Megan's Law ~ There has probably never been a law passed that has hurt so many, done so little to help, and been so blatantly unconstitutional.  It's a shame that a young girl of a heinous crime should have her name associated with such a law that deprives so many of their right to not be punished cruelly or unusually, and deprive people of their right to privacy and freedom of association.

Reasons why Megan's Law is clearly wrong:

1) It's "knee-jerk" politics based on nothing except emotion; statistics do not justify the law because murder at the hands of a crazed pedophile is extremely rare.  Studies have also shown that it has done no good except for catching a few probation violators who were befriending children.  Serious sex crimes such as rape and sex related murders have not diminished. 

2) It's an infringement of a myriad of constitutional rights.  When the founding fathers wrote into the constitution there shall not be cruel or unusual punishment; they meant any ruling, sentencing, or consequence of the crime emanating from the court -- not just punishment.  Naturally, there was nothing like sex offender registration back then; no distinction could have been made between punishment and legal requirements.  Our courts are just playing the semantics game in saying sex offender registration is not punishment, thus it is not covered by the constitution.   Megan's Law deprives people of the following constitutional rights: the right to not be punished in a cruel way, the right to not be punished in an unusual way, the right to privacy, the right of freedom of association, and most importantly simply the right to be treated as an individual.

3) Some say one's criminal record is a public record, and Megan's law is just an aggressive way of disseminating what is already public.  That may very well be true, but one's address is certainly not public information, nor is one's photograph, at least not beyond one's police mug-shot.  Photographs taken later, even by the police, are not true mug-shots and cannot be published without one's express consent.     

4) Megan's Law causes extensive hardships to its victims.  The consequences of having one's crime so publicly advertised causes people to lose their jobs, lose positions on sports teams, lose their housing, and be victimized by vigilantes in the neighborhood who may resort to anything from picketing the household, throwing rocks through the windows, to the extreme of murdering the occupants. 

5) Megan's Law does not allow one to put his or her past behind him and move on.  No parent after punishing a child would keep reminding the child of the misbehavior and keep stigmatizing the child for years to come.  No adult should be treated differently.  People have the right to be able to move beyond their crimes and pursue happiness as guaranteed by the constitution.

Megan's Law should at most require only the registration of vicious felons like the man who actually murdered Megan Kanka.  Rather than requiring every sex offender to register, Megan's Law should required sexual ethics training in schools and behavior modification therapy for those convicted of serious sexual offenses, as well as extended counseling or life-long counseling.  Megan's Law will do no good because it won't stop the sexual psychopath who is bent on doing harm to children and does nothing to get at the root of the problem.  Additionally, all anyone has to do is simply not register or use a false address with little fear of being found.  It's the decent person, who obeys the law, and poses little risk that gets stigmatize by being known to the community and suffers the most.

Related Articles:

Registration required: Are sex offenders unique?
TownHall.com ^ | Friday, November 8, 2002 | by Jacob Sullum
 

 by JohnHuang2
 

If a convicted child molester moved into the house across the street, I'd want to know. But I'd also want to know if my new neighbor had been convicted of homicide, assault, robbery, burglary, larceny or fraud.

Which suggests one of the problems with sex offender registration laws, the focus of two cases the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear on Wednesday. These laws -- which require sex offenders who have served their sentences to report their whereabouts to the government, which passes the information on to the public -- are both too narrow and too broad.

They are too narrow because they do not cover a wide range of potentially dangerous characters whom citizens might want to avoid. They are too broad because the sex offender label sweeps together serial predators with individuals who pose little or no threat to the public. For example, Alaska's law, one of the two the Supreme Court will consider, applies to people convicted of possessing child pornography.

The main rationale for singling out sex offenders is the assumption that they are especially likely to commit new crimes. Sex offenders "will immediately commit this crime again at least 90 percent of the time," a California legislator warned in 1996.

The Bush administration -- which filed a brief in defense of Connecticut's registration law, the other statute the Supreme Court will consider -- is a bit more cautious. "When they re-enter society at large," says Solicitor General Theodore Olson, "convicted sex offenders have a much higher recidivism rate for their offense of conviction than any other type of violent felon."

The brief cites data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which show that rapists are more likely to be rearrested for rape than other offenders are. But that does not mean they are more likely to be rearrested.

Among prisoners released in 1994, 46 percent of rapists were arrested again for any offense within three years, compared to 62 percent of violent felons generally. Recidivism rates for nonviolent criminals were even higher: 79 percent for car thieves, 74 percent for burglars.

Even if we focus on repeats of the same offense, rapists do not stand out. Less than 3 percent of them were arrested for a new rape in the three years covered by the study. By comparison, 13 percent of robbers, 22 percent of (nonsexual) assaulters, and 23 percent of burglars were arrested again for crimes similar to the ones for which they had served time.

Studies that cover longer periods and include other kinds of sex offenders find higher recidivism rates, but still nothing like those claimed by politicians. The National Center on Institutions and Alternatives cites three large studies, covering tens of thousands of sex offenders, that reported rearrest rates for sex offenses ranging from 13 percent to 19 percent.

It seems that the vast majority of people forced to register as sex offenders are actually former sex offenders who will not repeat their crimes. Indeed, Connecticut's online Sex Offender Registry proclaimed that "the Department of Public Safety has not considered or assessed the specific risk of reoffense with regard to any individual prior to his or her inclusion within this registry, and has made no determination that any individual included in this registry is currently dangerous."

According to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, that was precisely the problem. The court ruled that Connecticut's registration law violates the Due Process Clause because it does not give offenders an opportunity to challenge the presumption that they are public menaces.

In the Alaska case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit did not address the due process issue because it concluded that the statute was an ex post facto law, unconstitutionally imposing punishment on offenders who committed their crimes before it was passed. As evidence of the law's punitive effect, the court cited, among other things, onerous requirements similar to those of probation: Many offenders have to register in person with police four times a year for the rest of their lives.

The court also noted that "by posting the appellants' names, addresses, and employer addresses on the Internet, the Act subjects them to community obloquy and scorn that damage them personally and professionally," making it difficult for them to find work and lead normal lives. One need not have sympathy for sex offenders to wonder whether this is a sensible way to encourage their rehabilitation.

Criticism

Despite the near-unanimity that tends to characterize legislative attempts to "toughen" Megan's law (especially during election years), the law does have its critics.

Libertarians, pro-sex feminists and gay rights activists have criticized Megan's Law claiming the sex offender registry unfairly includes those who committed consensual crimes in addition to sexual predators. The arrests for indecent exposure would improperly include incidents that involve public nudity in which one could become a sex offender include streaking, skinny dipping, public urination and mooning. Consensual sodomy (pre Lawrence v. Texas), adultery and fornication are also crimes for which one could be declared a sex offender and required to register under the law.

Another criticism of Megan's Law comes from police officers, prosecutors and victims' rights advocates who view Megan's Law as ineffective. These critics favor life imprisonment for high risk sex offenders (especially for child molesters) instead of community notification.

Others maintain that the registration database is built on information provided by former offenders who are complying with the law, and who are therefore inclined toward accepting responsibility and living law-abiding lives. The registry therefore becomes, in effect, a database of those former sex offenders who presently are law-abiding citizens, and who therefore may be the least likely to reoffend. The real threat, these critics would maintain, is posed by those offenders who don't bother to register or who provide false information.

Another criticism comes from those who maintain that the law may give parents a false sense of security. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the overwhelming majority of minors sexually assaulted were victimized by a family member or acquaintance. ^[1] This weakens the notion that children are most likely to be victimized by a stranger with a history of sexual misconduct, such as would appear on a sex offenders registry.

Some mental health professionals and social observers speculate that overly harsh laws imposed on released sex offenders may increase, rather than decrease, their likelihood of committing new sex crimes. These critics assert that the combination of legal restrictions on where an offender may reside, and shame and harassment resulting from community notification, may force offenders to live in isolation in rural areas (or conversely, in heavily industrial neighborhoods of cities), far from their families, treatment providers, houses of worship, and other sources of social and emotional support.

Also of concern to civil rights advocates and law enforcement officials alike have been instances of vigilantism against registered sex offenders. It's difficult to precisely quantify the frequency of vigilante incidents because neither the Justice Department nor any other governmental agency maintains a database of such incidents. In addition, many lesser incidents (verbal harassment, vandalism, etc.) probably go unreported by the offenders themselves, either because they believe that reporting the harassment is pointless, or because they fear retribution.

Nonetheless, there have been some highly-publicized cases of vigilantes using state-run sex offender registry Web sites to gather information about registered sex offenders, which they then used to murder those individuals. Two of the more notable cases were the murders of two men in Washington State in August of 2005 [5], and of two men in Maine in April, 2006 [6].

Sex offender community notification has also led to incidents of attempted murder, such as a thwarted attempt against an 82-year-old registered offender in Florida in July of 2004 [7], innocent people being mistakenly identified as sex offenders [8], arson [9], and harassment of the families of registered sex offenders [10].

Proponents of Megan's Law often point out that it is not the law's purpose to promote vigilantism, harassment, discrimination, or other illegal acts against registered sex offenders. Indeed, every state sex offender registry's Web site contains a notice that the information contained must not be used for illegal purposes.

Critics of the law, on the other hand, assert that the government's intentions are meaningless compared to the undeniable fact that information made available pursuant to Megan's Law has repeatedly been used to commit violent crimes, including murder. These critics would assert that the government is guilty of gross negligence by reason of intentional and deliberate indifference to the potentially fatal consequences of the law's requirements.

Another criticism of sex offender registration laws is based on an assertion that the recidivism statistics frequently cited by politicians to justify the laws are inflated and are not borne out by actual evidence. A 2004 study commissioned by the Solicitor General of Canada found the five-year recidivism rate for child sex offenders to be 13 percent and the 15-year rate to be 20 percent; however, the recidivism rate dropped dramatically the longer an offender remained offense free, with the rate for an offender who had been offense-free for 15 years being only 4 percent. [11] In the United States, the US Bureau of Justice Statistics rates the three-year recidivism rate for all sex offenders at 5.3 percent. [12]

Some civil libertarians liken the sex offender registration laws to those passed in Nazi Germany in the period from 1933 through 1936, under which which homosexuals and other "deviants" were required to register their whereabouts and wear pink triangles, lost their voting rights, and were subjected to draconian punishments, all in order to "protect the children." Adolf Hitler himself, referring to the laws, wrote:

“The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation. ” -Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler, Publ. Houghton Miflin, 1943, Page 403 This quote is not found in any online copy of Mein Kampf. [13]

The similarity between Megan's Law and the Nazi laws of the 1930's also has been noticed by more than a few ordinary citizens. In an Internet article published shortly after the murders of two registered sex offenders in Maine in April 2006, visitors were asked to comment regarding the Maine sex offender registry Web site and whether it should be taken offline. As of September 20, 2006, 23 visitors had commented, with the great majority favoring abolishing the sex offender registry Web site, and many citing the similarity to the Nazi laws as part of the reason for their positions. [14]

The comparison of Megan's Law with the sex offender registration laws passed by the Third Reich is not just a matter of unpleasant similarity for individuals who are opposed to the law on this basis. Rather, they see the intentional, systematic deprivation of the rights of a particular, generally despised class of people as the first step on the "slippery slope" toward a broader dismantling of civil rights in general [15].