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#Megan s Law Resources by State

Megan's Law is the common term for state laws that create and maintain a sex offender registry that makes information on registered sex offenders available to the public. The first Megan's Law appeared after the rape and murder of seven year-old New Jersey resident Megan Kanka by a sex offender who lived in the girl's neighborhood. Soon after the passage of this first Megan's Law, the federal government implemented requirement that all states establish sex offender registries and provide the public with information about the registered offenders.

While each state's version of Megan's Law differs slightly, they all require some form of sex offender registration and community notification. The information that states typically collect about the sex offenders includes: the offender's name, address, picture and the nature of their crime. States publish this information on freely available web sites that the public can query in many different way.

The list below contains links to each state's official Megan's Law web site. Follow the links below for access to your state's sex offender registry and information on the operation of your state's version of the law.