Modern state and federal legislation relating to sexual offending and registration arose from a uniting in the late 1980s of the “tough on crime” movement and a widespread, if ill-founded, belief that sexual predators were lurking behind every tree. During the two decades that followed, all 50 states and many sovereign tribes enacted sex offender registries. Legislatures also increased the number and type of sex crimes requiring registration, imposed residency restrictions, created harsher sentences for such crimes, and increased penalties for failure to register. The expansion of registration requirements led to bloated registries. Some states, including Oregon, have tried to address the obvious drawbacks of large registries by finding ways for low-risk registrants to exit the registry. At the federal level, however, there has been no similar reassessment of these laws.
Read about Oregon and U.S. legislation related to sex offenses in the following pages.
Timeline
A timeline is being developed to correlate the timing of federal and Oregon laws relating to registration for sex crimes. Watch this page for future updates.