Handling Sexual Predators: History And Treatment Of Disturbed Individuals

9 Pages 2263 Words

from prison” and in all 50 states, “they have been made to register their addresses with law enforcement agencies, and they have had their residences and behaviors disclosed to the public” (Sample & Bray, 2003: 60). Some states introduced chemical castration and reintroduced execution as possible punishments for sex crimes (Sample & Bray, 2003). In Illinois, convicted sex offenders are now prohibited from public parks and school zones. Furthermore, currently all states mandate the “drawing of DNA samples from convicted sex offenders, so they may be housed in databanks and used by law enforcement agencies to help identify criminal suspects and enact arrests” (Sample & Bray: 2003).
In 1996, California was the first state to enact a non-voluntary chemical castration punishment for child molesters (Lynch, 2002). Those sex offenders in the especially dangerous category usually labeled “sexually violent predators, currently have a set of even more restrictive incapacitative methods aimed at them, most dramatically in the form of post-sentence detention” (Lynch, 2002: 530)
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, three specific incidents of sexual homicides against children were catalysts for much of the sex offender legislation we have today. Specifically the three main cases involved Jacob Weiterung, Polly Klaas, and Megan Kanka (Sample & Bray, 2003). Since these children were abducted the passages of certain laws and acts went into affect. For example, “in 1994, the Jacob Weiterung Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act mandated that 10% of a state’s funding under the Edward Bryne Memorial State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance grant program be used for establishing a state-wide system for registering and tracking convicted sex offenders” (Sample & Bray, 2003: 60). The Weiterung Act was soon “amended by the passage of Megan’s Law in 1996, which requires states to make sex of...