Texas Voices, a group made up of families of people on Texas’ sex offender registry and others who support reform of Texas sex offender statutes, has been quite active this session, and it’s a good thing.
As Grits told their indefatigable leader Mary Sue Molnar when the organization began, every other criminal justice reform group and activist in the state, including me, will inevitably sell them out at the Legislature. When someone says of a proposal, “well, we can do that but we have to exclude sex offenders,” reform advocates routinely will jump at the deal without a second thought. And in general, rightly so. One cannot succeed in legislative politics by making the perfect the enemy of the good. Full Article
I try to contact the texas voices , because I wanted to move down there, one thing I could say is they truely fight for the reg citizens out there , but it is very hard to get in contact with them.
Posted in response to the authors response to a comment to his article:
@Gritsforbreakfast
You said “@Harry, let’s calm down and acknowledge that punishing people who committed sex crimes is different than punishing Jews who did nothing at all.”
You’re probably aware there are two different legal systems at work in the US: 1) Criminal and 2)Civil.
The purpose of the Criminal system can be summed up as “punishment.”
However, the registration, registry, employment, etc. restrictions are formed under the aegis of the Civil system which is supposed to be concerned with the “public good” and not with “punishment.”
The whole basis of the Supreme Court ruling allowing retroactive registration requirements rested on the fact that the registration laws were not punitive and to paraphrase one of the justices were no different that having a membership card to a big discount box store (Costco, or Sams club.)
Allowing the Civil legal system to be twisted to become punitive in nature undermines the very basis of our society. If you want to support laws for “punishing” sex offenses, then toughen the Criminal laws, don’t play games with the Civil laws and say it’s ok because sex offenders deserve more punishment.”
If you want to use/support Civil laws, then prove the point that there is an actual positive gain to the public that outweighs the rights being denied your fellow citizens. If you want residency restrictions, show a positive correlation with reducing crime rates. You allow all citizens rights to be undermined when you allow rights to be denies for no positive benefit to society and only for political expediency!
When the “good of society” is allowed to be whatever wins a politician more power/votes or what allows some group of citizens to feel better without providing any scientifically provable benefit to society, you’re heading down a slippery slope that leads to segregated seating, tiered levels of civil rights, and yes even to holocausts!
Eugene Darden , try emailing TXvoices again, they are real busy at this time going back and forth to Austin, many bad bills to deal with. Do you have a certain question that you need a answer too?