Megan’s law may not have had much of an impact

Phase one of the federally funded NJ study of the effectiveness of Megan’s Law is complete and the results are interesting.

A declining trend of sex attacks on children began before the law took effect and has continued, raising the suggestion that New Jersey’s Megan’s Law – one of the first laws of its kind in the nation – may not have influenced the trend, researchers say.

“We don’t know whether Megan’s Law really works,” said Witt [a consultant on the study], who helped create the risk-assessment system used by New Jersey’s courts to classify sex offenders.

“Just a few studies have looked at whether community notification laws are effective,” he said. “I believe they have very little effect.”

The first phase charted sex offenses in the decade before 1994 and the decade after.

Researchers said they were surprised to find that a steady decline in sex crimes across New Jersey had begun in 1991 – three years before Megan’s Law.

Sex offenses against children have also declined since Megan’s Law was enacted, but there has been no way to know whether that’s because of the law.

“Sex-offender rates are down, and we can’t attribute it to Megan’s Law,” said Kristen Zgoba, a Corrections Department researcher leading the study. “Is it worth the amount of money and manpower we’re pouring into it?”

Nationally, sex offenses against children fell 49 percent between 1990 and 2004, according to the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. Meanwhile, the broad category of violent crime in the United States also plunged, according to government figures.

If only more states were to conduct such a study, so we can get a better idea of whether Megan’s Law does lead to reduction in crime. I suspect that even if there is a decline that can be attributed to Megan’s Law, it will be negligible.