"Sex Offender Registration and Community Notification Laws: An Empirical Evaluation"

The title of this post is the title of this new book of essays.  I reached out to the editors of this text to provide a bit of background and context for this new volume:

Sex offender registration and community notification (SORN) surely numbers among the most significant social control methods of the past several decades. Although the Supreme Court in 2003 rejected two constitutional challenges to SORN laws (Connecticut Dept. of Public Safety v. Doe and Smith v. Doe), of late courts, including the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals (Does v. Snyder, 2016), have cast a more critical eye, invalidating new generation SORN laws that have become more onerous and expansive in their reach. 

Since its origin in the early 1990s, basic questions have existed regarding the effects of SORN, including whether it actually achieves its intended purpose of reducing sexual offending. Cambridge University Press has just published a new book, edited by Professors Wayne A. Logan and J.J. Prescott, containing chapters from the nation’s leading social science researchers on the many important empirical questions surrounding SORN.  As readers might be aware, the American Law Institute, as part of its overhaul of the Model Penal Code’s sex offense-related provisions, has tentatively approved a slate of reforms advocating a vastly reduced approach to registration and discontinuation of community notification.  The book promises to be an invaluable resource as policy-makers begin to consider whether SORN laws should be retooled or perhaps done away with altogether. Here is the SSRN link and abstract for the book:

Despite being in existence for over a quarter century, costing multiple millions of dollars and affecting the lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals, sex offender registration and notification (SORN) laws have yet to be subject to a book-length treatment of their empirical dimensions, examining their premises, coverage, and impact on public safety.  This volume, edited by Professors Wayne A. Logan and J.J. Prescott, assembles the leading researchers in the field to provide an in-depth look at what have come to be known as “Megan’s Laws,” offering a social science-based analysis of one of the most important and controversial criminal justice system initiatives undertaken in modern times. The editors attach the title page, table of contents, and preface of the volume.