ATLANTA (CBS46) — Two metro Atlanta middle school students face disciplinary action for their involvement in a sex incident on school grounds. Most parents, like Patrisha Mongeon, were disturbed to learn that the students engaged in a sex act and recorded it. “It’s really scary. My daughter goes here and she’s at the age where these things start happening. I was hoping to wait a little longer before these types of explicit conversations were had in my household,” Mongeon said. A source tells CBS46 that the two students performed a…
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FL: DOJ Now Investigating Florida Sheriff’s Office For Using A Federal Grant To Fund Its ‘Predictive Policing’ Harassment Programs
Source: techdirt.com 9/21/21 The Pasco County (FL) Sheriff’s Office believes in “intelligence-led policing.” This is its formal slang for harassing residents until (in the office’s own words) “they sue or move.” The Sheriff’s Office turns anyone with a criminal background into a suspect-for-life. Deputies visit residences and residents on the “intelligence-led” shit list multiple times a month, demanding answers to questions they have no business asking. When residents fail to comply, nuisance (in every sense of the word) citations are issued for things like uncut grass or missing mailbox numbers.…
Read MoreKS: Criminal justice panel hashes out potential changes to Kansas offender registry
TOPEKA — Criminal justice advocates, experts and law enforcement are debating potential changes to the Kansas drug and sex offender registry, including whether registries should be made public and an exit mechanism for some offenders. Of primary concern for the Kansas Criminal Justice Reform Commission Subcommittee on Proportionality and Sentencing is whether drug offenders should be included on a public registry or if that information should be available only to law enforcement. Under Kansas law, those with a drug conviction are required to register on the same public list as…
Read MoreMI: Changes to sex offender list cause confusion
Source: upmatters.com 9/14/21 GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Nearly nine months after the state made court-ordered changes to the sex offender registry, there’s still a lot of confusion and questions about enforcement. Michigan State Police say they are not enforcing violations of the law, which is meant to track offenders, while other agencies are. The registry includes more than 40,000 names. The confusion started a few years back when a federal judge, in response to a lawsuit filed by the University of Michigan Law Clinical Program and the American Civil…
Read MoreAction Alert: Congressional Bill to Expand Reach of IML
A new piece of federal legislation (HR 5150), if passed and signed into law, would expand the reach of the International Megan’s Law (IML). The new legislation was introduced by the original author of the IML, Rep. Chris Smith (Republican, NJ), as well as Rep. Karen Bass (Democrat, CA). The provisions of the legislation regarding the IML are a very small part of the 92-page bill which claims to be aimed at preventing and protecting victims of trafficking. The IML provisions would expand the scope of the IML by extending…
Read MoreACSOL Executive Director to Discuss Need to Overturn U.S. Supreme Court’s Mistake on September 18
ACSOL Executive Director Janice Bellucci will discuss the need to overturn a significant and harmful decision made by the U.S. Supreme Court, Smith v. Doe, during the ACSOL conference on Saturday, September 18, at 10 a.m. She will also discuss, with ACSOL President Chance Oberstein, the newly effective Tiered Registry Law in California on Saturday, September 18, at 12:30 p.m.. “The U.S. Supreme Court made a terrible mistake when it decided that the requirement to register is not punishment,” stated Bellucci. “Due to that decision, governments at every level —…
Read MoreBill honoring abolitionist aims to expand human trafficking prevention
CLEVELAND (Catholic News Service) — Two members of Congress have introduced a bill to expand successful trafficking prevention efforts in schools and businesses. Reps. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) and Karen Bass (D-Calif.) introduced the Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection and Reauthorization Act of 2021 in the House of Representatives Sept. 3. “During COVID … the exploitation of children has risen substantially, mostly online, and there is kind of like a pent-up demand to exploit, it’s lingering there,” Smith said during a livestreamed news conference prior to the bill’s introduction.…
Read MoreStates of Incarceration: The Global Context 2021
Louisiana once again has the highest incarceration rate in the U.S., (Rates calculated per 100,000 people) unseating Oklahoma to return to its long-held position as “the world’s prison capital.” By comparison, states like New York and Massachusetts appear progressive, but even these states lock people up at higher rates than nearly every other country on earth. Compared to the rest of the world, every U.S. state relies too heavily on prisons and jails to respond to crime. Looking at each state in the global context reveals that, in every region…
Read MoreCritics seek reform of Colorado sex offense laws they say can do more harm than good
Lawmakers, researchers and even some victims seek reform of Colorado’s Sex Offense Management Board. By ALEX BURNESS | [email protected] | The Denver Post September 6, 2021 Close to 30 years ago, Mr. Bethurum was living in Wray, in his late 40s, when he groomed an underage family member and entered into what he wrongly thought of as a relationship. He says he now understands now there is no such thing as a “relationship” between a child and an adult. He completed his prison sentence for sexual assault on a child,…
Read MoreIndecent exposure charges filed against trans woman over L.A. spa incident
Prosecutors filed multiple counts of indecent exposure this week against a transgender woman whose alleged conduct was at the center of a viral video that sparked a pair of violent protests outside a spa in Westlake this summer, officials said Thursday. ______ Merager was charged Monday with five counts of indecent exposure, relating to an incident inside the Wi Spa on June 23, according to a news release issued by the Los Angeles Police Department. The next day, a viral video emerged alleging a customer had exposed their penis in…
Read MoreAn old arrest can follow you forever online. Some newspapers want to fix that.
Source: washingtonpost.com 8/31/21 The Boston Globe has joined a handful of newsrooms around the country doing something once unthinkable: changing old articles because they are ruining a person’s life. The newspaper on Friday launched its Fresh Start initiative, which allows people to petition to have information about them removed from or added to old stories, to have their names anonymized, or to have the stories delisted from Google searches. The Globe will prioritize stories involving minor crimes and those from long ago, but will also consider ones about “embarrassing” noncriminal…
Read MoreKansas Supreme Court Ruling: City Conviction Requires Sex Offender Registration
The Kansas Supreme Court ruled Friday that a man’s municipal conviction for sexual battery requires him to register as a sex offender. The 5-2 decision comes in the case of a man, who was convicted in 2018 of sexual battery in violation of the Shawnee municipal code. At issue was whether he was required to register as a sex offender under the Kansas Offender Registration Act. The Supreme Court ruled that he did, finding that the Shawnee ordinance is identical to the state statute. Justices Melissa Standridge and Eric Rosen…
Read MoreAction Alert: Call before Aug 26 to support the Jeremy Rose family against job discrimination
Women Against Registry (W.A.R.) 8/24/21 NATIONWIDE CALL TO ACTION! We are all in this together so please take action as soon as possible and certainly before the program airs on KSTU-FOX 13 on August 26 in the evening! We were contacted by a registered citizen in Salt Lake City Utah a few months back. He was being vilified by Fox13 television station due to a grievance a vengeful female had against the director for kicking her son out of the group which had nothing to do with him. He was…
Read MoreFL: Three Disney World employees along with 17 arrested in child sex sting
Three Walt Disney World employees in Orlando were along with 17 suspects arrested in a massive child sex sting in Florida. The Polk County Sheriff’s Office announced the arrests as part of ‘Operation Child Protector’ at a news conference on Tuesday. Collectively, the group was charged with 49 felony counts and two misdemeanors, including: traveling to meet a minor for sex, attempted felony battery, using a computer to seduce a child, and transmission of material harmful to a child. Officials said most of the suspects had communicated with undercover agents, posing as…
Read MoreApple to scan U.S. iPhones for images of child sexual abuse
Apple is planning to scan U.S. iPhones for images of child sexual abuse, drawing applause from child protection groups but raising concern among some security researchers that the system could be misused by governments looking to surveil their citizens. Apple unveiled plans to scan U.S. iPhones for images of child sexual abuse, drawing applause from child protection groups but raising concern among some security researchers that the system could be misused, including by governments looking to surveil their citizens. The tool designed to detected known images of child sexual abuse,…
Read MoreGeneral Comments Aug 2021
Comments that are not specific to a certain post should go here, for the month of Aug 2021. Contributions should relate to the cause and goals of this organization and please, keep it courteous and civil. This section is not intended for posting links to news articles without additional relevant comment.
Read MoreBudget breakdown: Minnesota to review sex offense registry program 30 years after it became law
A Minnesota group will study the laws that govern people convicted of a sex offense this year and provide a report to the Legislature in January. The state budget includes $25,000 for the creation of a Predatory Offense Statutory Framework Working Group by Sept. 1. It will examine the state’s predatory offense registration laws including “the requirements placed on people convicted of an offense, the crimes for which POR is required, the method by which POR requirements are applied to people convicted of an offense and the effectiveness of the…
Read MoreMN: OCEAN Community Conference and Rally — July 18, 2021
OCEAN is hosting their Community Conference at Capital Mall in St. Paul, Sunday, July 18, 2021. At this gathering, a lineup of speakers will educate the public on the terrors of preventive detention in the state of Minnesota. The first speaker will be introduced at 1:00 PM. If you can, please bring your own chair. At 3:30 PM we will walk/drive to the Governor’s Mansion, where we will demand an Executive Order from Governor Tim Walz to shutdown preventive detention in Minnesota. The current conditions are ripe for mass…
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