As Doug Berman notes, the Federal Sentencing Reporter issue dedicated to sex offender issues is out. You can find the details here. I was honored to be one of the contributors and as I noted I have also made my piece available on SSRN. Here is the entire list of articles in the issue:
- Michael O’Hear, Perpetual Panic
- Mary Ann Farkas & Gale Miller, Sex Offender Treatment: Reconciling Criminal Justice Priorities and Therapeutic Goals
- Ian N. Friedman & Kristina W. Supler, Child Pornography Sentencing: The Road Here and the Road Ahead
- Eric S. Janus & Robert A. Prentky, Sexual Predator Laws: A Two-Decade Retrospective
- Mary Graw Leary, Kennedy v. Louisiana: A Chapter of Subtle Changes in the Supreme Court’s Book on the Death Penalty
- Joseph L. Lester, Brandishing the Mark of Cain: Defects in the Adam Walsh Act
- Michael Petrunik, Lisa Murphy, & J. Paul Fedoroff, American and Canadian Approaches to Sex Offenders: A Study of the Politics of Dangerousness
- Richard G. Wright, From Wetterling to Walsh: The Growth of Federalization in Sex Offender Policy
- Corey Rayburn Yung, The Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act and the Commerce Clause
Legislators who wish to respond to strong public sentiment but who are troubled by the track record of statutes adopted in times of panic should consider a legislative device that reverses the forces of legislative inertia: the sunset provision. When adopted, new criminal penalties can be set to expire within a given period of time. The history of the crack panic, as well as the earlier sex crime panics, suggests that ten years may be an ideal period of time to permit public passions to subside. A decade should also be a good amount of time to permit rigorous evaluation of the effectiveness of new laws. For instance, as Janus and Prentky point out in this issue, the spread of civil commitment laws was rapid in the 1990s but slowed dramatically this decade as the fiscal burdens of commitment became clearer.84 In the current budgetary climate, one wonders how many state legislatures would now be happy to see civil commitments die out quietly under the terms of a judicious sunset provision. To be sure, in the panic atmosphere, a sunset provision may be criticized as watering down the legislature’s condemnation of whatever class of offense or offenders is being targeted. On the other hand, the adoption of a sunset does not necessarily mean there will be a weakening of the legal response to the subject of current public outrage. Indeed, if public concern remains high over an extended period of time and analysis shows that tough penal responses are helpful, then the imminent expiration of one set of penalties may actually facilitate the enactment of even higher penalties. But, if public concern wanes or penal responses are shown to be ineffective, it should be made as easy as possible to redirect scarce criminal justice resources in more fruitful directions.
I wanted to thank Berman and O'Hear for inviting me to take part in the issue. I think all of the articles look really interesting and I look forward to reading them.
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