ABSTRACT
Social movement organizations (SMOs) have emerged across the country to change sex offender registration and notification (SORN) legislation, called anti-SORN SMOs in this study. These policies mandate that individuals charged with a sex crime have to periodically register with the police in order to provide their personal information and photograph. Police departments then put this information on an Internet-based registry for the public to view. By having this information viewable to the public, registrants have been subjected to harassment and isolation and have also lost employment and housing (Tewksbury, 2005). The resulting consequences also extend to registrants’ family members (Levenson & Tewksbury, 2009). It is these unintended consequences that most often motivate offenders and their family members to organize for change.
