Megan's Law Essay

I will repeat again; our system is not perfect. Our last act of criminal law stated is the penal sanction. This law states that all violators will receive just punishment or at least exposed to disciplinary action by the state. I believe the Megan Law can be a characteristic of all five criminal laws listed. The Megan Law states that any person convicted of a sex offense must be listed with the state.

The United States Supreme Court in the Packingham v. North Carolina first amendment case has ruled in favor of Lester Gerard Packingham. The state from now on may not bar social media access to registered sex offenders. The case’s build up dates back to 2002 when 21 year old college student Lester G. Packingham had a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old girl. For involvement with a minor he received a 10-12 month sentence, but having never met problems with the law, the judge required him to go on a 24 month probation and register as a sex offender. Five years had passed and in 2008 North Carolina forbid any person on the sex offender list to use any type of social media.

Policy Analysis: Megan’s Law Sexual violence, particularly against children, is a significant issue all around the world. In the early 1990’s in the United States, there were multiple well-publicized cases of sexual violence against children. From kidnappings, to rapes, and everything in between, violence was being committed against children and something needed to be done about it. In 1996, Megan’s Law was passed in response to the sexual assault and death of Megan Kanka, a seven-year-old from New Jersey (Corrigan, 2006).

Megan was last seen riding her bike home, her parents began to search when they found her bike in the front lawn. Cops found her body in Mercer County Park. How Megan's law helps. By helping locate sex offenders. Being able to locate sex offenders allows for less rape cases, less sexual assults, less indecencies with childern, less kiddnappings, and murder.

Policies have supported Megan’s Law despite the absence of evidence creating a variety of problems within states that Megan’s Law has achieved its goal. While notification laws and access to sex offender databases may give parents a sense of security, they may distract parents from paying attention to friends and family members who pose a potentially higher risk than the sex offenders on state registries. (Larson, 2016) The number of unreported sex crimes committed by registered sex offenders relative to the number of individuals without a record of sexual offenses is unknown. (Bonnar-Kidd, 2010)

Megan's Law then added the requirement that the public be notified when a sex offender moves into the area (Levenson, 2007). While this law has support from many communities, it also has been under scrutiny by those questioning its constitutionality. The question is, does this law really protect communities or does it simply punish sex offenders after they are released?

Chapter Eight of the book Flawed Criminal Justice Policies, authors take the closer look at the laws and faulty policy regarding the sex offenders. According to the book policy makers started the myriad laws to protect the public from the sex offenders with increased prison sentences, and restricting the residences to the violators. Today we have very similar situation when it comes to treatment of sexual offenders. The process starts with the sex offender being committed to the prison sentence, and lastly to being registered as a sex offender on many public websites, so that the people could distinguish who the sex offender is and where he/she lives. In this chapter we can learn about a lot of different statues that were made to protect people from the sex offenders.

To have a law passed under the name of a victim is world-wide changing, as the terrible acts could be restored into the criminal justice system today. Although, the circumstance of any law passed by legislation is too hard to understand why would anyone want to commit such a horrific crime, the answers, we may never know. As many Americans may remember it, the world stopped on July 15, 2008 as people heard across the nation on the news, radio, and perhaps social media. A two-year old little girl from Orlando Florida was missing, and her name was Caylee Marie Anthony. Casey Marie Anthony gave birth to Caylee on August 9, 2005 in Orlando Florida.

A prison sentence is designed to punish people who break Society’s laws, but that isn’t always the case. In March of 2016, Star Student athlete Brock Turner at Stanford College was convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious and intoxicated woman behind a dumpster, while he also was intoxicated, he was possibly facing ten years. June 2nd, 2016, Turner was sentenced to 6 months in Jail by Judge Aaron Persky, his reason being that “A prison sentence would have a severe impact on him. I think he will not be a danger to others” (Why Brock Turner Only Got 6 Months in Jail, 1). Although his sentence was light, he also had to register as a sex offender.

Megan’s Law is a federal law that has changed the course of the criminal justice system in the United States of America. Prior to Megan’s law, convicted sex offenders were able to easily re-offend due to lack of public notification. In the year 2000, it is estimated that there were more than 248,000 sexual victimizations and over an 8-year period in the United States there were 366,460 attempted or completed rapes and sexual assaults (Welchans, 2005). The prevalence of sexual assault, rape, and pedophilia in the United States has sparked a large conversation over the last decade, which has led to the creation of several laws, including Megan’s Law. This analysis of Megan’s Law will focus on the positive aspects that implementing this law has

Megan's Law is a controversial law that requires sex offenders to register with law enforcement authorities upon their release from prison. The law was enacted in response to the sexual assault and murder of 7-year-old Megan Kanka by a neighbor who had twice been convicted of similar sex offenses and was on parole. The law requires offenders to provide their name, photograph, physical description, list of offenses, current address, place of employment or school, and automobile license plate number. In terms of the ideal characteristics of criminal law, Megan's Law can be seen as a positive step towards protecting public safety. The law aims to prevent future crimes by providing the public with information about convicted sex offenders in their

The passing of these new laws changed the lives of thousands of children from then on out. Children tried as adults often face lengthy prison sentences sometimes as long as life without parole. Such sentences send the message to children that if they mess up that there is absolutely no hope for rehabilitation. The laws were originally placed in order to “scare kids straight” so to speak; it was to keep them from using violence because the fear that they could spend their life in prison. Yet, minors who commit accidental crimes or are an

Argument For my argument project I was asked to do a paper about a problem or situation in my community. I was looking for some ideas and came a across and article about a sex offender moving to our community. I thought that would be an amazing topic to write about.

“Teenager’s Jailing Brings a Call to Fix Sex Offender Registries,” is an article written by Julie Bosman, and published by the New York Times Newspaper. The article is written about a 19-year-old named Zachery Anderson who is listed on a sex offender registry for life. The cause of this was talking to an under aged female through a dating app called “Hot or Not.” Although, Zachary Anderson did not know that the girl who had lied about her being 17, was actually 14, he later plead guilty to what had happened. Reading this newspaper article had me thinking about all sorts of things, whether it was about the fact that Zachary had sex with a female who was under the age of consent in Michigan or the fact that he was put on the sex offender registry.

The notification system is based on the sex offenders risk to reoffend and the danger they may pose to the community. Many states adopted a three-tier notification system for the sex offender registry; tier one is for offenders evaluated to be low risk for reoffending, tier two is for those offenders assessed at a medium risk and tier three are for those offender that meet criteria for the highest risk of reoffending (National Institute of Justice, 2009a). Megan’s Law is a federal law with subsequent state laws, states have discretion in developing criteria for reporting Megan’s Law however; private and personal information related to the registered sex offender must be available to the public (National Institute of Justice, 2009b). Under Megan’s Law, the tracking database is monitored by states and involves community notification when a sex offender moves into a