register with the police, or they are considered to be breaking the law and will be arrested (Reno 2)."The general objective of the Act is to protect people from child molesters and sexually violent predators through registration requirements. It is not intended to, and does not have the effect of, making states less free than they were under prior law to impose registration requirements for this purpose ( Reno 10)." The act itself provides that, if a person required to register is let out of jail then the officer responsible for him must obtain the registration information and send it to the registration agency also within three days of receiving it ( Reno 2). Some states assign the duty of getting the information that the child molester or sexually violent predator to either probation officers or parole officers ( Reno 3).Although there were strong controversial debates over the law, a new law was signed on May 17, 1996 by President William Clinton requiring states to adopt a system of notifying the public of the whereabouts of sex crime offenders or child molesters by September of 1997, but it leaves it up to the states to establish their own form of notification ( Mader 1). " First states that wish to achieve compliance with the Jacob Wetterling Act should understand that its Butler and Roos 4requirements constitute a floor for state registration systems, not a ceiling, and that they do not risk the loss of part of their Bryne Formula Grant funding by going beyond its standards ( Reno 10)." The Jacob Wetterling Act says that sex crime offenders must register with the police, while Megans Law, a provision of this Act, says that sex crime offenders must register with both the police and the community (Bai 1). For example, a state might have a registration system that covers a broader class of sex crime offenders than those identified in the Jacob Wetterling Act, requires verification for other such offenders at more frequent inte...
