On this date, 29 July 1994,
seven-year-old Megan Kanka, was murdered in Hamilton Township, Mercer County,
New Jersey. In loving memory of her, we, the VFFDP, will endorse Megan’s Law
and not forget her and her family. We got the information from Wikipedia.
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Megan's Law is an informal name for
laws in the United States requiring law enforcement authorities to make
information available to the public regarding registered sex offenders, which
was created in response to the murder of Megan Kanka. Individual states decide
what information will be made available and how it should be disseminated.
Commonly included information is the offender's name, picture, address,
incarceration date, and nature of crime. The information is often displayed on
free public websites, but can be published in newspapers, distributed in
pamphlets, or through various other means.
At the federal level, Megan's Law is
known as the Sexual Offender (Jacob Wetterling) Act of 1994, and requires
persons convicted of sex crimes against children to notify local law
enforcement of any change of address or employment after release from custody
(prison or psychiatric facility). The notification requirement may be imposed
for a fixed period of time - usually at least ten years - or permanently.
Some states may legislate registration
for all sex crimes, even if no minors were involved. It is a felony in most
jurisdictions to fail to register or fail to update information.
Megan's Law provides two major
information services to the public: sex offender registration and community
notification. The details of what is provided as part of sex offender
registration and how community notification is handled vary from state to
state, and in some states the required registration information and community
notification protocols have changed many times since Megan's Law was passed.
The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act supplements Megan's Law with new
registration requirements and a three-tier system for classifying sex offenders
according to their risk to the community.
New Jersey
Paul Kramer was the sponsor in 1994 in
the New Jersey General Assembly of a package of seven bills known as Megan's
Law that were approved one month after the rape and murder of seven-year-old Megan
Kanka by Jesse Timmendequas, a sex offender who had been
previously convicted of sex crimes and had lived across the street from Kanka
together with two other sex offenders. He had killed Megan Kanka after luring
her into his house under the pretext of showing her his new puppy.
The bills would require sex offender registration,
with a database tracked by the state, community notification of registered sex
offenders moving into a neighborhood and life in prison without a chance of
parole for those convicted of a second sexual assault. Kramer expressed
incredulity at the controversy created by the bills, saying that "Megan
Kanka would be alive today" if the bills he proposed had been law.
Study
of effectiveness
A December 2008 study of the law in
New Jersey concluded that it had no effect on community tenure (i.e., time to
first re-arrest), showed no demonstrable effect in reducing sexual re-offenses,
had no effect on the type of sexual re-offense or first time sexual offense
(still largely child molestation), and had no effect on reducing the number of
victims of sexual offenses. The authors felt that given the lack of
demonstrated effect of the law on sexual offenses, its growing costs may not be
justifiable.
Michigan
Michigan adopted Megan's law soon
after its inception in New Jersey and modified it with some notable changes.
Each "sex"-related offense is placed on the registry with largely
vague categories of severity numbered 1 through 4. The specific details of the
offense, the circumstances, and various other factors are taken into
consideration when charges are brought and listed on the site along with the
driver's license picture of the individual. Regardless of offense level, the
individual is placed on the registry for a minimum of 25 years, up to life.
Certain HYTA cases are not listed on the public version of the registry while
the individuals are minors.
Michigan's law also includes
registration as sex offenders for certain crimes without any sexual element,
such as kidnapping and public vulgarity or indecency (swearing in public).
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Mixed reactions
The effectiveness of Megan's Law, the
Jacob Wetterling Act and the Adam Walsh Act are constant fodder for media and
politicians alike. Proponents of the above laws maintain that these laws are
necessary for the control and monitoring of dangerous individuals that live
among the general populace.
Opponents have called the law a
"vigilante's charter", citing cases such William Elliot, one of two
people located on the list and killed by the vigilante Stephen Marshall.
William Elliot was on the Megan List because his girlfriend was "two weeks
shy of her 16'th birthday" while Elliot himself was also a teenager. In a
similar case, construction worker Garcia Oliver was charged with murder for
killing Michael Dodele, saying that he had acted to protect his son, "I
felt that by not taking evasive action as a father in the right direction, I
might as well have taken my child to some swamp filled with alligators."
In fact, Dodele was 67 years old and his accuser/victim was an older woman, not
a child.
One senator has suggested that sex
offenders in each jurisdiction be ordered to report to their local jail on
October 31 (Halloween) of each year to protect children from being abducted
during "this night of intentional identity confusion". The logistics
of this have proven to be difficult to justify, as there have been no reported
cases of abduction related to children visiting an offender's home on
Halloween.
Michigan state representative Paul
Scott issued this statement on October 14, 2011: "Although Halloween is a
joyous time for many young children, it is also a time when sex offenders don't
have to troll play areas or neighborhood hangouts to gain access to young
people," said Scott, R-Grand Blanc. "Unsuspecting children will
inevitably knock on the doors of sex offenders this Saturday, creating a
potentially dangerous situation."
His comments reflect the general
attitude of many politicians, legislators and law-enforcement officials across
the country. Virtually all 50 states have enacted similar requirements for sex
offenders on Halloween night.
"Convicted sex offenders should
never be allowed to take part in the Halloween tradition," Scott said.
"Michigan must take a 'lights out' approach when it comes to the homes of
sex offenders to help young people stay safe during Halloween."
Considering extensive research done on
true sex offense relapse rates — averaging under 9% for the entire country from
1983 to 2010 — suggest that Scott's comments are less fact and more of a
personal agenda, the true scope of Megan's Law is revealed to be quite broad
and open to interpretation.
Reformists have conceded that the
registry and the above laws have a place, however with some modifications. The
typical relapse rate statistics provided by the State of Michigan show that an
average of 3.5% (years 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008) of registered offenders
re-offend (a reoffense is defined as committing a similar offense, missing a
parole or probation meeting, or failing to re-register as is required four
times a year). The other 96.5% on average, for the years stated, are classified
as first time offenders with no prior felonies or "sex"-related
crimes on record.
As stated above, country-wide
statistics over a longer period of time echo the results provided by the State
of Michigan.
