Document Type

Working Paper

Publication Date

1-15-2005

SSRN Discipline

PSN Subject Matter eJournals; LSN Subject Matter eJournals; Constitutional Law, Jurisprudence & Legal Philosophy eJournals; Political Behavior eJournals; Legal Scholarship Network; PRN Subject Matter eJournals; Criminal Law & Procedure eJournals; Philosophy Research Network; Law School Research Papers - Legal Studies; Law & Society eJournals; Law & Society: Private Law eJournals; Law & Society: Public Law eJournals; Law School Research Papers - Public Law & Legal Theory; Political Institutions eJournals; Humanities Network; Political Science Network

Abstract

In the last decade of the twentieth century every state adopted a new criminal offender community notification law While critics challenged these provisions on a number of grounds one potential consequential cost of these laws received no attention the possibility that they might disparately impose their significant burdens on racial minorities and particularly AfricanAmericans This article breaks this silence about race and Megans Laws establishing that community notification provisions do have a significantly disparate racial impact Using newly gathered statistical data across multiple jurisdictions it shows that AfricanAmericans are overrepresented on these public registries of criminals It considers how the contours of these provisions may promote this result and also explores why this disparity is consequentialMoving from an empirical study of these provisions the article then investigates the reasons why race concerns never surfaced in the community notification debates Given the centrality of racial critiques in the criminal law literature one might have expected legislators advocates or at least scholars to have investigated this issue previously The article suggests several reasons for this remarkable silence including the narrow scope of equal protection doctrine failures of legislatures to demand transparency about race social phenomena such as moral panics and availability cascades and the framing of Megans Laws as an answer to whiteonwhite crime It then offers suggestions for doctrinal legislative and scholarly moves that increase the transparency of race issues exposing them to fuller democratic debate

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