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America's Unjust Sex Laws Thesis

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“America’s Unjust Sex Laws” is an editorial published in the Economist that argues that America’s laws for sex offenders is too stringent. The author makes tenacious arguments that gets the reader thinking, however most of the arguments that were made I contest with. “America’s Unjust Sex Laws” argues that the sex offender laws in America are too harsh. It begins by discussing “Megan’s Laws” and the Adam Walsh Act of 2006 to describe the current sex offender laws. The author then goes on to discuss how large the sex-offender registry is in order to support their first point that harsh penalties shouldn’t be imposed for minor crimes. The author argues that with so many people on the list it makes it hard to distinguish between people who are really threats on the list and those who are not. The second point the author argues is that sex-offender registries shouldn’t be made public because it causes sex offenders to be harassed and even fired from their jobs (“America’s Unjust Sex Laws” 655). The author suggest that the list should be held by the police who could then share it with people who need to know instead of the public having easy access to it (“America’s Unjust Sex Laws” 656). The author then explains how many teenagers have sex before they are legally allowed too and how this shouldn’t be reason to …show more content…

The last point the author makes is

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This is because the law is overly vast when it describes what the sex offender can and cannot due over the internet. This is unfair because in today’s world almost every website use reviews and opinion based comments. Many of these websites don’t require a user to have any sort of account or username. This means that any person, including minors, are able to use this website regardless of whether or not it is allowed, and the very possibility of a minor being on a website restricts it from the use of a sex offender. An example of this is Cooks.com, this website allows users to leave comments without requiring any type of account, email, or identification.

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Policy Analysis: Megan’s Law Sexual violence, particularly against children, is a significant issue all around the world. In the early 1990’s in the United States, there were multiple well-publicized cases of sexual violence against children. From kidnappings, to rapes, and everything in between, violence was being committed against children and something needed to be done about it. In 1996, Megan’s Law was passed in response to the sexual assault and death of Megan Kanka, a seven-year-old from New Jersey (Corrigan, 2006).

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On July 29, 1994, New Jersey resident Megan Kanka was lured into the home of Jesse Timmendequas, a convicted sex offender, with promises of seeing a puppy (Corrigan, 2006). Once she entered his house, she was raped twice, strangled with a belt, and suffocated with a bag (Corrigan, 2006). Timmendequas was arrested soon after and confessed to this crime (Corrigan, 2006). This event outraged Kanka's parents and the surrounding community (Corrigan, 2006). They used this tragic death to create Megan's Law as an addition to the Jacob Wetterling Crimes against Children Violent Offender Registration Act, which required sex offenders to register within their counties (Welchans, 2005).

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Chapter four refers to specificity "as the scope of criminal law" (Bohm & Haley, 2014, p.97). These acts can be ruled not criminal if certain information is not proven to have been present when the crime was committed. The state rules for sex offenders that have been convicted of this crime be persecuted and their information made public. This reminds

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The notification system is based on the sex offenders risk to reoffend and the danger they may pose to the community. Many states adopted a three-tier notification system for the sex offender registry; tier one is for offenders evaluated to be low risk for reoffending, tier two is for those offenders assessed at a medium risk and tier three are for those offender that meet criteria for the highest risk of reoffending (National Institute of Justice, 2009a). Megan’s Law is a federal law with subsequent state laws, states have discretion in developing criteria for reporting Megan’s Law however; private and personal information related to the registered sex offender must be available to the public (National Institute of Justice, 2009b). Under Megan’s Law, the tracking database is monitored by states and involves community notification when a sex offender moves into a

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