Unintended Consequences of Sex Offender Laws (1150 words)

Write a 3-5 page (APA format New Times Roman, 12 font, 1" margins) essay about three (3) unintended consequences of sex offender laws such as residency restrictions, community notification, and GPS monitoring; use 5 academic sources.

This brief review looks at research documenting the unintended consequences of sex offender laws. Residence restriction laws are given first and primary focus, but the underlying registration and notification laws are also considered. This review documents the failure of these laws to achieve their intended aims—a critical unintended consequence in and of itself—as well a litany of unintended, collateral damage, culminating in the possibility that notification laws may actually contribute to the likelihood of recidivism.
Residence restriction laws
Sex offender residence restrictions in the United States have their origin in the Jacob Wetterling Act of 1994. Strictly speaking, the Act did not impose residency restrictions but rather required sex offenders to “register their addresses with law enforcement agents to facilitate better tracking and monitoring of this particular group of criminals” (Levenson & Hern, 2007, p. 60). 1996’s Megan’s Law went one step further by making the address registry available to the public, thereby making salient for the public that sex offenders did—or could—live among them...

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