An overview of Sarah's Law and its implications, for computing students.

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Implications of Sarah’s
Law
Computer Law and Ethics
Michael Heron
Denis Edgar-Nevill

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Introduction
 The process by which laws are created is not perfect.
 Special interests reign.
 Popular causes can result in disproportionate attention being paid to
some cases.
 Laws themselves may have unintended consequences.
 The enforcement of a law may result in unfortunate implications.
 Laws which do not receive large scale public consent become
unenforceable.
 At least, consistency becomes a problem.
 Today’s lecture is a case study into one specific piece of
legislation.
 Sarah’s Law.

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Sarah’s Law

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Megan’s Law
 Megan’s Law is the ‘popular’ name given to a set of laws in the
US.
 These laws require law enforcement agencies to make available
information regarding registered sex offenders.
 Megan’s Law provides two major information resources to the
public.
 Access to sex offender registrations
 Community notification when an individual moves into an area.
 The law is formally known as the Sexual Offender (Jacob
Wetterling) Act of 1994.
 Those convicted of sex crimes against children must notify law
enforcement of any change of address or employment after release.
 Requirement is usually for at least ten years, and in some cases
permanent.

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Megan’s Law
 Information commonly available to individuals includes:
 Name
 Picture
 Address
 Incarceration Date
 Nature of Crime
 The law is named for seven year old Megan Kanka.
 She was kidnapped, raped and then murdered by Jesse
Timmendequas, a violent repeat sexual offender.
 Timmendequas was found guilty and sentenced to death.
 In the time it took to enact that verdict, the state of New Jersey ended
the death penalty.
 He is now serving life without parole.

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Megan’s Law
 Megan’s parents, Richard and Maureen Kanka, began the
Megan Nicole Kanka Foundation.
 “Every parent should have the right to know if a dangerous sexual
predator moves into their neighbourhood”
 400,000 signatures were gathered on their petition.
 The federal law was passed in approximately 89 days.
 Bill first proposed by Paul Kramer in New Jersey.
 “Megan would be alive today” if the bills he proposed had been law.
 Wetterling Act amended with Megan’s Law in 1996.

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Sarah’s Law

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Sarah’s Law
 Sarah Payne was murdered on July, 2000
 She was nine years old, and murdered by Roy William Whiting.
 On 2nd of July, officers from the Sussex police visited Whiting’s
flat making inquiries into her disappearance.
 On the 17th of July, a girl’s body was found in a field some 15
miles away from the village of Kingston Gorse, where Sarah
had disappeared.
 Forensic tests confirmed the body was Sarah’s.
 Sussex Police began a murder investigation.
 Whiting was questioned about the disappearance.
 Which happened five miles from his flat.

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Sarah’s Law
 Why whiting?
 He was routinely questioned on these issues, as he had been
placed on the Sex Offenders Register.
 The officers left his flat, but were suspicious of his lack of concern.
 As compared to the concern demonstrated by other offenders
who had been questioned.
 Whiting was stopped by police after attempting to leave the
village in his van.
 He was arrested, but the police had no concrete evidence.
 They had found a receipt for fuel at Buck Barn garage near
Pulborough, which contradicted his alibi of being at a funfair.

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Sarah’s Law
 Whiting was released on bail.
 And then went to live with his father in Crawley while his flat was
searched by forensic scientists.
 No evidence was found in his flat to suggest that Sarah had
been there.
 Whiting was arrested again on the 31st of July.
 Despite the proximity of the crime (3 miles from his known location)
and his false alibi, there was still not enough evidence to press
charges.
 On the 14th of November, Whiting was brought to trial.

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The Trial of Whiting
 Several key witnesses:
 Sarah’s older brother lee (14)
 He had seen a scruffy looking man with yellowish teeth drive past a
field where he and his siblings were playing.
 He failed to pick Whiting out of an identity parade during the early
days of the investigation.
 Deborah Bray (motorist) found one of Sarah’s shoes in a country
lane several miles from where her body was found.
 And fibres from Whiting’s van were on her shoe.
 A strand of blonde hair on a t-shirt was also found in Whiting’s van.
 DNA tests put the chance of it belonging to anyone but Sarah at one
billion in one.

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Sarah’s Law
 The case is remarkable in relation to the extensive use of
forensic sciences to build the case.
 The investigation involved over a thousand people and cost more
than £2m.
 On 12th of December, Whiting was convicted of the abduction
and murder of Sarah Payne.
 He was sentenced to life imprisonment.
 The trial judge, Richard Curtis, said it was a rare case in which a life
sentence should mean life.
 This was not the first time Whiting had been convicted.

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Whiting’s First Conviction
 On the 4th of March, 1995, an eight year old girl was abducted
and sexually assaulted in Langley Green, Crawley.
 Whiting was arrested after a man who knew him came forward
after hearing the abductor drove the same kind of red Ford
Sierra as Whiting had just sold.
 Three months later, Whiting admitted charges of abduction and
indecent assault.
 He was sentenced to four years in prison.
 The maximum sentence would have been life imprisonment.
 The sentence was lighter because he admitted to the crime
early.

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Whiting’s First Conviction
 A psychiatrist who assessed
Whiting after his conviction
said he was likely to re-
offend once he was
released.
 He was released from prison
in November, 1997.
 After serving two years and
five months of his four year
sentence.
 He was one of the first
people in Britain to go on the
sex offender’s register.

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Sarah’s Law

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Sarah’s Law

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Megan’s Law

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Megan’s Law

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Megan’s Law

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Megan’s Law

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Sarah’s Law
 When the News of the World closed its doors, it said that its
campaign for the Child Sex Offender Disclosure Scheme
(CSDOS) was proof the paper was a force for good.

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Sarah’s Law
 Sarah’s Law was trialled in four police areas in 2008.
 Later extended to a further eight.
 Then rolled out across the whole of England and Wales in August
2010.
 But, what are the implications of the law?
 Both it and Megan’s law are controversial for a reason.
 The first question is – did they work?
 Did they actually increase safety of children from predators?
 It’s surprisingly difficult to say, even though it had been ‘evaluated’
 It was evaluated for ‘process’, rather than impact.

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Evaluation
 Evaluation included 61 interviews with registered sex offenders
(RSOs)
 Some had not offended against children.
 None had been ‘disclosed against’ in the process of trialing the tool.
 The evaluations can tell us little about the likely impact of ‘name
and shame’ on child sex offenders.
 Or how they would respond if their names and addresses were made
publicly known.
 The study determined "how successfully the pilots have provided
members of the public with a formal mechanism for requesting
information about individuals who have access to children and
who may have convictions for child sex offending"

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Evaluation
 The evaluation showed: 159 applicants asking for disclosure
during the covered people.
 Of those, more than 50% had been about an ex partner’s new
partner, a family member, a boyfriend, a girlfriend or a neighbour.
 The majority of these then were not aimed at ‘stranger danger’
cases.
 This is eminently understandable.
 Only about 20% of child sex assaults are committed by strangers.
 The majority are committed by someone that children know and
trust.

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Evaluation
 Would the scheme have prevented Sarah Payne from being
murdered?
 We obviously can’t say for sure, but the evidence for it is circumstantial
at best.
 Concerned neighbours may have raised suspicions in the local
community.
 And these may have prompted the parents to inquire to the police if
Whiting was a dangerous individual.
 But this doesn’t map on to the details in this case.
 Perhaps though the system has resulted in fewer children being
abducted, raped or murdered?
 There is limited evidence that it is true.

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Evaluation of Megan’s Law
 A 2009 study funded by the federal government examined the
impact of the law in New Jersey.
 ‘Cost of $5.1m in 2007 may not be justifiable’
 ‘Wide spread community support, but little evidence to date to support a
claim that Megan’s law is effective in reducing either new first time sex
offences or sexual re-offences’
 Senator Bill Baroni – ‘the study completely misses the objective of
the law’
 ‘Any attempt to use this study to weaken or erode Megan’s lal will never
succeed’
 The study found no statistically significant difference between
recidivism between those sex offenders released from jail before
or after the law was passed.

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Controversy
 Why is this law so controversial?
 Does the public actually have a right to know?
 Does this law force offenders underground?
 Does this law create an avenue for vigilantism?
 There have certainly been vigilante attacks in the US as a result
of Megan’s Law
 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/a-
vigilantes-charter-the-bitter-legacy-of-megans-law-
405254.html#
 Should a law exist if it just ‘makes people feel better’ even if there is
no evidence for its success?
 What are the advantages and disadvantages?
 You tell me!

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Conclusion
 Sarah’s Law is an example of a piece of legislation driven by
special interests.
 The input of the News of the World was instrumental in making it a
‘national issue’
 While no-one disputes the cases discussed in this lecture are
tragic, the issue at hand is on the legislation that followed in
their wake.
 Laws can be good and they can be bad.
 We talked about this quite early on.
 On what side does Sarah’s Law fall?