Legislation Targeting Sex Offenders: Are Recent Policies Effective in Reducing Rape?

Sex Offender Policy and Prevention

“…Sexual offenses were being taken far more seriously than in previous decades, and the punishment they garnered increased dramatically as a result. The birth of the "Tough on Crime" movement in the 1980s brought further changes to sanctioning policy, including longer sentence lengths and a shift toward determinate sentencing for all offender typologies (Ackerman, Sacks, & Greenburg, 2012 ;Edwards & Hensley, 2001 ). Both of these trends were the result of public outcry, particularly the introduction of determinate sentencing, which requires offenders to serve at least 85 % of their prison sentence before being eligible for release (Bales & Miller, 2012 ).…”

“…To further complicate matters, when offenders eventually "max out" of prison by serving the entirety of their sentence under determinate sentencing standards, they are no longer subject to typical parole procedures. The unintended consequence of this sentencing strategy is, regrettably, a large number of untreated, institutionalized offenders being released, unsupervised, into the community (roughly 100,000 per year; Ackerman et al, 2012 ).…”

Megan's Law and Durkheim’s Perspective of Punishment: Retribution, Rehabilitation or Both?

“…The tentativeness of overall sex offender registrations also persists with conjoined labelling of low and high consensus sexual violations as offence, or from restricted support of the relationship between registration and recidivism (Duwe & Donnay, 2008;Ackerman et al, 2012;Trivits & Reppuci, 2002). The very retributive preponderance of Megan's Law to an extent coincides with Garland's (1990) reworking of Durkheimian analysis of the ruling morality, which does not represent mass support but is a function of certain kinds of social forces.…”

“…First, it applies more to high risk offenders, does not apply to non-sexual offences, and implies additional expenditures for law enforcement (Duwe & Donnay, 2008). Second, other studies argue sex offender legislation such as Megan's Laws have failed to substantively reduce forcible rapes (Ackerman, Sacks & Greenberg, 2012). Irrespective of these limitations with regards to its effectiveness, Megan's Law is portrayed as one of the most potent weapons of anti-rape measures since the 1970's, cultivating the image of the rapist as a pathologically and mentally challenged deviant, and through its austere method of monitoring and controlling the offender, disproportionately targets selected few (Corrigan, 2006).…”

Stopping rape

“…She found no evidence that the legislation had an effect overall. Ackerman, Sacks and Greenberg (2012) have recently re-examined US state-level data and focused specifically on rape, using a panel data approach and controlling for other legislative changes across all states. They conclude that the notification component of SORN schemes have not brought about dramatic reductions in the rates at which rape occurs.…”