Feb 26, 2007 3:02 pm US/Eastern
Lawmakers Want Effectiveness Study Of Megan's Law
TRENTON (CBS/AP) ―
The sponsor of a bill that created New Jersey's sex offender registry and community notification law on Monday asked his fellow senators to sign off on an extensive study of Megan's Law, more than a decade after the law was enacted.
The study, to be undertaken by the Violence Institute at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, would examine the effectiveness of the law requiring convicted sex offenders to tell authorities their whereabouts so residents can be notified when one lives nearby.
Sen. John Girgenti, D-Hawthorne, who sponsored the original Megan's Law bill in 1994, said it's time to look at the law's track record.
"Some information was brought to our attention that maybe it has not been uniformly applied throughout the state," Girgenti said. "We want to check it out to make sure that is not the case."
The registration requirement, known as Megan's Law, was enacted after a 7-year-old Hamilton Township girl, Megan Kanka, was killed in 1994 by a sex offender who lived in her neighborhood. It was enacted in 1994, and amended later to add an Internet-based offender registry.
The proposed study would:
-- Examine whether the law is applied uniformly by all 21 counties.
-- Recommend ways to standardize methods to determine an offender's risk of re-offense.
-- Ensure community notification standards are being met.
-- Determine whether the Internet registry is useful to the public.
-- Decide whether a central agency should oversee Megan's Law and the determination of which offenders' names should appear on the registry.
A December report on Megan's Law by the state Administrative Office of the Courts showed that the posting of sex offenders' names, addresses and photos on a state police Web site varies greatly among the 21 counties.
For example, the report showed more than 40 percent of the sex offenders in Atlantic and Cape May counties are on the Internet registry while less than 10 percent of the offenders in Morris and Passaic counties are posted.
The Internet posting applies only to offenders who are judged likely to commit another crime. There are nearly 11,000 registered offenders in the state, about 2,000 of whom are imprisoned. Of the estimated 8,800 that remain, many are not considered likely to commit another crime, so less than one-fourth of them appear on the Web site.
The state Public Defender's Office, which has challenged the law several times, says it would embrace a comprehensive review of the statute's fairness and effectiveness.
"We welcome any kind of review of the law that will lead to improvement in its implementation," said Assistant Public Defender Michael Buncher. "We just hope that the work that's going to be done will continue to emphasize that the bottom line for improving public safety is rehabilitation -- to the extent possible -- of people who have committed a sexual offense."
Monday marks the first public airing of the proposal, which was introduced in the Senate late last month. There is currently no similar proposal in the Assembly.
(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
