[Note: Friends of Justice is a personal blog. I speak only for myself.]
“… there’s a deeply questionable moral calculus involved in holding people’s crimes against them long after they’ve paid their debt to society. In theory if not in practice, our justice system is built on the idea that this is wrong. Yet when it comes to sex offenders, American lawmakers seem not just willing but eager to impose punishment forever—a tendency that has resulted in sex offenders all over the country being forced into homelessness because residency restrictions have made it impossible for them to find housing. In its most extreme form, the idea that sex offenders never stop being dangerous has resulted in thousands of people being held indefinitely in “civil commitment” long after they’ve completed their prison terms.”
Read the article by Leon Neyfakh in Slate.
