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Syllabus
dispositive, since a statute's location and labels do not by themselves transform a civil remedy into a criminal one. See United States v. One Assortment of 89 Firearms, 465 U. S. 354, 364-365, and n. 6. The Code of Criminal Procedure contains many other provisions that do not involve criminal punishment. The Court's conclusion is not altered by the fact that the Act's implementing procedural mechanisms require the trial court to inform the defendant of the Act's requirements and, if possible, the period of registration required. That conclusion is strengthened by the fact that, aside from the duty to register, the statute itself mandates no procedures. Instead, it vests the authority to promulgate implementing regulations with the Department of Public Safety, an agency charged with enforcing both criminal and civil regulatory laws. Also telling is the fact that the Act does not require the procedures adopted to contain any safeguards associated with the criminal process. By contemplating distinctly civil procedures, the legislature indicated clearly that it intended a civil, not a criminal, sanction. United States v. Ursery, 518 U. S. 267, 289. Pp. 92-96.
(c) Respondents cannot show, much less by the clearest proof, that the Act's effects negate Alaska's intention to establish a civil regulatory scheme. In analyzing the effects, the Court refers to the seven factors noted in Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, 372 U. S. 144, 168-169, as a useful framework. First, the regulatory scheme, in its necessary operation, has not been regarded in the Nation's history and traditions as a punishment. The fact that sex offender registration and notification statutes are of fairly recent origin suggests that the Act was not meant as a punitive measure, or, at least, that it did not involve a traditional means of punishing. Respondents' argument that the Act, particularly its notification provisions, resembles shaming punishments of the colonial period is unpersuasive. In contrast to those punishments, the Act's stigma results not from public display for ridicule and shaming but from the dissemination of accurate information about a criminal record, most of which is already public. The fact that Alaska posts offender information on the Internet does not alter this conclusion. Second, the Act does not subject respondents to an affirmative disability or restraint. It imposes no physical restraint, and so does not resemble imprisonment, the paradigmatic affirmative disability or restraint. Hudson, 522 U. S., at 104. Moreover, its obligations are less harsh than the sanctions of occupational debarment, which the Court has held to be nonpunitive. See, e. g., ibid. Contrary to the Ninth Circuit's assertion, the record contains no evidence that the Act has led to substantial occupational or housing disadvantages for former sex offenders that would not have otherwise occurred. Also unavailing is that court's assertion that the periodic update requirement imposed an affirmative disability. The
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