Category: Commentary

Making Headlines: The criminal legal system is massively punitive toward people who commit sex offenses

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Source: inquest.org 4/8/22 The death threats started almost immediately. On April 3, 2020, The New York Post published the story of our case under an impossibly salacious headline: “Child rapist ordered released to keep him safe from coronavirus.” The article was no better, describing the underlying crime in vivid detail while underplaying how its subject’s multiple, severe medical issues made him vulnerable to COVID, and that the sentence being served was not actually for the crime itself, but rather for so-called “technical” violations of probation. The Post had apparently noticed…

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Stranger Dangers: The Right’s History of Turning Child Abuse Into a Political Weapon

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Source: motherjones.com 3/28/22 Josh Hawley’s attacks on Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson are part of a long, sad tradition. At some point between the ’80s and now, leaving children unattended in public became unthinkable. To let children as old as, say, 10 walk by themselves became grounds to investigate parents for neglect. As a child of the late ’90s and early 2000s, I knew latchkey kids existed, but nearly exclusively from the aging 1980s children’s paperbacks in my elementary school’s library. My friends whose parents worked too late to pick them up…

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Hawley’s cynical attack on nominee may be misguided

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Source: ocregister.com 3/28/22 In a 1996 Harvard Law Review article, Ketanji Brown Jackson, then a law school student, noted the “climate of fear, hatred, and revenge” in which policies dealing with sex offenders are formulated. Before Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing began this week, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, objected to that observation, then proceeded to demonstrate its accuracy. Hawley’s misrepresentation of Jackson’s record in this area was typical of the criticism leveled at Supreme Court nominees, which often involves inflammatory, acontextual citations of a candidate’s statements and decisions. But it…

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Child sexual abuse: Why spend billions on prison, but not prevention?

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Source: futurity.org 3/28/22 Download the report The United States government spent an estimated $5.4 billion last year at the state and federal level to incarcerate adults convicted of sex crimes against children under age 18, according to a new study. The study calculated annual spending on incarcerated adults convicted of sex crimes against children under age 18 in US federal and state prisons and sex offender civil commitment facilities. The findings, which appear in the journal Sexual Abuse, highlight the cost of what is considered a preventable public health problem.…

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Emily Horowitz: The hollowness of the child porn smear: Ketanji Brown Jackson has been bold and prescient

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Source: nydailynews.com 3/24/22 Soon after her nomination, it was reported that as a law student in 1996, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a Harvard Law Review note analyzing the constitutionality of sex offense registries and that during her judicial career she did not always give the maximum sentence in child pornography cases. Unsurprisingly, she was immediately accused by Sen. Josh Hawley of “endangering our children” and not “protecting the most vulnerable.” These entirely meritless allegations show the extreme risks of speaking the truth about our disastrous and cruel sex offense…

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Experts say sex offender registries don’t work. Can they be fixed?

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Source: news.yahoo.com 3/24/22 What’s happening During confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, Republicans hammered away at her record in cases involving sex offenders. Much of that centered around misleading claims about sentences she handed out to people convicted of possessing child pornography. But GOP senators also repeatedly questioned Jackson on her views on sex offender registries, a topic she wrote about as a law student in the 1990s. In 1994, Congress enacted a law mandating that all states create registries of people convicted of sex offenses and crimes against children. Two years later, it passed…

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The Trailer: How campaign rhetoric about child porn made it to the Supreme Court hearing

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Source: washingtonpost.com 3/22/22 In this edition: Why Republicans are talking about pedophilia this week, how contempt is shaping Ohio’s U.S. Senate primary, and what’s happening in the race to replace Don Young. Treat a senator: Print out your favorite part of the newsletter and turn it into a big, scary poster. This is The Trailer. The White House dismissed it with a joke. A National Review columnist called it a “smear.” And the paid media campaigns against Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the Supreme Court have ignored it completely. And…

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Is the Sex Offender Registry Fair?

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Source: thecrimereport.org 3/9/22 Sexual offenses are serious crimes. There is no doubt that the intentions behind creating the laws meant to punish and deter sex offenders were noble. However, according to opponents of the sex offender registration laws, such as Human Rights Watch, there is no proof that these laws achieved the purpose they were designed for. As a former sex crimes prosecutor, I share that skepticism. It’s one reason why, after years of serving as Chief of the Sex Unit and Chief of the Child Abuse Unit in Macomb…

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9-Year-Olds Are Being Forced to Register as Sex Offenders. That Might Finally Change.

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Source: slate.com 2/1/22 It’s hard not to get emotional about child sexual abuse. The thought of anyone hurting a child in this way is so egregious that it’s no wonder society has thrown its support behind a robust criminal justice response, including lengthy prison sentences and the registration and public notification of people convicted of this type of sex crime. But what happens when the perpetrator of child sexual abuse is also a child? This isn’t a thought experiment. In the United States, up to 70 percent of sexual offenses…

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The new Bill Cosby documentary ‘We Need to Talk About Cosby’ refuses to make a case against him

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Source: news.yahoo.com 1/25/22 Showtime’s four-part series “We Need to Talk About Cosby” debuted at Sundance over the weekend. Comedian W. Kamau Bell, a self-described “child” of Cosby, directs. Unfortunately, Bell merely refuels established debates around Cosby’s complicated legacy. At the outset of “We Need to Talk About Cosby,” the new Showtime documentary about the comedian, actor, and accused rapist Bill Cosby, director W. Kamau Bell concedes that over the last few years there has been a lot of talk about the man who was once known to millions as “America’s…

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Is the Sex Offender Registry Fair?

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Source: legalreader.com 1/11/22 Failure to Register, in most states, is a serious felony, punishable by jail or prison time. The 1990s saw a significant rise in horrific sex offenses directed towards children, prompting the federal and state governments to formulate laws to help deter offenders and ensure public safety. One of these laws was the 1994 Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act, requiring convicted offenders to register with their local law enforcement after their release from prison. In 1996, Congress passed Meghan’s Law (a subsection…

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FAC Member Contribution: The Last to Finish Can Win the Race

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When I was in my late forties I ran two miles a day. It was a joy to run on the rural Georgia roads, enjoying the clouds overhead and the delightful smell of honeysuckle by the side of the road. I was told of a 5k race in a small town near where I lived. I’m not sure how far 5k is, but I think it’s about 3 miles. I thought, “Why not?” so I signed up and showed up that Saturday, to find it was raining. Not pouring down…

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The Collateral Consequences of Exoneration

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Source: thecrimereport.org 12/23/21 The holiday season is often a time for family gatherings, and while many will be preparing for reunions in the coming days, it is important to remember the roadblocks returning citizens face. For instance, background checks cause thousands of potential collateral consequences that can impact things like housing or employment. As my story explains, these consequences can even inappropriately spill over to a family reunification. On May 27, 1994, I lost my freedom. I was sent to prison for a crime I did not commit.. Everything I…

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Transparency Laws Let Criminal Records Become Commodities

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Source: wired.com 12/23/21 For millions of people, details from an arrest—even a mistaken one—live on after being sold to data brokers. And the state profits. In April 2018, Adnan (a pseudonym) was wrongfully arrested in Newark, New Jersey, on the basis of an incorrect arrest warrant. A brief period in jail led to the criminal court judge dismissing the incident and moving to have Adnan’s arrest record expunged. A few days later, Adnan began receiving mysterious text messages from several “reputation management” companies that promised to help him get his…

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FL: Sex offender registry laws don’t work. Here’s what might.

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Source: tampabay.com 12/16/21 The uncomfortable truth? Those who commit sexual offenses are usually not strangers. There are roughly half a million sexual assault incidents in the United States every year — and more than 11,000 in Florida alone. These numbers are troubling. So it’s no surprise that people search the sex offender registration website to make sure that no one convicted of a sexual offense lives near them or more worrisome, their children’s school, day care or neighborhood park. The premise is simple: to make people feel safer in their…

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San Francisco Court Grants Registrant’s Petition

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Source: ACSOL San Francisco Superior Court today granted a petition filed on behalf of a registrant who was assigned to Tier 1.  Local law enforcement determined that the registrant was eligible to petition and the District Attorney did not object to the petition.  The registrant was represented in court by ACSOL Executive Director Janice Bellucci. “Another person has escaped the bondage of the registry,” stated Bellucci.  “We must continue to file petitions in order to maximize the number of people who are released from the registry.’ After a court grants…

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The Great (Fake) Child-Sex-Trafficking Epidemic

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Source: theatlantic.com 12/9/21 A poster in the window of Cahoots Corner Cafe—great potatoes, good coffee—advertised a family event at the Oakdale, California, rodeo grounds. There would be food trucks, carnival games, live music, a raffle, and the opportunity to support the cause of “freeing child sex slaves.” The event, called the Festival of Hope, was a fundraiser for the anti-child-sex-trafficking group Operation Underground Railroad, which was founded in Utah in 2013 and has achieved immense popularity on social media in the past year and a half, attracting an outsize share…

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Pakistan: “Chemical Castration” for Sex Offenders has flaws

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Source: dailytimes.com.pk 12/1/21 There have been growing calls for tougher punishment against sexual offenders and stronger preventive measures in the aftermath of a series of violent crimes victimizing women and children. Recently, a Cabinet meeting approved a revised bill, under which a clause providing for “chemical castration” of habitual rapists had been removed from the Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill, 2021, in the light of objections raised by the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII). Using hormonal drugs to reduce sexual violence recidivism is known as chemical castration. The first reported attempt…

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