NCJ Number
234475
Journal
Criminology & Public Policy Volume: 10 Issue: 2 Dated: May 2011 Pages: 237-263
Date Published
May 2011
Length
27 pages
Annotation
This article examines sex offender notification laws.
Abstract
Community notification laws require government officials to inform the public of a sex offender's presence in the community when that offender has been identified as posing a high risk for recidivism. The logic behind these laws is that by providing the public with information about a potential threat to safety, citizens will be motivated to take protective actions to mitigate their risk for victimization (Walsh and Cohen, 1998). Since their federally mandated inception in 1996, much research has been conducted on the impacts community notification laws have had on offenders (e.g., English, 1998; Levenson and Hern, 2007; Petrosino and Petrosino, 1999; Tewksbury, 2005; Zevitz, 2006; Zevitz and Farkas, 2000). However, these laws primary were written and designed with the public's behavior in mind-not the offenders'. Despite their existence in all 50 States, research focusing specifically on the effects of community notification laws on the public's adoption of protective behavior- the behavior the laws are intended to impact-is limited to a handful of recent studies (Anderson, Evans, and Sample, 2009; Anderson and Sample, 2008; Beck, Clingermayer, Ramsey, and Travis, 2004; Beck and Travis, 2004; Caputo and Brodsky, 2004). (Published Abstract)