Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Sentencing Law and Policy

Criminal Law

: Sentencing Law and Policy

Are sex offender registries effective?

By Douglas A. Berman

A new paper available here via SSRN asks "Do Sex Offender Registration and Notification Laws Affect Criminal Behavior?".  The piece is authored by J.J. Prescott and Jonah Rockoff, and here is their abstract: In recent decades, sex offenders have been the targets of some of the most far-reaching and novel crime legislation in the U.S. Two key innovations have been registration and notification laws which, respectively, require that convicted sex offenders provide valid contact information to law enforcement authorities, and that information on sex offenders be made public.  Using detailed information on the timing and scope of changes in state law, we study how registration and notification affect the frequency of sex offenses and the incidence of offenses across victims, and check for any change in police response to reported crimes...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on March 06, 2008 (boomark / email).