Revisiting Sex Offender Registration and Notification: Does Awareness Differ Across Community Type?

Abstract

In recent decades, sex offender registry and notification has become ubiquitous across the United States. Although researchers have attempted to evaluate the awareness of registered sex offenders, much of this work has had a nearly unilateral focus on urban communities. In response, researchers have called for further investigation into whether awareness manifests differently across community type (suburban and urban). To address this question, we draw from two data sets. The first data set contains property data for single-family households sold in 2015 from a suburban county in Illinois and an urban county in Kentucky. The second data set consists of survey responses from 113 suburban and 171 urban county residents within 1,000 feet of the nearest sex offender that was delivered via a sequential mixed-mode design. In addition, we investigate whether awareness manifests differently across community type through a number of predictors (e.g., children in the household, education) and potential theoretical explanations (fear of crime, informal social control, and social cohesion). We find that community types do have differing levels of awareness and that varying levels of social cohesion may explain this difference. Implications are also discussed.