Meredith Allison, associate professor of psychology, Erin Martin '16, and collaborator Sandy Jung from MacEwan University presented their research at the annual meeting of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers in Orlando, Florida.
Meredith Allison, associate professor of psychology, Erin Martin ’16, and collaborator Sandy Jung (MacEwan University) presented their research at the annual meeting of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers in Orlando, Florida.
Their work was titled “Community perceptions of sex offender registries: A cross-cultural comparison”. They described people’s views of sex offender registries (SORs) and made comparisons between students and community members, as well as Canadians and Americans. The country comparison was examined because while SORs are publicly available in the U.S., they are available only to law enforcement in Canada.
The authors found that participants’ views were largely commensurate with their countries policies. For example, more Americans felt that SORs should be publicly available than Canadians. Americans were also more aware of the SORs, realistic about their function and less negative about sex offenders in general. Community members were more aware of SORs than students but were less convinced that SORs help to reduce crime.
Future research will examine legal decision-makers’ views of SORs.