Category: General News

VIRGINIA (WAVY) — Their faces and address are already public, now one Virginia lawmaker wants registered sex offenders to face public hearings before going inside schools. To have access to Virginia public schools, House Bill 1366 would require violent sex offenders to pay for a newspaper ad publicizing a personal court hearing. It would run once a week for two weeks. Then anyone could attend the hearing and testify against them. Full Article

I can think of no area of the criminal law, except perhaps international terrorism, into which contemporary American society has terrified itself into more ignorance than this. One of the guiding principles of western philosophy, etched in same Greek language spoken by Socrates and Plato into Apollo’s shrine at Delphi, is the maxim “Know Thyself.” When it comes to the darker side of human sexual conduct, we’d rather not. To do so will almost certainly force us to reckon with the fact that many of us aren’t the neat and tidy sexual beings we’ve convinced ourselves we…

A Fifth Circuit panel yesterday handed down an intriguing little ruling in US v. Fernandez, No. 14-30151 (5th Cir. Jan. 14, 2015) (available here), reversing a notable condition of supervised release. Full Article

Sex offenders have been subject to unprecedented restrictions and punishment. The government’s treatment of sex offenders is a clear example of the dangers of laws derived from and upheld because of the emotion of disgust. Disgust has led to a dehumanization of this category of people, which has led to a stripping of their constitutional rights. The law’s treatment of sex offenders is a clear example of why the law should eschew employing the emotion of disgust during all proceedings. In addition, the courts’, particularly the Supreme Court’s, treatment of…

The Constitutionality of Sex Offender Registration, Public Registries and the ever changing and expanding Federal, State and Local restrictions and regulations (via law) is a regular topic for writers, reporters and attorneys. Yes, the U.S. Supreme Court Smith v. Doe, 538 U.S. 84 (2003), ruled that registration is administrative not punitive but since 2003 every state took that ruling and ran with it as permission to restrict anything. Full Article More from It’s Time to Reduce, Reconstruct, Reclassify, Rethink and Reform the Virginia Sex Offender Registry 

The Static-99 is the most widely used instrument for assessing sex offenders’ future risk to the public. Indeed, some state governments and other agencies even mandate its use. But bureaucratic faith may be misplaced. Conventional psychological tests go through a standard process of development, beginning with the generation and refinement of items and proceeding through set stages that include pilot testing and replication, leading finally to peer review and formal publication. The trajectory of the Static-99 has been more haphazard: Since its debut 15 years ago, the tool has been…

My goal in the coming year is to better understand why some things, in this brief and transitory life, are as they seem to be. Not to accept it, necessarily, but just to be able to make sense of it. For instance, I am unable to figure out why D.C. taxpayers are being called upon to provide shelter for a man who, according to Mark Segraves of WRC-TV (Channel 4), was charged with several sex offenses and assaults in Prince George’s County nine years ago, pleaded guilty and was sentenced…

It was a troublesome Facebook post from a conservative talk show host at a Santa Rosa radio station. Promoting an upcoming segment, last week’s post read: “Former KGO Radio Talk Show Host _____ _____, convicted of child pornography seven years ago, is going to be released from federal prison in time for Christmas. Where will he go? Are your children safe? Is he truly rehabilitated as he claims?” Full Opinion Piece

When a 35-year-old mother was stabbed to death and a 10-year-old girl raped in Clay County on Dec. 1, many in the small Middleburg community learned for the first time that the sexual predator suspect was among 143 offenders who lived within five miles of the crime scene. Full Article

Sex Offenders who are denied the opportunity to start a fresh life within the community pose greater risks of striking again than those who are housed. Full Article

Sex offender registration and notification laws have been widely studied since their implementation during the mid-1990s. Within the last decade, researchers have turned their focus towards the unintended and collateral consequences that registered sex off enders (RSO) experience as a byproduct of being listed on a registry. This study of the consequences that RSOs in Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin endure mirrors research that has studied offenders in Kentucky and Indiana (Tewksbury, 2004, 2005). Research Paper (PDF)

Rape and sexual assault often do not get the police attention they deserve in the United States, whether on college campuses, in the military or in major American cities. This isn’t arguable. But sex is also vastly overpoliced in this country, and this ought to concern us, too. Full Op-Ed Piece