Megan’s Law: Evaluations of Sexual Offender Registries

• Author: Sarah Welchans
• DOI: 10.1177/0887403404265630
• Published date: 01 June 2005
• Date: 01 June 2005
• Subject Matter: Articles

10.1177/0887403404265630CRIMINAL JUSTICE POLICY REVIEW / June 2005Welchans / MEGAN’S LAW EVALUATIONS

Megan’s Law: Evaluations of

Sexual Offender Registries

Sarah Welchans

University of California–Los Angeles

This article presents a literature review of the empirical evaluations of sex offender

registrationand community notification policy, commonly known as Megan’s Law.A

background of the social problem that stimulated the policy formation of Megan’s

Law is provided. Literaturesearches presented 12 empirical evaluations on different

aspects of Megan’s Law. These evaluations focused on stakeholder, client-centered,

goal-oriented, and process evaluations. Many sex offenders found some value to

Megan’s Law in both deterring future abuse and when DNA collection was used in

reducing false accusations. Implementation of this policy varied both within states

and between states. Community members generally support the policy’s concept.

Goal-oriented evaluations are not supportive of the policy’s effectiveness. Sugges-

tions for future evaluative research on this policy are given.

Keywords: sex offender registries; Megan’s Law; policy evaluation

Sexual violence against women and children is a significant social issue that

remains mostly out of sight because of its secretive and shameful nature. It

is this secrecy that shrouds the high numbers of Americans touched by sex-

ual crime. For example, in the year 2000, it is estimated that there were more

than 248,000 sexual victimizations in the United States (Rennison, 2002a).

Rennison (2002b) also reported that, over an 8-year time frame in the

United States, there was an average of 366,460 attempted or completed

rapes and sexual assaults. When women in their college-age years are

examined, the numbers show that almost 28 out of every1,000 women were

the victims of rape or attempted rape in a 6-month period (Fisher, Cullen, &

Turner, 2000). Children can also be victims of sexual violence. A Depart-

ment of Justice report stated that, in 12 states reporting on child rape, 16%

of all rape victims were under the age of 12 (Langan & Wolf Harlow, 1994).

Moreover, Jones and Finkelhor (2001) reported that in 1998 there were

103,600 substantiated cases of child sexual abuse in the United States. This

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Criminal Justice Policy Review, Volume 16, Number 2, June 2005 123-140

DOI: 10.1177/0887403404265630

© 2005 Sage Publications

is most likely an underestimate, as many cases are reported, however,there

may not be enough evidence to classify the case as substantiated.

Those who perpetrate these crimes are typically not the strangers who

jump out of bushes to attack joggers or pull young children into cars. Rather

the perpetrators are generally friends, acquaintances, or family members. A

report released by the Justice Department on sex offenses and offenders

found that three fourths of rapes and sexual assaults involved a person

known to the victim (Greenfield, 1997). The number was even higher for

those younger than 12 years of age, as victims knew 90% of their attackers

(Greenfield, 1997).

Tocompound the rape and sexual abuse problem, the perpetrators of sex-

ual crimes generally do not only assault one person. Lisak and Miller (2002)

recently published results on repeat rape among undetected rapists. Their

research shows that 120 individuals were responsible for a total of 1,225

acts of interpersonal violence defined as rape, battery, child physical abuse,

and child sexual abuse(Lisak & Miller, 2002). This translated into an average

of 5.8 rapes per rapist that were not reported to law enforcement officials

(Lisak & Miller, 2002). Incest offenders had a sexual crime relapse rate of

6.4% after 6.5 years, but more than 26% of these incest offenders committed

another nonsexual criminal offense (Firestone et al., 1999). Furthermore,

extrafamilial incest offenders showed greater recidivism risk past age 40

than the rapists of interfamilial child molesters (Hanson, 2002). In a summary

of research on the sexual recidivism of offenders, Hanson and Bussiere’s

(1998) meta-analysis discovered that 13% of convicted sexual perpetrators

offended again within four to five years (1998). That percentage only

dropped one percentag e point when looking at recidivism for child sexual

assault. It should be noted that these numbers were basedmainly from arrests

or reconvictions, and the authors noted that this should be considered an

underestimate because many offenses remain unreported (Hanson &

Bussiere, 1998). The high numbers of children being sexually victimized,

in combination with undesirable recidivism rates of perpetrators of both

adults and children, in addition to media coverage about egregious

recidivistic offenders prompted new laws regarding sexual assault to be

passed in the 1990s. These community notification and sexual offenderreg-

istry laws aim to reduce the number of victims of repeat sexualperpetrators.

MEGAN’S LAW

Two federal laws were enacted during the mid-1990s to combat sexual

abuse recidivism. In 1994, Congress passed the Jacob Wetterling Act,

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