Sex Offender Registration and Community Notification Challenges: The Supreme Court Continues Its Trend

All states and the District of Columbia have passed sex offender registration and community notification laws. While the specific provisions of these statutes vary, all have public safety as a primary goal. The authors discuss two recent cases heard by the United States Supreme Court that challenged the constitutionality of Alaska’s and Connecticut’s statutes. The laws were challenged as violations of the United States Constitution’s prohibition on ex post facto laws and its Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of procedural due process. In both cases, the statutes were upheld. As it has found in challenges to sexually violent predator statutes, the Court emphasized that the registration and community notification schemes are civil and not criminal in nature. The article concludes with a discussion of possible implications for clinicians involved in evaluating or treating sex offenders. J Am Acad Psychiatry Law 31:494–501, 2003 Since 1990, mandatory sex offender registration and community notification laws have become ubiqui-tous. These laws resulted, in large part, from public outrage at shocking crimes committed by sex offend-ers who were living in communities in anonymity. Two cases in particular provided the momentum for many of these statutes. The first involved a crime that was never solved. On October 22, 1989, Jacob Wet-terling, an 11-year-old boy, was returning home from a convenience store in Minnesota with his brother and friend when an armed masked man ap-proached all three children. The gunman instructed Jacob’s brother and friend to run into the woods. As the two fled, they briefly observed the stranger grab-bing Jacob’s arm. During the ensuing investigation, a background check of possible suspects showed that nearly 300 known sex offenders were living in the four-county area around Jacob’s home. This infor-mation, previously unknown to the community, outraged the public. Although neither Jacob nor the perpetrator was ever located, Jacob’s disappearance resulted in Con