Sex Offender Laws By State

NOTE: Each State has their own Sex Offender Laws -
Please refer below for each individual law for each State.

Prior to 1994 only five states required convicted sex offenders to register their addresses with local law enforcemnet. As recognition of the severity of this problem grew, Congress passed the Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Act, 42 U.S. C. §§ 14071, et. seq. ("Wetterling Act"). This requires state implementation of a sex-offender registration program or a 10 percent forfeiture of federal fuds for state and local law enforcement under the Byrne Grant Program of the U.S. Department of Justice. Today, all fifty states have sex offender registries.

The realization registration alone was not enough came after the tragic murder of 7 yr old Megan Kanka by a released sex offender living on her street. The public outcry created a call for programs to provide the publice with information regarding released sex offenderes. In 1996, Congress passed a federal law mandating state community notification programs. Megan's Law, section (e) of the Wetterling Act, requires all states to conduct community notification but does not set our specific forms and methods, other than requiring the creation of internet sites containing state sex-offender information. Beyond that requirement, states are given broad discretion in creating their own policies.

THE CHALLENGE

There are currently 549,038 registered sex offender in the United States. Sex offenders pose an enormous challenge for policy makes; they evoke unparalleled fear among constituents; their offenses are associated with a great risk of psychological harm; and most of their victims are children and youth. As policy makers address the issue of sex offenders, they are confronted with some basic realities:

Most sex offenders are not in prison, and those who are tend to serve limited sentences.

Most sex offenders are largely unknown to people in the community.

Sex offenders have a high rick of re-offending

While community supervision and oversight is widely recognized as essential, the system for providing such supervision is overwhelmed.

LOOPHOLES IN CURRENT STATE PROGRAMS

The increased mobility of our society has let to "lost" sex offenders, those who fail to comply with registration duties yet remain undetected due to law encorcement's inablility to track their whereabouts. A consevative estimate of the number of "lost" sex offenders is at least 100,000 nationwide. The wide disparity amoung the state programs in both registration and notification procedures permits sex offenders to "forum-shop", research which states have the least stringent laws, in order to live in communities with relative anonymity.

RECOMMENDATION

There is a clear need for more consistency and uniformity amoung state programs for sex offender registration and community notification.

There should be more funding to assist states in maintaining and improving these programs.

New technology should be developed for tracking offenders and improving communications between and amoung various agencies (law enforcement, corrections, courts and probation).

Click on your state to access more links.