Sex Offender Reproduction

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Legal sanctions imposed by the criminal justice system are often scrutinized for being ineffective or cruel and unjust. Long implemented disciplinary actions such as capital punishment have been the subject of academic debate for quite some time. Other legal actions, such as the mandatory registration of sex offenders, have only come to face criticism in more recent venues. The goal of mandatory sex offender registration is to reduce the rate of recidivism of among sex offenders and protect the public around them from future heinous acts. However, current literature brings mandatory registration’s ability to reduce recidivism into question. Some academics contend that registration does little to reduce the rate at which offender’s re-offend.…show more content…
Early provisions of sex offender registration laws only required convicted offenders to register with local authorities, with that notion that offenders could be more easily supervised, thus curbing recidivism rates. Up until 1994, laws pertaining to registration were isolated in various states and jurisdictions whose requirements varied (Wright, 2008). As a provision of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, the Jacob Wetterling Act was passed to provide a federal standard for offender registration (Wright, 2008). As a result of this new legislation, sex offenders residing in all jurisdictions were required to register their location with local authorities in an effort to provide a record of their whereabouts on a national level (Levonson, Zgoba, & Tewksbury, 2007). Although the Jacob Wetterling Act provided a federal standard for sex offender registration laws, it lacked the ability to warn the public of any potential threat to their…show more content…
Megan Kanka was raped and murdered by her neighbor, Jesse Timmendequas, a convicted sex offender registered due to the Jacob Wetterling Act. As a result of this legislation, Timmendequas’ status as an offender was information privy only to law enforcement. The parents of the young girl, as well as the community around them, were appalled at the fact that they had unknowingly lived close to a convicted offender, contesting that had they known, the event could have been avoided (Corrigan, 2006). As a result, Megan’s Law, titled in honor of Kanka, was enacted. Building upon the foundations of the Jacob Wetterlling Act, information regarding the place of residency and sex offender status was made available to the public as well as law enforcement in an effort to inform the community of the presence of these individuals (Freeman & Sandler, 2010). The goals set forth by The Jacob Wetterlings Act and Megan’s Law were somewhat undermined by a lack of standardization in what sexual acts constituted a need for registration. (Freeman & Sandler, 2010). Acts deemed registrable offenses in one particular jurisdiction may not be in

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