Place a moratorium on the passage of sex offender residence restriction laws

Abstract

D uring the past few decades, lawmakers have devoted increasing attention to policies aimed at managing sex offenders released to the community. Indeed, since 1994, all 50 states have enacted at least two pieces of legislation specific to sex offenders; at the minimum, each of the 50 states has established a sex offender registry and a community notification system in compliance with the Jacob Wetterling Act of 1994 and Megan’s Law of 1996, respectively (CSOM, 2008). Since this time, states have passed several other laws targeted at sex offenders. For example, some states require sex offenders to carry special identification cards, whereas other states have the authority to impose chemical castration (Mancini, 2009). Among the newest wave of sex offender policies to sweep the United States are residence restrictions. A recent analysis revealed that since 1999 more than half of all states have enacted a residence restriction law (Mancini, 2009). Residence restrictions come in different shapes (i.e., different “hot-spot” locations) and sizes (i.e., different “buffer zones”). A hot spot is a specific location that is restricted for sex offenders, and it typically is defined as a park, playground, daycare center, or school. A buffer zone is the exclusion perimeter that is established around identified hot spots. For example, a buffer zone of 500 feet means that sex offenders cannot reside within 500 feet of hot spots. Buffer zones can range from 500 feet to more than 5,000 feet depending on the state of interest (Mancini, 2009; Meloy, Miller, and Curtis, 2008). Despite variation in the scope of hot spots that can be included and the size of buffer zones that can be used, all residence restriction laws operate on the following underlying rationale: keeping a sex offender away from areas where children are