The criminal justice reform bill, hopefully dubbed the First Step Act, represents a real accomplishment — a positive development in otherwise conservative times. It is all the more remarkable that a reactionary president, who ran a tough-on-crime campaign, is now poised to sign the bill. …
Mass incarceration is no doubt the most glaring feature of the punitive turn. But the punitive state is not only about prison. Sex offenders represent a rapidly growing subset of the prison population, not doubt; their numbers help keep the system bloated. But sex crimes also have provided a laboratory for the development of prison conditions beyond prison walls: a high-tech system of continuous surveillance and control.
The current news, then, has to be read against the latest number of listings on public sex-offender registries, which have ballooned to more than 912,000 — a 4.8 percent increase in listings in the last year. If sex offenders were a city, they’d rank twelfth in size, just below Austin, Texas. Full Article
This is an outstanding article, kudos to the author. The statistic that “the incarceration rates for blacks has declined, while the rates for white has risen,” this was a behind the scenes calculated act by congress to free themselves from the thorn in the side of the high incarceration rates of blacks, and they found their answer in the sex offender, especially CP offenders who tend to be white middle and upper middle class. With the onset of the computer and the CP explosion congress found its gold mine to help alleviate the problem of black incarceration rates. They immediately imposed the mandatory minimums of 5 years, while Holder and Obama pushed the crack cocaine reductions acts and viola! instant demographic change in the federal prison system. I was part of this and I saw the demographic change. In 2011 and 2012 bus loads of blacks were sent out for resentencing while bus loads of whites, almost exclusively CP offenders took their place. It was obvious to everyone what had just happened and is still happening. The new criminal reform bill excludes pretty much every single offense involving sex, weather contact was made, or even if no sex took place. I think Trump is feeling a little guilty for his promiscuous life and needed to prove that he is self-righteous to the Christian conservatives by slamming and giving no forgiveness to people who made a poor choice around their sexuality (kind of like he did multiple times).
America is not a free country.
We need to fix the entire concept of freedom in America and what it actually means to be a free country.
No drug should be illegal. It is not our business what other people want to put into their bodies. We need to stop all of these people who love pretending that they are more moral than other people and think it is okay to make money from imprisoning people.
People who get off on controlling other people are immoral.
This is really important. Jacobin is one of if not the biggest voice on the American Left, which has been woefully recalcitrant when it comes to tackling the injustices meted out to people convicted of sex offenses.
This might be the article that “normalizes” a more frank and open discussion of the pariah status and hyper-criminalization of people convicted of sex offenses.
*amongst the left, I mean
Great piece from Professor Roger Lancaster who also wrote “Sex Panic and the Punitive State.” I’m glad that he mentioned Galen Baughman’s current situation as he awaits his possible lifetime incarceration/civil commitment as a “sexually violent predator” in Virginia despite having never been “violent” or “predatory.” Roger pointed out the mendacity of that term, something which we often need to remind ourselves.
Damn I really like this statement,
“But sex crimes also have provided a laboratory for the development of prison conditions beyond prison walls: a high-tech system of continuous surveillance and control.”
So true, this is really the state just spreading the prison industry. The monster is just growing ten fold every decade and now, and has been, spreading its tentacles world wide. I just like the way that was stated.