Several new laws have been proposed in Michigan following the conviction of former Michigan State University sports doctor Larry Nassar. The bills have broad bipartisan support, but Natasha Lennard writes that the proposed legislation is typical of the knee-jerk sex offender legislation that typically has followed high-profile cases in recent years.
The 1994 Jacob Wetterling Act, the first law to establish federal guidelines requiring states to implement sex offender registries, was named after an 11-year-old Minnesotan who was kidnapped and murdered by a suspected pedophile. Megan’s Law, mandating public notification about registered sex offenders when deemed necessary, was introduced directly in response to the brutal rape and murder in New Jersey of 7-year-old Megan Kanka by a recidivist sex offender neighbor. And the expansion of the sex offenders registry to include juvenile registrants came in part in response to the assault of an 8-year-old Wisconsin girl by a 14-year-old boy.
It’s an understandable pattern, but a dangerous one. Premised on extreme horrors, sex offender laws have constructed an overreaching, excessively punitive registry system, which empirical studies and human rights advocates have found may cause more harm than good.
Read Lennard’s full article here.
