Effectiveness of sex offender registration policies in the United States (original) (raw)

Sex offender registration and notification (SORN) laws are highly accepted by the public, who believe that knowing the location of sex offenders residence may improve their ability to guard themselves and their children from sexual victimization. Empirical observations do not typically support this assumption, however. According to the Office of Justice Programs' SMART Office, sex offender registration and notification requirements arguably have been implemented in the absence of empirical evidence regarding their effectiveness. The majority of research results do not find a statistically significant shift in sexual offense trends following the implementation of sex offender registration and notification (SORN) regimes. A few studies indicate that sexual recidivism may have been lowered by