Jury's Out on Whether Megan's Law Is Protecting Children
Twenty years after going into effect, most Americans are not sure if Megan’s Law has actually done anything to reduce the number of children attacked by sex offenders, although they remain strongly supportive of a public registry for these criminals.
Megan’s Law, named for a young girl who was raped and murdered in New Jersey in 1994, requires anyone convicted of a child sex crime to register and have that information publicly available in their neighborhoods. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 84% of American Adults favor such a registry, consistent with findings since late 2011 following the major child sex abuse scandal at Penn State University. Only seven percent (7%) oppose such a registry. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
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The survey of 1,000 American Adults nationwide was conducted on August 7-8, 2014 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
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