‘In 1996, when Jackson wrote her critique, she was one of the few who foresaw that a new web of laws banishing sex offenders from society would create a banished class of nearly one million, forced to regularly register with police and have their personal information publicly posted for decades and often life. That’s something for which she should get credit, not scorn.
‘These post-release consequences have been upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court on the erroneous grounds that sex offenders have a “frightening and high” recidivism rate. In 2015, legal scholar Ira Ellman found the court relied on a comment from a treatment provider in Psychology Today as their sole source for this assertion. Notwithstanding these shallow underpinnings, those branded “sex offenders” — including all those Jackson sentenced to supposedly too little prison time — are subject to a lifetime of endless regulations and public shaming that makes it nearly impossible to get jobs, find housing or support their families and re-integrate into society. These consequences never end, and are not considered punishment but merely administrative, civil regulations to protect the public because of the myth of high recidivism.’
Please read the entire article by NCRJ Director Dr. Emily Horowitz in The New York Daily News.
