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The case already has a tragic backdrop. Last month, another registered sex offender committed suicide in Santa Rosa, the county seat, shortly after local law enforcement officers notified a neighborhood of his presence. But police maintain there is no clear link between the public notification and that suicide only close timing.FOR critics of the nations targeted assault on sex offenders in recent years, Santa Rosa is simply a vivid example of bad policy thats taking hold nationwide.Franklin Zimring, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, says Americans are in the middle of a childsex panic even though there is no evidence the practice of sex offense is increasing or that the recidivism rate among sex offenders is any higher than for other crimes.Indeed, some form of Megans law, named for a New Jersey girl murdered by a convicted sex offender in 1994, has been adopted by virtually every state. And while such laws are the most pervasive examples of action to deter sex crimes, theyre not the only ones.Montana, Georgia, and California have passed laws requiring chemical castration as a condition of parole for some sex offenders. Oregon and Virginia require blood samples from sex offenders for DNA data banks. And Kansas, along with a number of other states, has enacted laws permitting sex offenders to be detained after they serve their sentences if theyre deemed dangerous and mentally abnormal.By all accounts, the public tide in favor of these gettough policies remains strong. And, so far, while the courts have set some limits that civil libertarians regard as significant, most of the laws have been upheld.Yet critics say the effectiveness of the cascade of sexcrime laws is yet to be proven, while their sometimes ugly consequences are piling up.In June, shots were fired into the home of a sex offender in New Jersey after the public was notified about him, underscoring the criticism of groups like the American Civil Liberties Union that such laws encourage vigilantism.We opposed this [Megans] law from Day 1. Its misguided political posturing that will do nothing to reduce sex crimes in New Jersey, says New Jersey ACLU attorney David Rocah.The New Jersey law that started the Megans law trend was tied up in the courts for years, a process that led to amendments providing offenders with a right to challenge how they are classified, which determines the scope of public notification.The California law makes no provision for any such procedures and was challenged on those grounds in a bid by Markvardsens lawyers for a temporary restraining order against the leafletting by Sonoma police. While that request failed, other issues of due process and the scope and range of notification will be heard in his case in September.Challenges elsewhere to Megans laws have been made on the grounds that they represent a double jeopardy, or a second punishment for the same crime, and are a violation of privacy. But those claims have largely been rejected by the courts.Stephen McAllister, a law professor at the University of Kansas and a former special assistant attorney general for that state, says Megans laws are not unconstitutional but that the real debate over whether they amount to effective policy is just beginning.In his view, the public has gained an enormous fear of the stranger pedophile from some highly publicized sex cases in recent years, even though most sex attacks on children are perpetrated by members of their own families. And while Megans law disclosure and notification requirements may address the fear of assaults by strangers, its unclear whether they will have any discernible impact on the overall rate of sex crimes.In short, the tradeoff comes down to whether the impact of public exposure on offenders privacy is worth the chance it may prevent them from breaking the law again.

 

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