Sex Offender Registration and Community Notification

Evans, Mary; Lytle, Robert; Sample, Lisa L.

doi:10.1891/9780826196729.0007

Cited by 6 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…SORN laws were selected for this study for two reasons. First, SORN laws are not only present in every state, they have been established for at least two decades in most states (Evans, Lytle, & Sample, 2015; Mancini et al, 2013). This was preferable for a study of policy change as it removed the need to account for the lack of policy adoption processes at the state level.…”

Section: Defining Policy Change and Justifications For Its Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Panic: Variation in the Legislative Activity for Sex Offender Registration and Notification Laws Across States Over Time

Lytle

2016

Criminal Justice Policy Review

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Nationwide moral panic has long served as a primary explanation for sex offense laws. These laws, however, remain primarily left to state legislatures, which implies potential variation in their content over time. Variation in legislative content, to the degree that it represents implementation, not only suggests differential consequences for registrants and communities, but also it would raise questions to the sufficiency of moral panic as a sole explanation for sex offense policy change. I build upon earlier work by exploring variation in the content and timing of sex offender registration and notification (SORN) reform in all 50 states over time. After documenting variation in these laws, I present the ways in which SORN legislative content has evolved differently across states. In addition, the timing of legislative reforms differed not only across states but also within states over time. These findings have implications for existing theoretical assertions regarding criminal justice policy.

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Section: Defining Policy Change and Justifications For Its Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Panic: Variation in the Legislative Activity for Sex Offender Registration and Notification Laws Across States Over Time

Lytle

2016

Criminal Justice Policy Review

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“…Thus, even though registry access availability is presumably increasing for citizens, awareness is not. Overall, even though SORN comes with significant financial burdens (Evans et al, 2015) and is saddled with a number of collateral consequences (Burchfield & Mingus, 2008; Levenson, D’Amora, & Hern, 2007), the success of SORN systems rests on close-knit networks to spread information on RSOs.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Over the past few decades, scholars have devoted a considerable amount of empirical attention to understanding public attitudes toward registered sex offenders (RSOs) reentering their communities (see, generally, Rade et al, 2016). In turn, a growing literature has begun to investigate the effects of sex offender registries and notification (SORN) systems in communities (Evans et al, 2015). The Jacob Wetterling Act of 1994 formalized state-based registries of persons convicted of sex crimes with their personally identifying information.…”

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confidence: 99%

Revisiting Sex Offender Registration and Notification: Does Awareness Differ Across Community Type?

Navarro

Higgins

Swartz

2020

Criminal Justice Review

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In recent decades, sex offender registry and notification has become ubiquitous across the United States. Although researchers have attempted to evaluate the awareness of registered sex offenders, much of this work has had a nearly unilateral focus on urban communities. In response, researchers have called for further investigation into whether awareness manifests differently across community type (suburban and urban). To address this question, we draw from two data sets. The first data set contains property data for single-family households sold in 2015 from a suburban county in Illinois and an urban county in Kentucky. The second data set consists of survey responses from 113 suburban and 171 urban county residents within 1,000 feet of the nearest sex offender that was delivered via a sequential mixed-mode design. In addition, we investigate whether awareness manifests differently across community type through a number of predictors (e.g., children in the household, education) and potential theoretical explanations (fear of crime, informal social control, and social cohesion). We find that community types do have differing levels of awareness and that varying levels of social cohesion may explain this difference. Implications are also discussed.

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“…Regarding the implementation and application of notification laws, if men hold different perceptions of the "dangerousness" women pose as sex criminals, then close to half of the citizens in Nebraska who are men (49%) are not seeking out information on female sex offenders, are not applying this law to some on the registry, and are not fully participating in the implementation of this law, which can have consequences for this policy's outcomes. SORN laws were intended to provide citizens with information on local sex offenders, with the expressed intent that they would use this information to enhance their own personal safety and that of their family's (Evans, Lytle, & Sample, 2014). The fact that women and those with minor children in the home are significantly more likely to take some preventive action after learning of a female sex offender in their community is not surprising, but it does indicate that all citizens are not equally participating in the full implementation of notification laws.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public Opinion of the Application of Sex Offender Notification Laws to Female Sex Offenders

Cain

Sample

Anderson

2016

Criminal Justice Policy Review

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Sex offender notification laws depend not only on the public’s access of registration information but also on the belief that those on the registry present a danger to society and thus deserve informal monitoring. As registries have expanded to include more people, perhaps citizens feel some people on registry are incapable of committing sex crimes or do not pose a danger to society. A group whose inclusion the public may question is women, as many scholars have argued there is a societal-level denial that females commit sex crimes. Data from the 2012 Nebraska Annual Social Indicators Survey were used to determine whether the public agreed that citizens should be notified of convicted female sex offenders living in their communities, whether they would take preventive action if a female sex offender lived in their neighborhood, and whether they think that female sex crimes are less serious than sex crimes committed by men.

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Sex Offender Registration and Community Notification

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

Beyond Panic: Variation in the Legislative Activity for Sex Offender Registration and Notification Laws Across States Over Time

Beyond Panic: Variation in the Legislative Activity for Sex Offender Registration and Notification Laws Across States Over Time

Revisiting Sex Offender Registration and Notification: Does Awareness Differ Across Community Type?

Public Opinion of the Application of Sex Offender Notification Laws to Female Sex Offenders

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