Research Summary:Current legislation mandating DNA collection, civil commitment, registration, and community notification of sex offenders is predicated on the assumption that sex offenders are simply more dangerous than other types of offenders in that they inevitably re‐offend. Moreover, many states are moving to expand sex offender legislation to include non‐sexual offenders on the assumption that some offense types, such as burglary and robbery, serve as “gateway” offenses to sex crimes. The purpose of this research is to highlight two of the common perceptions underlying sex offender laws, and the extension thereof, and examine them in light of current empirical evidence. We employ analysis of variance techniques on Illinois arrest data from 1990 to 1997 to examine the degree to which sex offenders have higher proportions of repeat offending than other criminal categories and if some offense types serve as “gateway” or predicate offenses to sex crimes.Policy Implications:Our results suggest that the extension of sex offender laws to non‐sexual offenders will likely have little effect on sexual victimization rates. More importantly, our results illustrate that policies can be founded on misconceptions, and these misconceptions not only have financial consequences, but also can affect the likelihood that the policies enacted will achieve their goals. If nothing else, this research suggests that policy makers need to become better informed on the issues they subject to far‐reaching and costly legislation.
Few studies have examined the degree to which citizens access registry information or take preventative action in response. Survey responses from a representative sample of Nebraska residents were used to examine the degree to which people access registration information, the feelings this information invokes, and if preventative measures are subsequently taken by citizens. The results suggest that the majority of citizens had not accessed registry information, although the majority of people knew the registry existed, and few respondents took any preventative measures as a result of learning sex offender information. The implications of the results on notification laws are discussed.
Sex offender registration and community notification requirements are universally applied to all sex offenders irrespective of their type. In this way, these policies treat sex offenders as a homogenous group, assuming that they exhibit similar reoffending patterns regardless of the age of their victims or the nature of their crimes. In this article, the authors highlight the assumption of homogeneity underlying sex offender laws and reviewit in light of current empirical evidence. They also offer a case study of recidivism rates for sex offenders in Illinois. The authors find that sex offenders are not the homogenous group that our policies assume, and they discuss the implication of this finding for the application of sex offender laws.
Researchers interested in public policy have noted that laws may have a symbolic or an instrumental function. The example of sex offender legislation is used to look for both instrumental and symbolic effects of this legislation. Although the symbolic effects of sex offender legislation have been examined by prior research, less is known about the instrumental effects of this legislation. This research examines the instrumental functions of sex offender legislation using survey data that asked about whether members of the public have checked the sex offender registry and the reasons behind their answer. The findings of this study suggest largely symbolic effects of sex offender registry legislation, and implications of this finding are discussed.
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