Source: actionnewsjax.com 2/15/24 JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — There are tens of thousands of people on the sex offender registry in Florida right now, but there’s a growing movement from a group pushing to abolish the public list completely. Right now, you can check the public list to see who’s on it and why. They could be your co-workers, neighbors, or a person who comes by to service your home. “I made a poor judgement call,” a local sex offender told Action News Jax’s Robert Grant. “I put myself in a situation…
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This Rape Victim Wants To End the Sex Offender Registry
Source: reason.com 12/2023 issue, Women Against Registry (W.A.R.) “A lot of people on the registry are on there for consensual behavior, things I think many people agree shouldn’t be crimes,” says Meaghan Ybos, the president of Women Against Registry. When Meaghan Ybos was raped in 2003, it was the sort of assault you see more often in cinematic crime fiction than in reality. A stranger, wearing a ski mask, broke into her home, held a knife to her throat, and forced himself on her. Twenty years later, Ybos is president…
Read MoreJanice’s Journal: Best Way to Serve and Protect Victims is to Better Serve Offenders
The United Kingdom (U.K.) is not known for having an open mind regarding individuals required to register. Instead, the U.K. is known for stopping and returning to the country-of-origin individuals required to register even if the individuals have entered the U.K. via airport on their way to another destination. In such cases, the U.K. has returned the individuals to their country-of-origin at the individuals’ expense. Therefore, it was surprising, perhaps even shocking, to hear the voice of reason in a government report issued recently in the U.K. First, the report…
Read MoreAZ: Changes needed in sex offender registry rules
Source: azcapitoltimes.com 1/13/23 In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a rare spate of high-profile child abductions and murders, mostly sexual in nature, terrified America. With constant media coverage, parents across the country were easily led to believe that their children could be in imminent danger. As demands from the public, as well as a few prominent parents of missing or murdered children escalated, legislatures responded, and the sex offender registry was born. This primal need to protect our children from any possible harm resonates in us all. Human logic…
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: 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 MoreLegal Scholars to Consider Elimination of Public Registry Next Week
[ACSOL] Members of the American Law Institute (ALI), the most important and prestigious organization of legal scholars and prominent attorneys in the nation, will consider a proposal next week that could significantly change the nation’s sex offender laws. The most significant of those changes would be the elimination of public registries in all 50 state. The proposal also includes, but is not limited to, recommendations to abolish all public notification laws as well as most residency restrictions, internet restrictions and GPS location monitoring. “The ALI drafts model laws that often…
Read MoreAmerican Sex Offender Policy Condemned as Human Rights Violation Before the United Nations
[justfactsnotfear.com – 3/19/21] Watch the video Visit justfactsnotfear.com/
Read MoreAbolish the sex offender registry
[thenorthernlight.org – 4/29/19] It’s not easy to come to the defense of nonviolent sex offenders. Any lawmaker that considers reforming the excessively-punitive registry will start out on the losing side of the public’s perception. For starters, there is an erroneous assumption that the registry entirely comprises of rapists and pedophiles. On top of that, sex offender registration has become somewhat of a throwaway issue. Who cares about anyone on the registry? They did something, and that’s their punishment. However, our inability to think critically about sex offender registration is causing…
Read MoreDavid Comes Out Against Sex Offender Registry [David Pakman Show on YouTube]
[YouTube – 11/4/18] After receiving a question from a viewer last week, David comes out against the sex offender registry. Watch the video
Read MoreMA: The Case for Dismantling the Sex Offender Registry with Dr. Emily Horowitz [presentation]
[sopri-ma.org – 10/25/18] with Dr. Emily Horowitz, author of Protecting Our Kids? How Sex Offender Laws are Failing Us Thursday, October 25 @ 7pm Cambridge Friends Center, 5 Longfellow Park (off Brattle Street coming out of Harvard Square, Cambridge) Emily Horowitz, Professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice at St. Francis College (Brooklyn, NY), will review some of the research and evidence about sex offense registries and the harm they cause. She will discuss recent efforts to challenge these popular but ineffective and damaging policies. “The sex offense registry is essentially…
Read MoreAustralia: Tougher punishment needed for child sex crimes
[theage.com.au 5/16/18] Should child sex offenders be named and shamed, and their locations placed on a public register after they are released from prison? Raping or otherwise sexually assaulting a child is a crime so vile it challenges the capacity of lawmakers and the judicial system to design adequate and effective punishments and deterrents. The task is all the more difficult because such atrocities understandably elicit profound emotional responses, including despair, rage and a searing desire for retribution. … Evidence shows public registers of offenders can add to the suffering…
Read MoreMeet the activists demanding elimination of the sex offender registry
[therooster.com 4/19/18] “The tide is going to turn against sex offender registries when people realize they’re more likely to end up on the registry than to be molested by someone on it,” says Lenore Skenazy, author, columnist and activist for the elimination of sex offender registries. She lists off the offenses that could put a person on a public list of social outcasts widely seen as pedophiles, predators and rapists: You could be a sex offender if you go to a prostitute. You could be a sex offender if you…
Read MoreOH: Sex offender says Ohio’s registry ‘destroys lives,’ should be abolished
[mydaytondailynews.com] CINCINNATI — Derek Logue is a member of one of the few groups it is socially acceptable for people to openly hate. He knows online comments on this story will likely refer to him in the most vulgar terms, and no one will come to his defense. But Logue said people like him are being unfairly discriminated against, and he thinks something should be done about it. Logue is one of 17,236 adult registered sex offenders in Ohio, a group whose criminal histories are accessible to anyone with an…
Read MoreReason and the Soho Forum Want to Know, Do We Abolish the Registry?
[UPDATED links 2/21/18] [sexlawandpolicy.org] Dr. Emily Horowitz, noted sex offense policy researcher, and Marci Hamilton, child safety advocate, went toe-to-toe in an engaging debate Monday night, which may be a first of its kind on the need for sex offender registries. On the resolution for whether the laws requiring those convicted of sex offenses to put their names in a registry should be abolished, Dr. Emily Horowitz argued the affirmative and Ms. Marci Hamilton the negative. Even though Dr. Horowitz crafted a well-reasoned argument against the use of sex offender…
Read MoreIs It Better To Do Something versus Nothing? [Podcast]
[registrymatters.co] Episode 10 Is it better to do something versus nothing? Can you do more harm than good by a poorly thought out action than by sitting on the sidelines? That is the topic we’ll be covering tonight. Larry and Andy are discussing if there is some level of harm that can be done by taking action prematurely rather than waiting. An example of this is filing a challenge before there is sufficient evidence to support it. Waiting might produce other challenges that would bolster the case significantly. Additionally, a…
Read MoreNY: “All Sex Offender Registries Should Be Abolished”: Reason/Soho Forum Debate
[narsol.org] That’s the highly controversial resolution that will be argued at the next Soho Forum/Reason debate, on Monday, February 12 at New York’s Subculture Theater from 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. Emily Horowitz will argue the affirmative position. She is professor and chair of the sociology and criminal justice department at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, New York, where she founded a program that helps the formerly incarcerated complete college. Marci A. Hamilton will take the negative. She is Fox Professor of Practice and Fox Family Pavilion Resident Senior Fellow in…
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