ipl-logo

Megan Law Essay

1503 Words7 Pages

Megan Law Megan law was enacted with a sole aim of reducing sex crimes that are witnessed across various states in the U.S. The law required all the law enforcements officers to always make information available to the public on sex offenders who have been registered. The law has been in existence for a long time after its creation in reaction to the killing of Megan Kanka whereby it was created as a subsection of the Jacob Wetterling Law that just required the sex offenders to register themselves with the local law enforcers as opposed to records being circulated in the states in the proposed new Megan law (Shelby & Hatch, 2014). It now over decades since its establishment and there have been various criticism on its effectiveness an aspect that calls for a review or change on this crucial policy that was expected to eradicate all incidents of sexual offences. The law has been criticized on various grounds such as the stigmatization it causes to the victims who are at times exposed in the process of exposing the sexual offender. Apparently women form the majority of the victims …show more content…

In addition, most of the unreported cases result from instances where the offender is a close relative of the victim. Under such circumstances the victims prefer to cover-up the crimes as opposed to exposing their relatives and friends to the punitive Megan Laws. It will be wrong to assume that majority of the unreported incident are committed by the over 650, 000 registered offenders in the US (Wolak, et.al). It is possible for a sexual offender to be reformed through close supervision by assigned probation officials as opposed to subjecting the offender to the wrath of the public throughput his life. On that note, the minor sexual offenders such as those categorized under Tier 1 should be registered privately and it will be wrong for an officer bestowed with such information to share it to the

More about Megan Law Essay

    Open Document