P.L. 109-248 “Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act of 2006” The Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), also known as Title I of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act 2006, was signed into law by President George W. Bush on July 27, 2006 in recognition of the abduction and murder of Adam Walsh, a six-year-old boy, exactly twenty-five years prior. According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the policy’s intent is to “protect the public from sex offenders and offenders against children” (Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, 2006). It targets criminals who have committed offenses of a sexual nature, by requiring them to register as sex offenders so they can be monitored, and their information shared
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This enabled sex offenders to cross state boundaries without being tracked. SORNA was created in an attempt to close the loopholes sex offenders were believed to be using to prey on their victims and elude the authorities. Prior to SORNA, different states included various crimes as sex offenses, which meant sex offenders could “jurisdiction shop” to decide where to commit their offense depending on the punishment and benefit from the irregularities between state registries (Malcolm, 2012). SORNA alleviated this issue as it categorized all sex offenses into three tiers based on sentencing guidelines, aggravating circumstances, the age of the victim, the previous criminal history of the offender, and other factors. The tier-system determined the length registration was required, the amount of times the offender’s address needed to be verified each year, and the amount of information available to the public online about the offender (Zgoba et al., 2015). It was the first type of standardization to apply to sex offenders across the United States. The lack of consistency about who should register, the inability to track and monitor sex offenders sufficiently, and the demand from the public to know if sex offenders were living in their area so as to protect themselves, led to SORNA to address the gaps and limitations of prior
This enabled sex offenders to cross state boundaries without being tracked. SORNA was created in an attempt to close the loopholes sex offenders were believed to be using to prey on their victims and elude the authorities. Prior to SORNA, different states included various crimes as sex offenses, which meant sex offenders could “jurisdiction shop” to decide where to commit their offense depending on the punishment and benefit from the irregularities between state registries (Malcolm, 2012). SORNA alleviated this issue as it categorized all sex offenses into three tiers based on sentencing guidelines, aggravating circumstances, the age of the victim, the previous criminal history of the offender, and other factors. The tier-system determined the length registration was required, the amount of times the offender’s address needed to be verified each year, and the amount of information available to the public online about the offender (Zgoba et al., 2015). It was the first type of standardization to apply to sex offenders across the United States. The lack of consistency about who should register, the inability to track and monitor sex offenders sufficiently, and the demand from the public to know if sex offenders were living in their area so as to protect themselves, led to SORNA to address the gaps and limitations of prior