Source: amplifiedvoices.buzzsprout.com 6/20/23 Summary: How does society treat people based on their criminal conviction history and how can we better understand the unique experiences of people who are convicted of sexual offenses? Why, in an age where second chances and demands to reduce mass incarceration have become mainstream, are people with these convictions often excluded from reform and relief efforts? In this episode of Amplified Voices, Jason and Amber speak with Emily Horowitz, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at St. Francis College, ahead of the release of her…
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AZ: Arizona Opinion: Sexual Offense Laws
Source: tucson.com 6/11/23 The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer: Meet Ryan, who, as a young man, had a caring and consensual relationship with his high school sweetheart. After months of dating, just before her 15th birthday and shortly after his 18th, their relationship became sexual. These young people were in love, hoping to build a life together, but because of their slight age difference, Ryan will spend the rest of his life on Arizona’s sexual offense registry and will carry the label of “child sexual predator”…
Read MoreCalifornia: The State of Incarceration
Source: vera.org Despite California’s reputation as a progressive state, it is one of the epicenters of mass incarceration in the United States, incarcerating more people than any other state except Texas. Annually, California law enforcement agencies make almost 800,000 arrests and more than 600,000 bookings into county jails, and courts send almost 30,000 people to prison.† The result is that, on an average day in California, around 60,000 people are held in county jails and close to 100,000 people are incarcerated in state prisons.† In addition to people in criminal…
Read MoreRevisiting the Brock Turner Case
Source: newyorker.com 3/29/23 In the midst of the #MeToo movement, California voters recalled a judge for being lenient on sexual assault. As a new documentary argues, that recall campaign had unintended results. In 2016, Brock Turner, a former swimmer at Stanford University, was convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman outside of a fraternity party. Two passersby saw the nineteen-year-old freshman thrusting upon an immobile, partially unclothed woman, next to a dumpster, and restrained him while they called the police. At Turner’s sentencing hearing, the woman, known in court proceedings…
Read MoreHow SCOTUS Promoted Pernicious Myths About Sex Offender Registries
Source: reason.com 3/1/23 This Sunday marks the 20th anniversary of Smith v. Doe, a Supreme Court decision that approved the retroactive application of Alaska’s sex offender registry, deeming it preventive rather than punitive. That ruling helped propagate several pernicious myths underlying a policy that every state has adopted without regard to its justice or effectiveness. Writing for the majority in Smith, Justice Anthony Kennedy took it for granted that collecting and disseminating information about people convicted of sex offenses made sense as a public safety measure. But that premise was…
Read MoreWhy Do We Treat Sex Crimes Differently Than Other Violent Crimes?
Source: thecrimereport.org 2/21/23 In a recently published research paper in the Stanford Law Review, Aya Gruber, a law professor at the University of Colorado, considers the concept of “sex exceptionalism” in the United States criminal justice system and asks readers to take a second look at how we treat sex crimes. Gruber previously published “The Feminist War on Crime: The Unexpected Role of Women’s Liberation in Mass Incarceration” with University of California Press. In “Sex Exceptionalism in Criminal Law,” Gruber argues that treating sex crimes differently than other crimes is…
Read MoreEmily Horowitz Debate Podcast: Does the Sex Offender Registry Do More Harm Than Good?
Source: intelligencesquaredus.org 2/3/2023 [Note by Janice: Emily Horowitz recently did a fantastic job debating “Does the Sex Offender Registry Do More Harm Than Good?” During the debate, Emily successfully debunked many of the myths related to registrants including the “frightening and high” rate of re-offense. It’s important to listen to this debate in order to better understand the position of those who oppose us. Hope you will do so soon. Well done, Emily!] Summary: Sexual violence is arguably the most devastating kind. And over the past few decades, the legal…
Read MoreACSOL Board Member Publishes Updated Version of Important Book
ACSOL board member Alex Landon, who has been a criminal defense attorney for more than 40 years and is also a part-time law professor, has just published an updated version of an important book, “A Parallel Universe.” The updated version of the book includes six new chapters including a robust discussion of the Tiered Registry Law. “Once again, Alex Landon and his co-author Elaine Halleck have captured a vivid picture of how and why registries came about as well as how registries continue to punish both registrants and their families,”…
Read MoreThe Progressive Case for Ankle Bracelets – Opinion
Source: newsweek.com 11/28/22 Many of the most progressive countries in the world are making use of technology to promote rehabilitation and reduce incarceration. Yet blue states like Massachusetts and left-leaning advocacy organizations remain hostile to use of electronic monitoring (EM) methods. They are overlooking the benefits of EM—even from a progressive standpoint. Progressives’ typically formulated criminal justice goal is laudatory: to minimize incarceration consistent with public safety, and to maximize the rehabilitation of offenders. But achieving these ends has been, to say the least, problematic. Progressives commonly urge more addiction…
Read MoreUK: The reason we shouldn’t compare paedophiles to other criminals – Opinion
Source: cornwalllive.com 11/27/22 Contains extracts of a story first published in November 2020 I’ve been Truro Crown Court’s resident court reporter for quite some years now and I like to think I’ve seen it all, from the grotesque, to the disturbing, to the shocking, to the at time humorous. I try to stay away from our comment sections, but I appreciate everyone has an opinion and a right to air it on Facebook or elsewhere online – unless proceedings are active of course. But that said, sometimes I do venture…
Read MoreHow can sex offender registries be constitutional?
Source: quora.com There are two short answers: (1) For the most part, the courts have found them to be constitutional because a) they weren’t created with the intent of inflicting punishment and b) they are not punitive enough in effect to override the government’s “legitimate interests.” I would argue substantively that both of these contentions are false. It wouldn’t require a monumental effort. Generally, though, the registries are considered “civil, regulatory” measures. Except that practically no “real” regulatory, civil requirement is so intrusive or stringent while carrying the threat of…
Read More“Panicked Legislation”: Read ACSOL board member Professor Catherine Carpenter’s newest law review article
Professor Carpenter makes a groundbreaking and innovative argument against the registry. She presents a compelling case for how judges could utilize the “Irrebuttable Presumption Doctrine” to challenge the registry on the basis that it is grounded in false and discredited junk science. Click here to download the free “Panicked Legislation” article Abstract of the paper: We are in the throes of a moral panic. It is not the first time, nor will it likely be the last, but it is among the most enduring. Dubbed the sex panic, it has…
Read MoreEmily Horowitz: 18-Year-Old Faces Possible 70 Years in Federal Prison for Snapchat Sexting Crime
Source: reason.com 9/14/22 by ACSOL board member Emily Horowitz “I’m not saying my kid should get nothing,” says Eric Beyer Jr.’s mother. “But to take an 18-year-old kid and put him in jail for longer than he’s been alive?” Teens using Snapchat. (Franviser | Dreamstime.com) Let’s say you’re a 17-year-old boy asking two 16-year-old girls to sext you on Snapchat—well, that’s pretty normal these days, right? Let’s agree that it is. Now, let’s say that you possibly paid the girls for their sexts, and then allegedly threatened to expose them…
Read MoreFor People Just Leaving Prison, a Novel Kind of Support: Cash
Source: news.yahoo.com 7/9/22 Alwin Jacob Smith became a free man last summer after being locked up for 21 years because of what he calls “my little old rocky past” — most notably, robbery and drug possession. He worked hard while incarcerated, getting an associate degree in ministry, attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and substance abuse support groups, and eventually leading those groups as a peer mentor. Smith’s release, which he celebrated with a steak-and-eggs breakfast, came about through a California law that allows prosecutors to reevaluate sentences to determine whether they…
Read MoreWhy the U.S. Marshals Spend Millions on Sex-Offense Registrant Sweeps
Source: theappeal.org 7/8/22 The real aim of these operations might be to boost support for cops. Gary, a 62-year-old on Texas’s sex-offender registry, dates the problems with his neighbors to a visit by police in 2018. After a successful real estate career he lives in a relatively safe neighborhood outside Dallas, identifies as a conservative, and has friends on the police force. He’s donated to police charities, once giving $10,000 to the family of an officer killed on duty, he tells The Appeal. He was convicted of child pornography possession…
Read MoreCongress can’t punt its lawmaking responsibility to the attorney general
Source: thehill.com 6/6/22 Congress makes the law; you are innocent until proven guilty; and everyone is entitled to due process of law. These are elementary principles of American government that we all learn in grade school. But they are threatened when Congress gives the U.S. attorney general unilateral power to write the criminal laws his office is charged with enforcing. It shouldn’t be controversial to say that someone must not go to prison unless he broke a law written by Congress (or a state legislature). But Attorney General Merrick Garland…
Read MoreEmily Horowitz: The Real Monsters – Sex offender registries don’t make us any safer. Abolishing them would.
Source: inquest.org 6/3/22 Watching the Senate hearings for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, I was struck by how Republican senators pounced on the judge’s thoughtful, considered, and mainstream sex offense sentencing. My research examines why our sex offense policies are based on fear-driven myths and how excessive criminal-legal responses do not genuinely and effectively address sexual violence — and do create new harm. And at the time, based on this knowledge, I wrote about the spectacle, where politicians like Josh Hawley accused Jackson of “endangering our children” and not…
Read MoreThe Supreme Court Won’t Dismantle the Administrative State Quite Yet
Source: barrons.com 4/19/21 Progressives, conservatives, investors and Supreme Court-watchers are all anxiously awaiting the court’s decisions later this spring in two cases—American Hospital Association v. Becerra and West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency—which some experts have warned could sound a death knell for the “administrative state.” Not so fast: the authority of regulators is likely to be further limited, but not gutted. That’s the broad takeaway I got from moderating a recent panel for the Brookings Institution of constitutional and administrative law experts—Professors Anne Joseph O’Connell, Susan Rose-Ackerman, Ilya Wurman and…
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