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20 Crim. Just. Pol'y Rev. 3 (2009)

handle is hein.journals/cjpr20 and id is 1 raw text is: Introduction Uri nal Justice h' flicix Review Voluime 20 \timber 1 Geographic Aspects of Sex M0arch2009i 3I2 PDubt )-_chih ltions Offender Residency Restrictions 107683 hosted at Policy and Research http://onlin.sagepub.co.m Carrie F. Mulford Ronald E. Wilson Angela Moore Parmley National Institute of Justice Keywords: sex offender residency restrictions; notification laws; crime mapping T hroughout the 1990s and 2000s, there has been a trend in the United States to register and control the movement of convicted sex offenders. Following the abduction of an 11-year-old boy, the Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act (1994) required that all states create sex offender registries. Then, in 1996, Megan's Law was passed, which required public notification of the presence of sex offenders. Residency restriction laws and ordinances have become an increasingly popular way to respond to public outcry about sex offenses against children. These laws serve to extend the punishment of sex offenders out of fear they will be hunting for victims because they live in proximity to where children congregate. In 1996, Alabama became the first state to restrict where sex offenders were allowed to live. Although a handful of states had already passed exclusion zone laws prior to 2005, the idea of local ordinances took hold following an ordinance that was passed in Miami Beach, Florida, in response to the abduction and murder of 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford. As of 2006, 29 states and hundreds of localities had adopted measures to restrict where registered sex offenders are permitted to live (Nieto & Jung, 2006). Typically, the laws are intended to protect children by limiting offenders' access to locations where children congregate by establishing buffer zones of between 1,000 feet and 2,500 feet around these locations. There is wide variation in the details of the laws, including the types of offenders who are required to comply, the types of facilities included to create the buffer zones, the distance of the buffer zones, and how the distance is to be determined. Some of the laws make distinctions between categories of risk of offenders and include only high-risk offenders. Another area of variability is the retroactive nature of the laws, with some jurisdictions requiring all sex offend- ers on their registries to comply, regardless of when the offense occurred.

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