Megan's law
...lved. They even joked that he had the "perfect profile of a pedophile. "Had Donna lived in Arizona, Alaska, or many other states, she would have been able to hop on the Internet, access a database and check to see if her suspicions were well founded. In those and 26 other states, sex offenders’ names, photos, and sometimes-even addresses are online (Tone 2002). In 1996, the U.S. Congress passed Megan's Law as an amendment to the Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children's Act. It required every state to develop some procedure for notifying the public when a sex offender is released into their community. Different states have different procedures for making the required disclosures. The federal law was not the first on the books that addressed the issue of registering convicted sex offenders. In 1947, California became the first state in the nation to establish laws requiring the registration of convicted sex offenders. The registration process was virtually unchanged until 1986, when new registration requirements were applied to juveniles. Since the mid-1990s, a number of legislative mandates have significantly reshaped California's sex registration requirements, calling for sex offenders to register more often and to provide more detailed information (www.crime.about.com). For more than 50 years, California has required sex offenders to register with their local law enforcement agencies. However, information on the whereabouts of these sex offenders was not available to the public until the implementation of the California Sex Offender Information Line in July 1995. May of 1996 saw the enactment of the federal Megan's Law, followed fourth months later by the enactment of California's Megan's Law (www.caag.state.ca.us/megan). The law now requires local law authorizes to notify the public about high-risk and serious sex offenders who reside in a community. Now, California's Megan's Law arms the public with certain information on the whereabouts of dangerous sex offenders so that local communities may protect themselves and their children. The law is not intended to punish the offender and specifically prohibits using the information to harass or commit any crime against the offender. It recognizes that public safety is best served when registered sex offenders are not concealing their location to avoid harassment. President Clinton signed Megan's Law on May 17, 1996. The law is named after seven-year-old Megan Kanka, who was raped and murdered by a twice-convicted sex offender. There are two main goals of the law. One is the Sex Offender Registration, whereby each state and the federal government are compelled to register persons who have been convicted of sex crimes against children. The second goal of the law is Community Notification. Under this goal, each state and the federal government are compelled to make available to the public private and personal information on convicted sex offenders http://meganslaw.org. There is a down side to Megan’s law and sex offender registration. Many concern have been raised to the nation’s various sex offender registration...