates like Patty Wetterling have presented similar critique.]
See also
* Sex offender registry
* Jessica's Law
* Sarah's Law
*Clare's Law
Clare's Law, often known officially as a Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme or similar, designates several ways for police officers to disclose a person's history of abusive behaviour to those who may be at risk from such behaviour. It is inten ...
References
*
Further reading
*
*
*
*{{Cite journal, last=Welchans , first=Sarah , year=2005 , title=Megan's Law: Evaluations of Sexual Offender Registries , journal=Criminal Justice Policy Review , volume=16 , issue=2 , pages=123–140 , doi=10.1177/0887403404265630 , s2cid=144623766
External links
Megan's Law official Web site for California
Megan's Law ineffective, study says
(by Andrew Vachss, ''Inquirer Trenton Bureau'', February 7, 2009)
Politics and Irrelevance: Community Notification Statutes
State law in the United States
Sex laws
Sex offender registration
New Jersey statutes
Sex offender registries in the United States