Florida Public Safety Information Act Case Study

An act went into effect as a response to the federal Wetterling Act to help both law enforcement and the public and by increasing the awareness of criminal offenders, especially sexual offenders. This act was implemented on October 1st, 1997, Florida’s Public Safety Information Act. The Florida Legislature passed the following revised and additions to the Florida Sexual Predator Act and the Public Safety Information Act in 1998 so that rules are obeyed by federal requirements and to further improve the efficiency of sexual predator and offender laws (Bailey, 1998).

Policies and procedures require sex offenders in Florida to be indentified through the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles system. Within 48 hours the sex offender must

Wegner was convicted back in prison staying with a woman who baby sat who children while the kids parents were on vacation. Wegner was not accused of doing harm to the children but he was charged with merely being with the children. Because of his close contact with the children Wegner violated the rules of his probation for a 2007 child pornography conviction. Wegner broke the rules of his supervised release by moving in with woman and for also failing to make his correctional and the Connecticut State police aware of his arrangement and for not making both aware that he had left his previous address. Because of his failure to meet the terms of his probation, Wegner was turned over to federal marshals without delay to begin serving an 11-month sentence (Stacom,

The first study conducted by by J.J. Prescott of the University of Michigan and Johan Rockoff of Columbia University, established that requiring sex offenders to register with police may significantly reduce the chances that they will re-offend. But, this same research also found that making that same registry information available to the broader public may not go as planned, leading to higher overall rates of sex crime. On the other hand a study by University of Chicago PhD. Student Amanda Agan found no findings that sex offender registries actually worked in increasing public safety (University of Chicago Press Journals, 2011). Data from 15 states was examined over a ten year period by both Prescott and Rockoff on the evolution of sex offense rates during the time states passed and began enforcing their registration and notification laws. Both registration and notification laws were analyzed separately, an important factor because each law is premeditated to work in very diverse ways. Also during research Prescott and Rockoff found registration requirement without notifying the public decreases reported sex crime to a large extent, in all probability through better police monitoring and more effective trepidation of recidivism (University of Chicago Press Journals, 2011). Prescott and Rockoff believed that a state with an average-size