Overview of Sex Offender Registration - Effective or Not Research Paper

Overview of Sex Offender Registration - Effective or Not - Research Paper Example Police investigation revealed that the convicted person was a sex offender and was a nearby neighbor of Megan (Douglas, Burgess, Burgess & Ressler, 2006). Nevertheless, the parents of Megan had no information about the fact that their neighbor is a sex offender and how dangerous he can be to their family. This heated a great debate and eventually Megan’s law came onto the scene, which required States to put this information of sex offenders available to public so that people can ensure their safety (Tilley, 2009). Despite the fact that these registration polices vary amongst different states, however, the primary goal remains the same, avoidance of sexual violence or crime and prevention of sexual re-offending by these former offenders (Wright, 2009). This paper would try to compare to Sex Offender Registration policies in California and Massachusetts. California had implemented these policies in 1947 and Massachusetts was the last state to implement these policies in the last years of 1990s (Douglas et al., 2006). Moreover, in the light of the policies at these two states, many others elements concerning the effectiveness of this system would also come under discussion. Sex Offender Registration laws require offender to register with the local state authority and supply crucial information like name, address, employment details, and others. In most cases, the offender has to register right after his or her release from the prison or in the initial of days of community supervision (Holmes & Holmes, 2008). Since 1996, most of the states have put this information online for public viewing including California and Massachusetts (Brown, 2005). As mentioned earlier, all the states have laws regarding sex offender registration that vary greatly. Differences start arising from the information required for registration. Both these states ask for name, aliases, photo, fingerprints, description of offences, location of offences,