Kat’s Blog: Lessons Learned

Our family member has been on the registry for a year. I know that in the grand scheme of things, that time is merely a drop in the bucket. We had no idea what we were in for. We educated and prepared ourselves as much anyone can before we started this seemingly endless road thru hell. Read what we could, talked to those willingly to share, asked questions when we finally figured out what questions to ask. Soon we realized that if we didn’t help ourselves no government or law…

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FL: What Would Dr. King Do? The Case Against Amendment 4 on Felon Voting Rights

[floridaactioncommittee.org – 9/21/18] Florida leads the nation with over 1 million citizens disenfranchised and unable to vote due to felony convictions. The path to having their voting rights restored is long and difficult, and has been found unconstitutional by a federal judge. This November, Floridians who are able to vote will determine whether convicted felons who have completed their sentences, including parole or probation, will automatically have their voting rights restored. With two glaring exceptions: those convicted of murder or a sex offense. The problem with Amendment 4 is that…

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The Uncivil War On Sexuality

[dsdaughtry.wordpress.com 5/14/18] The sex offender registry and draconian laws aimed at offenders has destroyed lives of individuals and families. Today a new form of offender registration has transpired. This new offender registry creates life sentences using the internet as its delivery method carefully skirting libel and slander policies under the blanket of free speech. Naturally, this is not a registry, but social movements are utilizing social media platforms to quasi-create a public registry with no hopes of being removed or deleted, and it’s creating more harm than good. A recent…

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OR: Let ________ live his life: Letter to the editor

[oregonlive.com 5/11/12] _______ should be given the opportunity to live his life (“Oregon State’s _______ denies molesting girl, says ‘nothing ever happened,’ ” May 7). The accusations and subsequent punishment he received is enough. This story has received national attention and there seems to be a vicious campaign by the accuser’s mother to make him pay for this transgression for the rest of his life. This is brutally unfair and begs the question, “Why does she hold onto so much hatred?” Read more  

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Part I: Just another day in the life of a registered sex offender

[narsol.org 5/8/18] By Sandy . . . Each day’s emails and email alerts in my inbox always include at least one especially disturbing situation that threatens the ability of those on the registry to be allowed to resume a normal life, no matter how long ago the offense that caused the registration. The planets must have been in a particularly evil alignment when I started opening today’s offerings. First was a story from several days ago where the art work, highly acclaimed art work, was ordered pulled from a university…

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OR: He Was Convicted of Molesting a 6-Year Old. Should He Have a Future in Baseball?

[UPDATED LINKS 5/9/18] [nytimes.com 5/7/18] CORVALLIS, Ore. — __________, one of the best players in college baseball, and certainly its most controversial, strode to the mound, dusted away a patch of dirt with his cleats and lined up for his first pitch. The home crowd of nearly 3,000, most in orange and black, the colors of Oregon State, cheered, “Luke! Luke! Luke!” They wanted a victory against Arizona State, one of their biggest rivals. More than that, they wanted a performance that would hark back to a different time —…

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A Rational Approach to the Role of Publicity and Condemnation in the Sentencing of Offenders

[ssrn.com  5/2/18] Florida State University Law Review, Vol. 46, 2019 38 Pages Posted: 2 May 2018 Mirko Bagaric Director of the Evidence-Based Sentencing and Criminal Justice Project, Swinburne University Law School Peter Isham Northwestern University, School of Law, Students Date Written: April 14, 2018 Abstract The punishment imposed on criminal offenders by courts often does not exhaust the hardship they experience. There are a number of collateral forms of punishment that many offenders are subjected to as a result of their offending. Some of these deprivations are institutional, such as…

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He was a Carpenter and a Firefighter and a Sex offender! My Dad

[sosen.org] Please meet the greatest Dad in the world, my father! He was a good-looking man, strong and tall, he was also brilliant! Oh, let me brag a bit and tell you that he passed on some pretty good traits to his children and he had a pretty cute wife too, that would be my mother. People say that my mother was beautiful, and smart, and bossy and just basically a pain in the neck most of the time, but she was also one of those women who decided that…

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Wearing our scarlet letters [opinion]

[sosen.org] When I was 18, I joined the military. The first stop for an enlisted member is, of course, Boot Camp!! At boot camp, for the first time, I saw some impressive men and women who had a unique job of breaking down 100 18-30 year olds and building them into a unique group of young men and women. It is, of course, deeper than that. The drill instructors are there to teach many things, like how to survive, to move forward without stopping, and they pick lives up where…

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