More than 1,000 courts in several states allow private companies to oversee probation, often with little oversight or regulation, according to a new report from the non-profit Human Rights Watch. The report describes “abusive” financial practices inflicted by the “offender-funded” model of privatized probation. The findings are primarily derived from more than 75 interviews conducted with people in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi. Private probation companies supervise people who are on probation for minor offenses, collecting outstanding debts and court costs. They often add on their own fees — for items such…
Read MoreYear: 2014
Twisting Sexual-Assault Statistics
It is estimated that one in five women on college campuses has been sexually assaulted during their time there — one in five,” President Obama said on Wednesday. The occasion for this lecture: He was announcing the creation of a White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault. It’s a startlingly high number that figured prominently in the leads of media reports on the announcement. As NRO contributor Heather Mac Donald pointed out the last time the administration bandied it about, if it were true it would mean that women at…
Read MoreVA: Judge orders former Stafford teen’s name removed from sex offender registry, vacates sentence
Circuit Judge Jane Marum Roush on Monday ordered former Stafford County teen ____ ____’s name removed from the state’s Sex Offender Registry and vacated the convictions that put him there. The order resulted from Roush’s ruling that court-appointed attorney Denise Rafferty failed to provide effective assistance of counsel to Coker in 2007 as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Since January 2009, a team of attorneys with the Innocence Project at the University of Virginia School of Law, the law school’s Child Advocacy Clinic and JustChildren/Legal Aid of Charlottesville has been working…
Read MoreSexual assaults by US military in Japan unlikely to end in prison
At US military bases in Japan, most service members found culpable in sex crimes in recent years did not go to prison, according to internal Department of Defence documents. Instead, in a review of hundreds of cases filed in America’s largest overseas military installation, offenders were fined, demoted, restricted to their bases or removed from the military. Full Article
Read MoreScalia Says Internment Ruling Could Happen Again
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told law students at the University of Hawaii on Monday that the nation’s highest court was wrong to uphold the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, but he wouldn’t be surprised if the court issued a similar ruling during a future conflict. Scalia was responding to a question about the court’s 1944 decision in Korematsu v. United States, which upheld the convictions of Gordon Hirabayashi and Fred Korematsu for violating an order to report to an internment camp. “Well of course Korematsu was…
Read MoreKY: Sex-offender registry misguided thinking
I am a sex offender. I know well the tremendous power of those words. In 2007, I pled guilty to possession of child pornography. Nothing here is meant to defend what I did or to minimize the gravity of my actions. I had a major problem with pornography, and I was far too deep in denial and too scared to reach out to anyone. Full Op-Ed Piece Related: RSO Registered sex offender wants permission to practice law
Read MoreNV: County to charge inmates for food, doctor
ELKO — Between food, services, housing and utilities, taxpayers are footing a bill of about $85 per day for each inmate locked in the Elko County Jail, according to Sheriff Jim Pitts. With a jail population that’s almost constantly at the facility’s 120 inmate capacity, lock-up expenses add up to more than $10,000 per day and millions of dollars each year, according to Pitts’ estimation. But the sheriff has proposed shifting a portion of those costs onto the inmates. The county commission on Wednesday wholly supported the idea, which outlines a $6…
Read MoreEXONERATIONS ON THE RISE IN 2013
This week, the National Registry of Exonerations, housed at the University of Michigan Law School, released new data showing that 2013 was the high-water mark year for exonerations to date , with 87 prisoners freed. This led some legal media, like our colleagues over at Above the Law, to write headlines like “Instance of Known Prosecutor FAILS are on the Rise.” In their words, “More exonerations suggest that more resources are being spent going back over closed cases and freeing people based on new or better evidence. But the report is also chilling proof that…
Read MoreNew Study Finds That State Crime Labs Are Paid Per Conviction
I’ve previously written about the cognitive bias problem in state crime labs. This is the bias that can creep into the work of crime lab analysts when they report to, say, a state police agency, or the state attorney general. If they’re considered part of the state’s “team” — if performance reviews and job assessments are done by police or prosecutors — even the most honest and conscientious of analysts are at risk of cognitive bias. Hence, the countless and continuing crime lab scandals we’ve seen over the last couple…
Read MoreWe Have It All Wrong. Shunning Offenders is Not Working
A Reaction to the Woody Allen Story I’ve been working on an article about caring for the bad dad, the man who molested my sister and tore my family apart, and what it has been to sift through the wake of my father’s life in photos, scrapbooks, and letters. After he suffered a stroke early in 2013, he couldn’t care for himself and I did something I thought I’d never do — I brought him home to live with me. Full Op-Ed Piece
Read MoreWA: Yakima County court hears arguments over releasing sex-offender names
YAKIMA, Wash. — The names of Yakima County’s low-level sex offenders will remain out of public view while a judge reviews arguments on whether they should be released. Yakima County Superior Court Judge Blaine Gibson put off making a decision Thursday in order to read an amended legal brief arguing against releasing the names that was handed to him just before court convened. Also, he said he wanted to review a Benton County ruling blocking Mesa resident Donna Zink’s request for information on low-level sex offenders in that county. Full Article…
Read MoreInternational Travel – Mexico
There have been many comments / stories on recent travel to Mexico. This post is dedicated to Travel to Mexico. Some Mexico specific comments have been moved here for further discussion. Also see: Living with 290 – Traveling to Cabo San Lucas International Travel Sharing More Information Will Enable Federal Agencies to Improve Notifications of Sex Offenders’ International Travel – United States Government Accountability Office, February 2013 (Highlights) International Tracking of Sex Offenders Working Group – An interim report of the collaborative effort to develop a system for tracking registered sex offenders as they…
Read MoreOH: Sex offenders living in nursing homes
If you have a loved one in a nursing home, they may be living under the same roof as a sex offender — and have no idea that they do. An exclusive Channel 3 investigation found 29 sex offenders living in 16 nursing homes in Northeast Ohio. Two of those nursing homes — one in a small village in Summit County — had up to four convicted sex offenders living in them. “You would not want to live in a nursing home or have a loved one live in a nursing…
Read MoreKY: RSO Registered sex offender wants permission to practice law [UPDATED]
UPDATE: Kentucky court rejects sex-offender bar exam (3/20/2014) The Kentucky Supreme Court has turned away a request from a convicted sex offender to reconsider his bid to take the bar exam and become a practicing lawyer. The seven justices on Thursday unanimously rejected a rehearing in the case. Full Article — A University of Kentucky law school graduate who finished in the top third of his class is asking the state Supreme Court to reconsider its decision barring him from taking the bar exam because he’s on the state sex-offender registry. The…
Read MoreVA: Teen Girl Accused Of Posting Nude Selfies, Arrested For Child Porn
A 16-year-old Virginia girl is facing child pornography charges, after police say she posted photos of herself naked on Twitter. Authorities received an anonymous tip describing the photos, which were posted to Twitter around Jan. 30. The girl, a student in James City County, admitted to posting “multiple” lewd photos of herself to the social networking website last week, according to police. Full Article
Read MoreResidency Restrictions A bigoted idea that is illegal and True Americans should be ashamed of
Through our elected representatives efforts, they have legally created a class of people and that class is registered citizens. What does this mean as far as our judicial system is concerned. It means that this group of people are now able to stand on the same ground to fight their battles as anyone else, that is been discriminated against because of race, color, creed, religious views, disabilities, or ethnic background. One of the things to realize is that denying this group of citizens the ability to travel freely to use…
Read MoreCITY OF CYPRESS AGREES NOT TO ENFORCE RESIDENCY AND PRESENCE RESTRICTIONS
The City of Cypress, located in Orange County, has agreed not to enforce most of its residency restrictions and all of its presence restrictions as terms of two settlement agreements reached on January 31. The City of Cypress also agreed to pay attorney’s fees and costs for the lawsuits filed against them in federal and state courts. In exchange, the plaintiffs in those cases have agreed to dismiss with prejudice the pending lawsuits. “This is a significant victory for the registered citizens and the family members of registered citizens in…
Read MoreSex offenders should not be allowed in parks or beaches
In 2012 a law was passed that prohibited registered sex offenders from entering areas where children would likely be present. This in includes parks, playgrounds and beaches. However, according to ABC News the law was overturned in an appeals court in January 2014 because it was said to violate California’s state law. It is clear the state of California and its cities are not doing all they can to protect the families and children of California by leaving them vulnerable to dangerous criminals. In May 2012, District Attorney Tony Rackauckas…
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