“Some 800,000 registered sex offenders can’t live near parks or schools — or sometimes even in the homes of their own parents. Is it time to re-visit sex-offender registries that cast a wide net and often treat juvenile offenders as if they were adults?” Listen to this episode of NPR’s To the Point, which features… Continue reading Have Sex-Offender Registries Gone Too Far?

Reuters/Paul Sakuma/POOL “Much of the so-called wisdom that has been handed down to us about the workings of the legal system, and the criminal process in particular, has been undermined by experience, legal scholarship and common sense,” Kozinski writes in the Georgetown Law Journal. Read this summary in Business Insider by Matthew Speiser and Kozinski’s… Continue reading Judge Alex Kozinski Identifies 12 Lies About American Justice

“A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP) violates the U.S. Constitution by confining offenders indefinitely without giving them access to the courts and other protections of the criminal justice system.” Read the full article by Chris Serres in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

“She’ll be reading from her book this Sunday night, June 7, at the Bluestockings bookstore, 172 Allen St., on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, at 7 p.m. Admission is free. “If you’re wondering what it looks like when an academic talks the talk, walks the walk, and changes the lives of future cops and former convicts,… Continue reading Are we too hard on sex offenders? Lenore Skenazy on Emily Horowitz

“No one wants to allow a child to be hurt, and laws that create mechanisms to “keep bad men away” are seductive because they make us feel safer – but that safety is an illusion that comes at a great price. As a society we are not capable of predicting who will or will not… Continue reading Questionable Committments

“Permanent injunctions following a full trial may be constitutional, if the speech fits within some First Amendment exception, such as perhaps the libel exception. Preliminary injunctions are almost never constitutional, as the Pentagon Papers case shows. And in any event, any injunction would have to be based on a showing that the entire article was… Continue reading New Jersey judge orders newspaper to take down article

“When I learned that, more than a decade ago, reality-TV star Josh Duggar avoided jail after his parents dealt with molestation charges via church and family contacts, it made me think about the men I interviewed for my book about our draconian sex-offender laws.” Read the article in the Daily News.

“Ultimately, the panic and power of suggestion was pervasive enough to dupe our entire criminal justice system, as dozens of innocent people were sent to prison for crimes for which there was no evidence other than the coerced testimony of kids, and for which those same defendants would later be exonerated.” Read the article by… Continue reading The ongoing legacy of the great satanic sex abuse panic

The NCRJ has long sponsored the case of Dan and Fran Keller. “Beginning in 1991, Fran and Dan Keller, who ran a day care out of their Austin home, committed unspeakable acts against their charges — they put one in a swimming pool with a baby-eating shark; they forced the kids to watch as they… Continue reading “Satanic” Day-Care Operator’s Conviction Tossed

Lelaind knew he’d test positive for marijuana. But after spending the past few years bouncing in and out of jail, mostly for minor parole violations, he wasn’t afraid of another 30-day stretch. I can do that standing on my head, he thought. That was in 2006, when Lelaind was 26 years old. He’s been kept… Continue reading The Shadowy Realm of Civil Commitment