Voting blocs, where people support candidates on specific issues, have long played an outsized role in New York politics – from labor unions that focus on workplace rules, to environmentalists who place clean air and water at the top of the list.
But now an unusual bloc is emerging from an unexpected place: the locked sex offenders unit at one of the state’s major psychiatric hospitals.
Convicted sex offenders at Central New York Psychiatric Center are joining a PAC, or political action committee, which could conceivably raise money for candidates they favor and serve as a vehicle to mobilize voters.
Rather than gathering cash, however, they are looking to form a voting bloc where they could back state – and even local candidates – based in Oneida County where the Central New York Psychiatric Center is located. The center houses 283 people who have been civilly confined after serving prison terms for crimes such as sexual assault.
Under the state’s 12-year-old Sex Offender Management and Treatment Act, convicted sex offenders can be kept in secure psychiatric hospitals indefinitely after their prison terms expire.
That happens if an offender is deemed to have a mental abnormality that makes the person likely to commit another sex crime. State officials can go to court and request the offender be indefinitely committed to a hospital.
Creation of a PAC is the latest chapter in ongoing efforts, mostly in court, by some of the confined men and prison reform advocates to protest what they view as vague, open-ended confinement periods after their prison terms have ended.
You think we should start one over here in California or is CARSOL adequate for everybody here?
Great !
Now we can FIGHT 👊 the Law, Heath Dept. And the Civil MOBS!
We’ve come a long way baby..
Aghhh…
So instead of poo pooing the PAC, why doesn’t the reform advocate lend them a hand to get the right message out they feel they could gain ground with? Oh, that is right, it could take away from your bloc and your message if you show support. All about protecting one’s sandbox.
Every minority group has eventually had to stand up and go public and risk the scorn and public ridicule in order to demand their rights. I was incarcerated, and the psychiatrists was the most incompetent, arrogant, narcissist I ever had the misfortune of meeting. The terrifying thing is this tyrannical little man had tremendous authority over the future of the inmates. These SO’s that are locked down could be any of us caught up in this dysfunctional system. They are speaking up because they are obviously more desperate then us. Our numbers will reach one million this year. One million people sentenced to excessive punishment on the registry. That is a lot of people and we could be a huge political power. I commend these people for speaking out. I guess they have nothing to lose being locked down. Many of us are afraid to speak out because we don’t want to lose the little we have gained on the outside. I hope we can all unite. That is what ACSOL is all about. As Franks book says, “We are all in this together.”
Man you guys like to write a lot! Try writing more to the President and change his mind on this bs!!!
Detainee-Americans for Civic Equality (DACE) which SVP resident voters at DSH-Coalinga, Calif, founded in 2010, just garnered an important ruling (with Janice Bellucci lead attorney) in the CA 5th Appellate Ct of Appeals on 9/9/20. Here’s the simple version in a 9/10/20 article — National Law Review:
https://www.natlawreview.com/article/your-club-legal-entity