In response to widespread public concern about the release of sex offenders from prison, the Federal Government and all 50 States and the District of Columbia have passed laws collectively referred to as "community notification statutes" that authorize or require communities where such offenders will live to be notified of their arrival. The common goal of these statutes is to prevent sexual victimization by notifying potential victims that a convicted sex offender lives nearby.
To law enforcement and the public, sexual assaults, and especially the sexual assaults of young children, are a major social concern. Caretakers worry about such attacks when their children are out of sight. Law enforcement, child protective services, and legislatures work to reduce the incidence of these crimes. However, while a few highly publicized incidents are engraved in the public's consciousness, there is little empirically-based information on these crimes. Until recently, law enforcement and policymakers had few hard facts on which to base their response to these crimes, their victims, and their offenders.
July 1, 2000 NCJ 182990
Presents findings from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) regarding sexual assault, especially of young children. The data are based on reports from law enforcement agencies of 12 States and covers the years 1991 through 1996. The report presents sexual assault in 4 categories: forcible rape, forcible sodomy, sexual assault with an object, and forcible fondling. Findings include statistics on the incidence of sexual assault, the victims, their offenders, gender, response to these crimes, locality, time of incident, the levels of victim injury, victims' perceptions of offenders' ages, and victim-offender relationships, and other detailed characteristics.
Group items tagged 
