Archive for November, 2015

First Amendment woes in North Carolina

Wednesday, November 11th, 2015

“I’ve said it many times before — these sex offender cases are of the deepest importance, not because of any special concern we might have for convicted sex offenders but because they’re the despised minority du jour, subject to the harshest treatment that legislators and law enforcement officials can dream up, and unless the courts stand up and make it clear that there are lines the government cannot cross without running afoul of the Constitution, government action will become more and more abusive, and then all of our rights are at risk. A shame that the NC court didn’t view things that way.”

Read the op-ed by David Post in the Washington Post.

States Struggle With What to Do With Sex Offenders After Prison

Sunday, November 1st, 2015

Tim Gruber for The New York Times

“But now Minnesota’s civil commitment program — which detains more people per capita than any other state — is facing an overhaul. Earlier this year, a federal judge found it unconstitutional, calling it ‘a punitive system that segregates and indefinitely detains a class of potentially dangerous individuals without the safeguards of the criminal justice system.'”

Read the New York Times article by Monica Davey.