Reports on Sex Offense & Offender Policies

Links to significant reports and research on sex offense laws, sex offender registries and notification laws, and reforms

Building a Service Line to Support Incarcerated Survivors of Sexual Abuse, Urban Institute (June 2024)

Responding to Crimes of a Sexual Nature: What We Really Want Is No More Victims, Sentencing Project (January 2024)

Sex Exceptionalism in Criminal Law by Aya Gruber, 75 Stanford L. Rev. 755 (2023)

Registering Youth in the Sunshine State: A Report on Florida's Harmful Sex Offender Registration Laws by Vic F. Wiener, Juvenile Law Center (October 2022)

The effectiveness of Sex Offender Registration and Notification: A meta-analysis of 25 years of findings by Kristen M. Zgoba and Meghan M. Mitchell, Journal of Experimental Criminology (September 2021)

Civil Commitment of People Convicted of Sex Offenses in the United States by Trevor Hoppe, Ilan H. Meyer, Scott De Orio, Stefan Vogler, and Megan Armstrong, The Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law (October 2020)

Labeled for Life: A Review of Youth Sex Offender Registration Laws, Juvenile Law Center (August 2020)

NACDL Comments on Proposed Revisions to Sexual Assault and Related Provisions of the Model Penal Code (March 2016)

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The Reentry of Adults Convicted of Sexual Offenses: A National Survey of Reentry Professionals, Council of State Governments Justice Center (February 2015)

Raised on the Registry: The Irreparable Harm of Placing Children on Sex Offender Registries in the US, Human Rights Watch (May 2013)

Sex Offender Exceptionalism and Preventive Detention, by Corey Rayburn Yung, 101 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 969 (2011)

'Redemption’ in the Presence of Widespread Criminal Background Checks, Alfred Blumstein and Kiminori Nakamura, NIJ Journal (May 2009)

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A Reasoned Approach: Reshaping Sex Offender Policy To Prevent Child Sexual Abuse, by Joan Tabachnick and Alisa Klein, Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers (April 2011)

Report of Gabriel Myers Work Group On Child-on-Child Sexual AbuseFlorida Department of Children and Families (May 2010)

Megan's Law: Assessing the Practical and Monetary Efficacy, New Jersey Department of Corrections, (December 2008)

Registering Harm: How Sex Offense Registries Fail Youth Communities, Justice Policy Institute (November 2008)

The Influence Of Sex Offender Registration And Notification Laws In The United States by Bob Edward Vásquez, Sean Maddan, and Jeffery T. Walker, 54 Crime and Delinquency 175 (2008) (finding that sex offender legislation seems to have had no uniform and observable influence on the number of rapes reported in the states analyzed)

No Easy Answers - Sex Offender Laws in the US, Human Rights Watch (September 2007) (details evidence of the harm caused to people subject to this country's various sex offender laws, including the Adam Walsh Act’s registration requirements)