The Alliance for Constitutional Sex Offense Laws (ACSOL) is dedicated to protecting the Constitution by restoring the civil rights of registrants and their families. In order to achieve that objective, ACSOL will educate and litigate as well as support or oppose legislation.
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People change. This is an incontrovertible truth in life. Yet, this concept seems to be lacking in the wonderful state that has become my home – at least it’s MIA in the New Hampshire state prison system. (Fortunately, it hasn’t hit our schools yet.) The money to be made by an opposite view – people don’t change – is real. The flawed anthropology that...
Editor’s Note: Although this article is clearly editorial in nature, it contains a substantial amount of fact and data that have direct bearing on the subject. It’s also a long article, and I hope you’ll have the patience to read it through to the end. The article is in five sections: The History of Sex Offender Registries in the US, Sex Offender Registries are Manifestly Unjust, Sex Offender...
The Dallas City Council has expressed interest in prohibiting sex offenders from living near schools, parks and other kid-friendly areas. The idea, which is being pushed by Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings and is backed by the Dallas Police Department, would create a buffer zone, though specifics have not been determined. There are more than 3,300 registered sex offenders living in Dallas. Full Article
BALTIMORE —The list of sex offenders on Maryland's sex offender registry is shrinking because of a Maryland Court of Appeals ruling in June. The ruling said corrections officials are legally required to remove the names of offenders who committed their crimes before 1995, when the state registry was created. The court ruled that Maryland can't make those offenders register after the fact. Full Article
15
Aug
2014
Sonora, CA — The Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Department can no longer provide a sex offender watch list or alert residents when an offender moves into their neighborhood. The Sheriff’s Office has been forced by California’s Department of Justice to drop the “Offender Watch” online service which allowed residents to go on line, enter their address and be alerted via email if a sex offender...
15
Aug
2014
A suburb of St. Louis, Missouri, has been under a dramatic siege since Saturday, when a police officer shot and killed an unarmed black teenager named Michael Brown. In the wake of the killing, protests have engulfed the community — drawing a heavy-handed police crackdown with St. Louis County police officers armed with assault weapons and outfitted with military equipment. Many of the striking...
15
Aug
2014
Since 1994, when Congress first ordered states to create sex offender registries, the laws in the United States about sex crimes have steadily ratcheted up. We now have what experts say is the most draconian regime in the world. As we’ve tried to show in Slate this week, legislators have repeatedly expanded the definition of a sex offender, extended the periods of time for...
The debate about media sensationalism and moral panic concerning sex offenders is always a tough one for me, mainly because I think most news media chase the public's interest in stories more than we create it. Our rule usually is that the biggest story is the one the most people will read. In that sense readers tell us what to write more than we...
14
Aug
2014
In a vote of 4 to 1, the City Council for the City of Orange agreed on August 12 to eliminate all presence restrictions that prohibited registered citizens from visiting public libraries, parks, bus stops, schools and restaurants with playgrounds. The City Council also agreed to stop enforcement of its residency restrictions which prohibited more than one registered citizen staying in a local hotel...
12
Aug
2014
As we begin another school year, it is reassuring to know that Arizona's educators are on the prowl, ever on the lookout for sexual predators who may be lurking among our children. The perverts, the flashers, the five years olds …Wait … what? It seems a five-year-old Surprise boy was on the playground last spring when suddenly he pulled his pants down. The kid...
On his 18th birthday, ____ ____ and his 14-year-old girlfriend of one year, Misty, decided to have sex. Because of their ages, that meant ____ committed the crime of statutory rape. When Misty told her father months later, after finding out that _____ had cheated on her, he went to the police. In 1994, ____ struck a deal with prosecutors, pleading no contest to lewd and lascivious behavior....
Judges in two federal cases last week ruled against an Arizona man accused of operating an Internet extortion racket that targets sex offenders across the country. Full Article
Steve Blow and Josh Gravens are two of my new heroes. I met them both when I went to Dallas three weeks ago to speak at the Reform Sex Offender Laws convention. Gravens is a sex offender who also spoke at the convention. I went with him to see what it's like to register and that became a story in itself. Full Opinion Piece
11
Aug
2014
Our draconian policies about sex offenses reflect our ignorance of them. ... The upshot, experts say, is that the United States has the most draconian sex registration laws in the world. As a result, the number of registrants across the nation has swelled—doubling and then doubling again to 750,000—in the two decades since Jacob’s Law passed, according to data collected by the Center for Missing...
Immigration authorities in Puerto Vallarta turned away 53 foreign visitors between January and July when it was found they had a criminal record for acts of pedophilia. The National Immigration Institute (INM) began implementing a program call Angel Guardian in December of last year. Anyone entering the country who has a record for pederasty is denied entry. Full Article
BARTOW, Fla. — In the decade since Dateline NBC's To Catch a Predator segments popularized Internet sex stings, more than 1,200 men in Florida have been arrested, accused of preying on underage teens and children for sex. But as the stings put more and more men behind bars, detectives are working harder and harder to keep up their arrest numbers. And the tactics they're...
10
Aug
2014
The city of Orange is set to join a growing list of cities revising bans on registered sex offenders in parks in the wake of recent state appeals court rulings. ... Orange has already been served with a lawsuit, Lindsay v. City of Orange, challenging its laws banning sex offenders in parks. The suit alleges the entire ordinance must be repealed, but the city attorney...
10
Aug
2014
In saner times, what Josh Gravens did would be called “playing doctor” or “adolescent curiosity.” General embarrassment and a stern talking-to would have followed. And that would have been the end of it. But in this age of hysteria, the childhood misdeed will never end for Josh. And now the city of Dallas considers making it worse by declaring a great majority of the city...
Two high-risk sex offenders stopped in downtown Pasco's Peanuts Park on the same day claimed they didn't know the one-acre concrete plaza is a designated city park. Full Article Photo View of Peanuts Park
Faced with a draconian decision by the United States Supreme Court in late April which all but eliminated meaningful restitution for child pornography victims, U.S. Senators Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) spearheaded a comprehensive legislative fix (S. 2301) which addresses the concerns outlined by the Court in United States v. Paroline. The Amy and Vicky Child Pornography Victim Restitution Improvement Act of...