What Jury Found Kevin Spacey Guilty?

Chris Pizzello / Invision/AP

“Is Kevin Spacey a criminal sexual molester? I don’t know. Neither do you, unless you were actually molested by him, or, it seems, unless you’re the Boston Globe. ‘This Was A Criminal Act,’ the Globe…

Vermont corrections officer of the year dies in apparent suicide

vermont digger

Dalton pointed to a 2013 literature review from the U.S. Department of Justice that included research on the stress that correctional officers face. The review found, in part:

• In 2011, about 31 percent of correctional officers reported “serious

Sex offender registries endanger the lives they’re meant to protect

“Our communities deserve effective public-safety measures that are based on facts and sound research, not wasteful and counterproductive measures born of fear. We all want to be safe. We have to demand our legislators pass laws that work and actually …

Mothers Defend Sons Accused of Sexual Assault

Tim Gruber for The New York Times

“Few issues in education today are as intensely debated as the way colleges deal with sexual misconduct. Women’s groups and victims’ advocates have deplored Ms. DeVos’s moves, saying they will allow colleges to …

Elko sex cases show folly of mandatory minimum sentences

“A pair of sex abuse cases from Elko County demonstrates what a sham mandatory minimum sentences are, especially in light of the continuing national debate over U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision to use these one-size-fits-all punishments more frequently.”

Two …

Two Great Pieces by Steven Yoder

“Sexual predator” isn’t a clinical term that means anything to criminologists or sex-crime researchers. Instead, it’s a media construction created after horrific cases of rape and murder in Washington State in the early nineties, as criminologist Jacqueline Helfgott points out …

The Weakest Link Standard

Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard University

“Rosario was convicted based in part on a confession, but the high court accepted a late-arriving medical diagnosis of “delirium tremens” (drug or alcohol withdrawal, the “DTs”) to undermine the credibility of that confession. He was convicted …

Supreme Court unanimously overturns North Carolina’s ban on social-media use by sex offenders

(J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press)

“[T]he State may not enact this complete bar to the exercise of First Amendment rights on websites integral to the fabric of our modern society and culture. It is well established that, as a general rule, …

Texas Couple Exonerated, but we have New Witches to Hunt

“Viewed in retrospect, it seems that otherwise sensible people quite simply lost their minds. Social workers, therapists, prosecutors and cops joined a fruitcake crusade that ruined people’s lives, based on the coerced claims of vulnerable little kids.”

Read the editorial…

Couple Exonerated in ‘Satanic Panic’ Child Ritual Abuse Case

“The Kellers were not the only ones to face outlandish charges; in the 1980s and early ’90s, a phenomenon that has since become known as “Satanic Panic” was sweeping the nation. A confluence of societal factors led to widespread hysteria …