In the criminal justice system, one of the most commonly addressed topics is sex offender records and offender laws. Public and private entities seek sex offender information for a variety of purposes to include safeguarding their communities from future sexual offenses. Due to the overwhelming statistics regarding the repeat offenses of sexual predators in our country, and a number of tragic incidents involving these predators’ victims-children-four major federal regulations have been passed to help proactively make the public aware of sexual offenders in their communities through notification and registration at the varying government levels. In this discussion, we review what sex offender laws exist as well as how sex offender laws evolved to help protect children from sexual offenses.
The basic premise of all sex offender laws was originally enacted by the federal government, and-as all crimes are handled-specifically enforced and classified according to state jurisdiction. So, while these offender laws are in place to make sure all sex offenders are publically registered and the public notified, the individual states can determine which offenses be public knowledge, how access can be given to these sex offender records, as well as what classification-or severity-of offense to offer each sexual offense listed in a sexual offender’s criminal record. This is why-while these four laws regarding offenders to follow in exposition are vital to the protection of children in our communities- these laws are not foolproof means of stopping the crimes from happening.
The first law of this nature to create momentum for this movement of change and more informed citizenship is the Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Registration Act. In 1994, just previous to the act of the same name, an 11-year-old boy was kidnapped and is still, to date, missing. The overwhelming amount of kidnapped and harmed children of this same nature spurned legislation to enact a means of proactively fighting these crimes. This federal law calls for the mandatory implementation of sex offender registries by all states. The announcement of this act made it illegal for past sexual offenders to live or work in an area without formally and publically announcing their sexual offender history. While it was a good beginning in fighting crimes of this nature, it was still vague as regards what each state government must do. This led to inconsistencies in how states notified their public of offenders.
These inconsistencies were further resolved with the creation of the second sexual offender law, Megan’s Law. Megan’s Law came about when a 7-year-old girl was raped and murdered by a sex offender that lived in her neighborhood. Federal legislation then decided that the laws of this nature should be more specific as to avoid heinous repeat offenses due to state government confusion. So, in 1996, Megan’s Law came as an amendment to the Wetterling Act, calling not only for the federal and state registration of sex offenders, but also the public notification of these sex offenders to community members-regarding all details of their personal and public lives. Moreover, each sex offender listed in a government sex offender registry should be classified according to what severity of crimes that they have committed as sexual offenses. The purposes of Megan’s Law is of course, the same as the Wetterling Act, but in this case, it hopes to specifically make local governments notify their citizens thoroughly regarding harmful criminals of this nature in their community.
Again in 1996, the Pam Lychner Sexual Offender Tracking and Identification Act became a formal federal regulation which further formalized all efforts initiated by the Wetterling Act to notify the public of sex offenders in the community. Pam Lychner made the way for the creation of a federal searchable database of United States offenders of this nature under this act, as well as making registration of newly-moved offenders mandatory-and punishable by prison and/or fines. Moreover, the sex offender act called for “lifetime registration for certain classes of offenders”.
Lastly, in 2006, The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act further organized the manner in which notification and registration of criminal offenders was implemented. The act did this by instituting the first national sex offender registration and notification program, which further stipulated how this offender information should uniformly be offered to the public.