[huffpost.com – Michael Hobbes – 9/7/20] Human trafficking has been having an eventful summer. In July, internet sleuths accused online retailer Wayfair of selling missing children in overpriced cabinets. In August, QAnon supporters (along with some well-meaning if ill-informed influencers) held nationwide “Save the Children” rallies. And last week, there was the trailer story. “U.S. Marshals Find 39 Missing Children in Georgia During ‘Operation Not Forgotten,’” proclaimed the government’s official press release. Federal agents and local law enforcement, it said, had rescued 26 children, “safely located” 13 more and arrested…
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Kat’s Blog: Tracking Registrants
SMART/the government’s office of sentencing, monitoring, apprehending, registering and tracking, is in the business of tracking registrants. Registrants are tracked locally, within their hometowns. P.O.’s, police and other law enforcement officials always want to know where they are, where they’re living, working or relaxing. Registrants are tracked through domestic interjurisdictional informational tracking, law enforcement across jurisdictions sharing information regarding the whereabouts of registrants on the move. Registrants are tracked by international tracking, the number of countries they are allowed to visit seems to shrink daily. Our country’s “unique identifier” on…
Read MoreMaxwell Monty: There Is Much Malarkey in This Hierarchy
“Enough already! You’re all just a bunch of pedophiles and rapists!” barked the C.O. at midnight as he stood in the middle of the day room of the prison that housed me. And sex offenders were almost the exclusive inmates at this prison. “You perverts don’t deserve this cushy life. And any of you pathetic excuses for humans that disagree, can step out of your cube (the area that contained our bunks) and challenge me.” As I heard these wildly outlandish statements, my thought was, “Damn, we (sex offenders) truly…
Read MoreMaxwell Monty: Second chances? You can “bed” on it
[Maxwell Monty] On April 3, 2017, I sat down with my copy of the “Wall Street Journal,” took a sip of my morning cup of coffee and began reading a book review of retired U.S. Navy Admiral William H. McRaven’s Make Your Bed. In another lifetime, I may have simply passed over that review, thinking it was another fool’s errand somehow sent by my mother in a continued effort to get me to make my bed. I was fifty-one years old and had never seen the logic in making my…
Read MoreKat’s Blog: The Registry: If It’s Not Punishment, Then What Is It?
We’re tired of hearing that the registry isn’t punishment. Tired of “it’s for public safety” rhetoric that politicians use to keep the public in a constant state of fear, fanning the flames of hatred and depicting anyone on the registry as a violent, predatory monster. The registry is punishment. The courts know it. Registrants know it. Families, friends, spouses and children of registrants know it. The registry protects no one. There is nothing remotely “safe” or public friendly about the registry. It was disturbing to read that in Kansas, the…
Read MoreOf Witches, and Witch Burnings [by Guy Hamilton-Smith]
[littlereddots.substack.com – 8/22/20 – Guy Hamilton-Smith] Note: this piece is adapted from a forthcoming article in the Southwestern Law Review Several years ago, a debate raged in my local paper’s opinion section. Should sex offenders be allowed in church?, or something of the like. I wasn’t a churchgoer, but I had a spiritual experience that I didn’t know what to do with. I asked one of my friends in law school who I knew was religious, and who knew my story, if she would take me to hers. She took me. I…
Read MoreKat’s Blog: Job Loss Due to the Registry
A recent USA Today inquiry cost a registrant and his company hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal contracts and who knows how many other jobs. The article in its entirety can be read on the ACSOL website “Sex Offender loses Covid-19 Contract at VA Hospital after USA Today ask questions.” The employee’s janitorial firm had had multiple government contracts over the years. There were never any issues with his employment record, he and his company were responsible employees and in good standing with the federal government’s vendor database. He…
Read MoreKat’s Blog: A Mother’s Plea, Not So Different Than Ours
A recent, tragic shooting in New Jersey, a Federal Judge’s son killed on the family’s doorstep, her husband hospitalized with multiple gunshots. The Judge believes she was the shooter’s targeted victim because of her position on the bench. The Judge, was uninjured. Yesterday, Judge Esther Salas went on television and broadcast a desperate plea, asking those in power to do something to help those on the bench keep themselves and their families safe from individuals meaning to do them harm. She spoke about the “free-flow” of personal information, including home…
Read MoreBBC: Can Sex Offenders Change?
[bbc.co.uk – Available on BBC iPlayer on August 20, from 6:00 am UK time zone] Follow Becky Southworth as she steps into the unsettling world of sex offender rehabilitation. Meeting the sex offenders living in our communities, Becky tries to understand what drove them to commit these horrific crimes, whilst seeing what treatment is available to stop them committing any more. Becky’s father was convicted of sex offences against children and received 10 years in prison. He has since been released, but while in prison he undertook a sex offender…
Read MoreOur System Is Not Doing the Thing It Says It Intends to Do: Deliver Justice
[jacobinmag.com – 8/5/20] Carceral solutions to sexual violence won’t deliver justice. We need investments in public services that will actually reduce sexual violence. In the last few years, the #MeToo movement has brought renewed attention to sexual harassment, sexual abuse, and the ways they are used by mostly powerful, wealthy men to maintain social and economic hierarchies. At the same time, the push for decarceration and opposition to policing have exploded into a national movement. For leftist feminists, these two movements raise urgent questions about how to fight sexual violence…
Read MoreKat’s Blog: Mississippi Senate Bill 2009
Here’s an example of a Bill being passed “before” it was thoroughly thought through. On July 1, 2020, Mississippi Senate Bill 2009, also known as Carly’s Law, was passed. The Bill prohibits future contact with the crime victim by a convicted “sex offender”; and for related purposes. Here’s a summary of the Bill. Section 1. 1) Except as otherwise provided in this section, it is unlawful for a person required to register as a sex offender under section 45-33-25 to commit any of the following actions with respect to the…
Read MoreKat’s Blog: County Commissioner Seeks A New Kind of Registry in Florida
The County Commissioner in Brevard County, Florida has put this rather odd item on next week’s County Commission agenda. County Commissioner John Tobias is apparently not satisfied with the current state residency statute for those convicted of certain sexual offenses. The existing 1,000 ft. restriction of registrants from schools, daycares and playgrounds doesn’t seem to be “safe enough” for him. The Commissioner has proposed an ordinance that would also restrict registrants from certain businesses, an “expansion of the buffer zone” if you will. Those businesses that are willing, can “voluntarily”…
Read MoreKat’s Blog: City Walk-Urban Mission Wins Preliminary Injunction
A few months ago, I wrote about a small organization called City Walk-Urban Mission in Tallahassee, Florida. The ministry was started in 2012 by Anthony and Renee Miller, it’s purpose, a faith-based, voluntary, re-entry type program to offer homeless men and ex-offenders a hand up, a chance to get back on their feet. The program accepts registrants. The original piece was written back in May 2020. At that time City Walk had run into some nasty problems with county officials who seemed bent on closing them down. Certain neighbors of…
Read MoreKat’s Blog: Polygraph Predicaments
It’s hard to believe that some states are still performing polygraphs during the pandemic. Some polygraph technicians are performing the exams unsafely, they’re also asking some peculiar questions as well. Case in point, as recently as a week ago, in one TN location, polygraphs were being performed by technicians from another southern state that happens to have a much higher Covid-19 population. The technician wore neither a mask nor gloves and social distancing was of course, obsolete. Registrants taking the exam were, however, permitted to wear masks. Registrants were subjected…
Read MoreCritical Teaching in a Sex Crimes Course
[medium.com/@zilneyl/ – 7/5/20] It is often said that the media doesn’t tell us what to think; the media tells us what to think about. The media frames our understanding of public issues and informs us which public issues should be at the forefront of our minds. For 8 years I have taught a college course entitled Sex Crimes. The course uses history and theory to critically examine sex crime laws and sexual offending behavior. In the course, I aim to provide an in-depth examination of the causes and responses to…
Read MoreKat’s Blog: The Price of Public Shaming
Shame or being shamed is not something new to registrants or their families. Whether it’s personal feelings of shame or feelings of shame bestowed upon them by others, it’s a hurt that stays with each of us. Perhaps that’s why it’s so disturbing to see the increase in “mask-shaming” when we turn on the news. In the past few days, the events at a coffee shop and a retail grocer have garnered the public’s attention. People being publicly shamed and videoed for not wearing masks in stores during the pandemic…
Read MoreKat’s Blog: Post Incarceration Syndrome (PICS)
Researchers at NCBI/National Institute for Biotechnology Information have suggested that Post-Incarceration Syndrome/PICS should be considered a specific sub-cluster of psycho-social problems that share or overlap symptoms with PTSD/Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. PICS symptoms are specific to those incarcerated and those recently released from incarceration. For registrants diagnosed with PICS, cluster symptoms seem magnified due to not being able to fully reintegrate back into society because of registry constraints. According to the NCBI, reported PICS cluster symptoms are characterized by “institutional personality traits, social-sensory disorientation and alienation”. Those incarcerated are controlled,…
Read MoreSex Offender Registries Are Fueling Mass Incarceration — And They Aren’t Helping Survivors
[jacobinmag.com – 6/22/20] The “sex offense legal regime,” which has developed alongside mass incarceration over the last forty years, has failed. US sex offender registries now list nearly one million people. Federal, state, and local ordinances prohibit convicted sex offenders from living within a certain distance of schools, parks, day care centers, and other spaces where children might congregate. In places like Miami–Dade County, these restrictions have rendered hundreds of individuals effectively homeless. Only by building and inhabiting makeshift encampments in sparsely populated areas can offenders comply with such residency…
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