The Public Safety Impact of Community Notification Laws

Abstract

Sex offender management is one of the highest-profile issues in public safety today. Although states have enacted community notification laws as a means to protect communities from sexual offending, limited research has been conducted to examine the impact of these laws on public safety. As such, this study used a quasi-experimental design to examine the relationship, if any, between community notification legislation and sex offender rearrest. Sex offenders who were subject to community notification ( n = 10,592, 61.7%) were compared to sex offenders who were not subject to community notification requirements ( n = 6,573, 38.3%). Results indicate that sex offenders subject to community notification were rearrested twice as quickly (for a sexual offense) and 47% more quickly (for a nonsexual offense) than those not subject to community notification. The findings yield implications for sex offender interventions and public policies and suggest that notification may not be an effective strategy for significantly reducing sexual offenses.