More fuel for the movement to reform sex offender laws

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I’ve written before about the appalling (and unconstitutional) state of our laws regarding prohibitions and restrictions on the activities of convicted sex offenders — restrictions on where they can live, whom they can associate with, the Internet sites they can visit, the jobs they can hold and the places to which they can travel — to which they are subject after they have served whatever sentences were imposed upon them for their crimes. Commenting recently on a decision by the federal district court in Minnesota striking down Minnesota’s egregious post-conviction “civil confinement” statute, I expressed the sense — or perhaps it’s just the hope — that “a backlash against these laws is starting to form, in the courts and in public opinion.” So I was particularly pleased to see that the lead editorial in Sunday’s New York Times (“Sex Offenders Locked Up on a Hunch“) was a hard-hitting attack on the whole “civil confinement” regime. Full Article

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This is a good op-ed. The only part I have a problem with is where the court in Minnesota says

“Although the public might be safer if the government, using the latest “scientific” methods of predicting human behavior, locked up potential murderers, rapists, robbers, and, of course, sex offenders.

The problem I have with this is that nobody; not even science can predict the future behavior of anybody. Although it’s already done, I find the courts suggestion that society might be safer if certain people were locked up because they think that individual may do something in the future. I find this alarming and disturbing.

I can see this being misused and abused to the point we are at now with civil commitment, and possibly worse.

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There was a letter to the editor that disputed this:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/08/19/opinion/putting-freedom-out-of-reach-for-sex-offenders.html?_r=0&referrer=

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Yet another awesome op-ed!

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