David Nevin

Cj Ethics

November 16, 2016

Policy Paper- Megans Law

On July 29th, 1994 Megan Kanka, a seven year old, was raped and

murdered by Jesse Timmendequas a 33 year old man who lived across the

street from her in New Jersey. Jesse, who had two previous convictions on

sexual assaults against young girls, was arrested the next day. He confessed

to the police that day and told them how he had raped Megan and then

strangled her with his belt. There was many pieces of evidence against him

including bite marks that matched Megans teeth on his hand. He was

convicted of multiple charges including kidnapping, aggravated sexual

assault, and felony murder and was later sentenced to the death penalty,

even though that was later changed to life in prison without the possibility of

parole.(1997). The reason that this case became famous is because Megans

parents began a campaign to change the laws in their state with the sex

offender registry. At that time the police had records and registry of where

sex offenders lives and what their crimes were, but that information was for

police only, and the public did not know about any of it. The change that the

movement, spearheaded by Megans parents, wanted was that the public

would have access to who in their neighborhoods were sex offenders and

when they moved into the neighborhood. This bill became known as
Megans law and was passed just a short time after her death by the state of

New Jersey and later nationally. Each state is allowed to set how much

information they want to give out to the public and what set tier of sexual

offenders information would be released to the public.(2014). Megans

parents and the others in their campaign for this law said that they felt like

only having the police know about the sex offenders in their neighborhoods

was not enough crime prevention and that if that had known about the

criminal history of the man who had lived across the street from them then

their daughter would still be alive.

The teleological theory states that even a bad act can be defined as

good in this theory if the result is good. The best example of this theory is

the statement the ends justify the means. The teleological theory unlike

other theories does not focus as much on what act is committed, but instead

on the outcome and results of that act. The popular example used for this

theory is the dirty Harry example, where in a movie an officer had to injure

an offender so that he could find the location of the missing girl. People who

believe in this theory will say that it is acceptable to do actions like this if it

gets the results that it needs in certain situations. Those people would say

that it is acceptable to go outside of the rules and the law to get the

information that was needed to try and go save this little girl. This approach

is all about doing what is necessary in order to get the result that is needed.

In most cases the bad act that could be committed in this theory would be
immoral, but if it is for a good reason and has a good outcome in this

approach it would be seen as moral. (Pollock 2014).

A second ethical theory is the ethics of care. The ethics of care theory

is based upon the needs of people and caring about those needs. On Page

39 Pollock describes how the ethics of care is sometimes seen as a feminine

morality because women are seen as the ones who have a higher care

approach than men. This system is all about caring about people and what is

best for the people in different groups. It looks at what are the needs of the

people that are in situations and then will look for what the best possible

approach to a problem would be with keeping those needs in mind so that

the outcome would benefit those people. It is all about caring in this theory

and those who support and use this theory say that caring is the most

important thing that needs to be done when ethics and morality are

concerned and by keeping in mind the needs of the people who are affected

by different things and actually caring about the outcomes the best

approaches will be used and the hopefully the best possible outcomes will be

reached.

Both of these theories can be applied to Megans law and the affects

and impact that it had on society and the criminal justice system as a whole.

The teleological theory is one that most people who support Megans Law

will use when they are trying to justify the ethics or morality of the law. They

will say the ends of this bill justify the means in which is occurs. In most

cases it is not ethical or morally right to put a former criminals information

out to the public. For every other offense the public does not get notified

when a former criminal is moving into their neighborhood, give the public

their name, address, and crimes committed. However using the teleological

theory people would look at the end and think about Megan Kanka and how if

the public knows this information about sex offenders then they have a

chance to keep themselves, but more importantly their children safe.

Supporters of the bill will say that they are alright with the infringement of

the civil rights of these sex offenders if it can keep their children safe and

away from these offenders. They will say that it is okay with them if flyers

get posted around neighborhoods, which they do in a lot of these cases, that

display the face and crime of the offender for all to see, if it keeps children

safe and aware of sex offenders in their city or town then they are okay with

it.

The other ethical theory that can be applied to Megans Law is the

ethics of care. The ethics of care is all about simply just knowing peoples

needs and caring about them and those needs. People can take that theory

and apply it to Megans Law. People who are in favor of this law will say that

this is one of their main theories that they use when thinking about the

ethics and morality of the law. People will say that this law is a good thing

and is needed because they look at the needs of children and the public

cares about the children and they want to have law that have the needs of

children in mind. They will say that Megans law is acceptable and a good

thing because it can help children and parents of the children keep them safe
if they know where potential predators may be. Especially when the bill was

being passed into a law the ethics of car was the main ethical theory that

was being demonstrated. Every time the bill was talked about Law makers

and Megans parents talked about how if this law was in place earlier than

she would have still been alive. When people say thing like that and

demonstrate those emotions on a bill it cuts deep to the morality of caring

that people have. It made people think about their own children and how

parents would do anything to protect them. When people look at the needs

of children and how much they care about the children and what they would

do to protect the innocence of children law like this one get passed and set

into action in states because it is looked at as a way to care about and

protect children as well as their families from harm.

There are people that are both for this law and those who are against

it. Those who are against it will say that the law infringes upon the civil

rights of these offenders by letting the entire community know about their

crime and where they live after they have served their time. Some say that

it never lets people that have to register as sex offenders move on from their

crime and try to become a normal part of society again after they serve their

legal punishments. Opponents of the law also say that things like this can

lead to vigilante justice against the people on the list. Proponents of the law

say that they are alright with infringing on the rights of sex offenders.

They will point different studies done, like the one done by Cotter and

Levenson in 2005 that showed only a rare number of offenders had physical
attacks on after they are registered and many of them are not assaulted,

that this argument by the opposition does not hold. They will also say that if

it keeps children safer they have no problem with the information of

offenders being released for the public. In their minds when they think about

it, if the rights of a thousand sex offenders are compromised, but it saves the

life of just one child, or it saves them from being the victim of a sexual

assault it is justified. The thinking of many that are for the law when those

opposed it say it is too harsh on the offenders by publicly shaming them is to

not be a sex offender and then they wouldnt have any problem. The reason

that Megans law was put into place was so that communities could try to

prevent the atrocities that happened to the Kanka family and try to help

prevent them from happening again. When law makers looked at the public

outcry from this instance they knew that they had to do something. Ethically

Megans law is justified with the teleological and the ethics of care theories.

People believe that in order to keep people safe from sexual predators this is

one of the things that needs to be done. The general public believes that the

ends justify the means in this case and that when looking at the children of

our society people are willing to keep them pure and innocent and by

knowing when offenders are in their communities this os one way that

children and their families can be safe in their own neighborhoods so that

what happened to Megan Kanka in 1994 does not occur again because the

parents didnt know what kind of person was living across the street from

them.
Citations
 CNN Retrieved November, 2016, from

http://www.cnn.com/US/9705/30/megan.kanka

Klaas Kids Primary Menu. (n.d.). Retrieved November , 2016, from

http://klaaskids.org/megans-law/

Levenson, J. S. (2005). The Effect of Megan's Law on Sex Offender

Reintegration. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 21

Pollock, J. M. (2007). Ethical dilemmas and decisions in criminal justice.

Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth.