The Megan Quandary

__"Double Punishment?" by Judith Sheppard in American Journalism Review (Nov. 1997), 8701 Adelphi Rd., Adelphi, Md. 20783–1716.__

New laws that require law enforcement agencies to make public the names and addresses of convicted sex offenders are giving the news media an ethics headache. Forty-five states now have such statutes on the books; Congress adopted a federal "Megan’s Law" in 1996. The problem, writes Sheppard, who teaches journalism at Auburn University, is that while publishing the information may alert residents to potential dangers, it may also encourage vigilantism.

Harassment of sex offenders is apparently the exception rather than the rule. A 1996 study by the Washington State University Institute of Public Policy found only 33 cases of harassment in a state with more than 10,000 registered sex offenders. Yet some of the cases are serious. Neighbors torched the house of one man who was about to return home from prison. Other sex offenders have lost their jobs. The editor of one California newspaper published a list of sex offenders, only to find the name of her twice-convicted religion editor on it. She fired him.

Some journalists argue that shining a spotlight on sex offenders after they have served time is unfair. Others insist that the news media have a responsibility to expose dangerous people who are, after all, guilty of crimes. If a child molester strikes a second time, asks Philip Seib, a journalism professor at Southern Methodist University, "how do you say, ‘We had this information, and we decided not to alert the community to his presence’?"

The dangers posed by convicted offenders are hard to gauge, Sheppard notes. The oftcited estimate that 80 to 90 percent of sex offenders repeat their crime is apparently not supported by any research. The real figure is probably much lower. And most sex offenses are not committed by strangers; 90 to 95 percent involve incest or acquaintances. "Maybe that’s the kind of question a newspaper ought to ask," says Alex MacLeod, managing editor of the Seattle Times. "What danger do these people pose? I don’t know that we’ve ever tried to answer that."

Another problem that bothers editors is the accuracy of the official lists. Critics say they typically have a high rate of error, with many wrong or outdated addresses. Some newspapers now only print the names and addresses on a case-by-case basis.

In the end, the courts may spare the news media further anguish. In New Jersey—the state in which seven-year-old Megan Kanka, for whom Megan’s Law was named, was raped and murdered in 1996—the state has frozen the sex offender notification process pending a court challenge to the law. The plaintiffs: 20 convicted child molesters.