ABSTRACT
The area of sexual offenders in corrections law has generated a great deal of interest among states and has already produced interesting court decisions. The impetus for these cases started with the passage of the so-called Megan’s laws in the early 1990s. Megan Kanka was a seven-year-old New Jersey girl who was killed in 1994 by a juvenile, the son of neighbors who were friends of her family. The juvenile killer had a previous record of sexual assault, but that was not known to Megan’s parents because at that time the laws of New Jersey and other states prohibited the disclosure of such records to anyone, including neighbors or law enforcement officers. Megan’s killing caused a national outcry because the parents claimed that had they been informed or known of the killer’s sexual assault record the killing would not have taken place. It resonated with the public that had long felt that confidentiality of juvenile records protected the offender more than the public. By 1996, every state in the United States and the federal government had enacted a variation of Megan’s law.
