What Is Megan’s Law?

By David Martinez, Nancy Rivera, Daisy Colin, Kristen Cheung, and Elizabeth Contreras.

In New Jersey in 1994, Megan Kanka was lured into a neighbor’s home across the street and brutally raped and murdered by a recidivist sex offender, Jesse Timmendequas. He happened to cohabitate with two other sex offenders. Following her death, Megan’s parents advocated that the nation should have the ability to be aware of sex offenders’ locations and movements. Due to her parents’ advocacy, policymakers addressed the Kanka case of child sexual abuse by creating registration and community notification laws (RCNLs), more commonly referred to as Megan’s Law, in April 1996. This legislation intended to control “sexually violent predators” through registering and notifying the community (Corrigon, 2006).

The objective of Megan’s Law was to bring community awareness of nearby sex offenders so that the community could safeguard themselves and their children while reducing the likelihood that these offenders would re-offend. These laws control the liberties and actions of sex offenders. Corrigon (2006) reported that these laws combine punishments and public education by ensuring that offenders are shamed, marked, excluded; endure risk prediction, psychological assessments, and detailed information management. Although registration laws vary by state, offenders are commonly required to provide their basic identifying information and information regarding the crime committed, (i.e., name, alias, address, birth date, SSN, photo, physical description, fingerprints, employment, type of offense, age of the victim, date of conviction, punishment received, etc.). The person is then reviewed and ranked their level of risk to the community into categories such as low, moderate, or high risk (Terry, 2011). The dissemination of this information varies by state; however in 2004, Senate Bill 92 made sexual offenders registration information public and easily accessible through the Internet.[From what I can gather, this is a Pennsylvania bill, which has since been declared unconstitutional; so Google tells me. Just saying…]

 Elizabeth Contreras can be reached at eliza.558@gmail.com.

References

Corrigan, R. (2006). Making Meaning of Megan’s Law. Law & Social Inquiry, 31(2), 267–312. doi:10.1111/j.1747-4469.2006.00012.x.

Terry, K. (2011). What is smart sex offender policy? Criminology & Public Policy, 10(2), 275.