Megans law, The Jacob Wetterling Act, and The Adam Walsh Act

2-7-2009 National:

Each of these laws was patterned after the former and each merely tightened the former procedural requirements for registrants and making more and more of registrants' personal information public. Lawmakers claiming -each time- that the controls of the former law were insufficient and tracking of registrants was the answer to reducing sex offenses. State and local lawmakers, following each law, enacted collateral residency and proximity type laws applying them to registrants. This is the history and mentality of lawmakers, tracking, exclusion and isolation is their answer. Prevention absent from their minds!

Never have lawmakers used evidence based studies to make their decisions, sound bites and FEEL-good laws abound. Lawmakers goals under the pretext of protecting children and false claims of recidivism, accomplished nothing but did succeed in getting lawmakers votes and reelection, increasing law enforcement jobs, and making the public FEEL safer, but are they?

Billions of dollars have been spent, law enforcement -spread thin- spends the majority of their time keeping the addresses of where registrants sleep up to date, registrants are hunted down for their addresses (addresses of where they sleep) and prosecuted for technical violations of law causing a swelling prison population and associated costs skyrocketing.

Thirteen years later New Jersey decides to study whether Megan's law was effective. The result: Recidivism was not reduced; No reduction in sex offenses; The number of victims also has not been reduced; Sentences were increased and fewer paroles and Corrections costs soared.

New Jersey Concluding: Given the lack of demonstrated effect of Megan's Law on sexual offenses, the growing costs may not be justifiable!

Given each law was patterned after the former, will it not be true, they too -are and will be- a failure?

Unfortunately the New Jersey study fell short of telling the whole story.

The effects on registrants and their families: Newborn children of reunited families, and newly established relationships, have been torn from the family and given to other families or put into foster care; Other children of these families are shunned by their peers throughout society and not allowed to play with children of other families; These children are growing up in fear of law enforcement with their visits and technical prosecutions of their parents, losing some parents to prisons; Many spouses have sought divorces or other living arrangements due to the constant harassment of them and their children by the community; Suicides have soared and murders of registrants, folks accused of offenses and some innocent folks; Homelessness abounds and most recently one registrant, rejected by society's social safety net, froze to death in -3 degree weather.

Megans' laws are not just a failure, they are a horrific disaster, and will effect future generations in ways we yet can conceive. Are these costs justifiable for some to FEEL safe?

eAdvocate