Megan’s Law Protect Children When Applied Properly

Megan’s Law was named after seven-year-old Megan Kanka who was kidnapped, raped and then murdered by Jesse Timmenedquas, a violent, repeat sex offender who was found guilty and was sitting on death row, fortunately for Timmenedquas, New Jersey abolished the death penalty in 2007 so he is serving a life without parole sentence instead.

After Megan was killed, her parents, Maureen and Richard Kanka , who claimed not to have known that Timmenedquas and his two roommates who live across the street were sex offenders, began a petition drive to make sure every parent knows where sex offenders live and work. The Megan Nicole Kanka Foundation collected over 400,000 signatures and the law was passed in only 89 days. In 1994, New Jersey, Kanka’s home state, was the first to pass a ‘Megan’s Law’ to help protect innocent children and families, the law requires sex offenders to register with the local law enforcement in order to be tracked of their whereabouts and so that parents of young children, or anyone who would like the information, can find out if there is a sex offender living in their vicinity.

In 1995 Megan’s law went from a state law to a federal law and included provisions for community notifications of where sex offenders would be living and working. This law has been amended several times over and individual states have different procedures in place in order to notify neighbors of a sex offender moving into their neighborhood. Some compile an online database while other send letters to the sex offenders new neighbors.

Almost all provisions in every sex offender law states that the sex offender can not reside within a 2000 feet (from Jessica’s Law) radius of a school, church or park – anywhere children regularly gather. Many states and individual communities do not have the manpower to enforce these laws although some do perform ‘spot checks’ which will vet out those sex offender who are living too close to a school.

This leads to another problem, one that California is dealing with today, homelessness among it’s thousands of sex offenders. Several lawmakers gathered earlier this week to discuss the growing problem of homelessness among it sex offenders and many sited Megan’s law for the problem.

The California parole office uses GPS ankle bracelets to track their sex offenders and make sure they are not getting too close to a school or other areas where children could be at risk. This costs the state more than $55 million per year to outfit 7,100 sex offender parolees. Many lawmakers wonder if the money might be better spent on treatment.

According to several studies, treatment of sex offenders greatly reduces the recidivism rate. It’s not easy on the sex offenders and most do not like the treatment; it’s not magic and it doesn’t always work, but it helps.

There are several websites dedicated to helping individuals and family locate where sex offenders are living – that is if they have registered with the local law enforcement agency. This is a requirement of their parole, although, it is very difficult to enforce. Megan’s mom, Maureen said had she known about the sex offender living across the street she would have warned her daughter to be more careful and stay away, however, several neighbors say Mrs. Kanka knew of the sex offenders in her neighborhood, and Maureen denies this.