Supplemental Credit--Sex Offender Registries

WHAT:   Examine research on sex offender registries
WORTH:  Up to 15 points
DUE:    Tuesday, April 2   
LENGTH: In at least four or five pages:

In class, the instructor suggested that, according to most research,
 sex offender registries to not keep us safer. Yet, politicians and the 
majority of the public believe they do.  

Read the following two articles:
A. Agan: "Sex Offender Registries"
Keri Burchfield: Sex Offender Registries - An Environmental Injustice?

Then, in ESSAY (not point-by-point) format, address the following:

1) What's at stake in the debates over sex offender registries?

2) What are the benefits and what are the down-sides?

3) If sex offender registeries "don't work," what is the rationale
for keeping them and making them even tougher?

4) If you were a politician writing new legislation for sex offender
registries, what points would you include in it to either reduce
the scope or increase the scope of monitoring "sex offenders?"

Return to Jim Thomas's homepage