For over 80 years, policies have been enacted to prevent justice-involved individuals who perpetrated sexual offenses from sexually reoffending. While the US and Canada started on a similar policy path, both countries took distinct policy path since the 1990s. While American policies have been focused on the containment and neutralization of risk, Canadian policies reaffirmed the importance of rehabilitation embedded in a risk-management approach. Against the backdrop of about 80 years of policies aimed at preventing sexual recidivism, there has been very little effort to monitor the evolution of sexual recidivism rates, including what recidivism rates look like after significant policy changes. The findings stemming from a systematic and meta-analysis of Canadian (k = 186; n = 55,671) and American (k = 369; n = 333,323) recidivism studies conducted between 1940 and 2019 will be presented and contextualized. The rise and fall of sexual recidivism rates over time and across two waves of sex offender laws will be discussed.