Sex Offender Law and the Geography of Victimization

Sex offender laws that target recidivism (e.g., community notification and residency restriction regimes) are premised—at least in part—on the idea that sex offender proximity and victimization risk are positively correlated. We examine this relationship by combining past and current address information of registered sex offenders ( RSO s) with crime data from B altimore C ounty, M aryland, to study how crime rates vary across neighborhoods with different concentrations of resident RSO s. Contrary to the assumptions of policymakers and the public, we find that, all else equal, reported sex offense victimization risk is generally (although not uniformly) lower in neighborhoods where more RSO s live. To further probe the relationship between where RSO s live and where sex crime occurs, we consider whether public knowledge of the identity and proximity of RSO s may make offending in those areas more difficult for (or less attractive to) all potential sex offenders. We exploit the fact that M aryland's registry became searchable via the Internet during our sample period to investigate how laws that publicly identify RSO s may change the relationship between the residential concentration of RSO s and neighborhood victimization risk. Surprisingly, for some categories of sex crime, notification appears to increase the relative risk of victimization in neighborhoods with greater concentrations of RSO s.