Law Enforcement Perspectives on Sex Offender Registration and Notification Preliminary Survey Results

• NCJ Number: 249189
• Author(s): Andrew J. Harris; Chris Lobanov-Rostovsky; Jill S. Levenson
• Date Published: May 2015
• Length: 30 pages
• Grant Number(s): 2013-IJ-CX-0028
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Survey; Report (Study/Research); Report (Grant Sponsored)
• Award: Understanding Law Enforcement Perspectives on Sex Offender Registration and Notification

Annotation

Findings are presented from a 2015 online survey that constituted the second part of a two-phase national study of the perspectives of law enforcement personnel on the functions, utility, and operation of sex offender registration and notification systems in the United States.

Abstract

The study's first phase involved a series of semi-structured interviews conducted in 2014 with 105 law enforcement professionals in five States and two tribal jurisdictions. The survey items for the study's second phase were based on themes, experiences, and perspectives derived from those interviews. Participants were invited to complete the survey via targeted email outreach, using a nationwide commercial list of 8,840 police chiefs and command staff and a list of 2,921 county sheriffs obtained from the National Sheriffs Association. A total of 1,247 of those contacted completed the final battery of survey items. The sample included representation from 49 States and the District of Columbia. The final survey item asked for respondents' opinion on priorities for State and Federal policies for the management of sex offenders in the community. The highest priority for the greatest percentage of respondents (63 percent) was to expand penalties for non-compliance with registration requirements, followed by high priority for more aggressive prosecution of non-compliance (61.7 percent); expansion of probation and parole supervision (60.4 percent); dedicate funding to registration enforcement (51.5 percent); improvement in the integration of the registry with other criminal justice information systems (50.4 percent); improvement in classification systems (46.9 percent); and an increase in sexual violence prevention education (45.6 percent). The wording of each survey item is reported, along with responses received for each item. Extensive tables and figures