We’re Rethinking Prisons. Is It Time to Rethink Sex Offender Registries?

(Courtesy of Tammy Bond)

Taken as a whole, Agan says, the existing research shows that “registries and post-release notification laws do not on balance seem to be effective at reducing sex crimes or recidivism by sex offenders.”

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Obama Just Signed a Really Bad Criminal Justice Law

“… 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. …

Do sex offenders deserve a scarlet letter on their passport?

(David Paul Morris / Getty Images)

“After rousing themselves from the 30-plus-year bad trip that was the war on drugs — or rather, the war on drug users — many Americans in and out of elected office looked around for …

Congress Acts to Mark Passports of Sex Offenders

In a rebuttal printed as an appendix in the report, the State Department noted that there was no evidence anyone on that list had traveled in order to commit a sex crime, and that it already has the authority to …

Catholic Guilt? The Lying, Scheming Altar Boy Behind a Lurid Rape Case

“The psychiatrist isn’t the only person deeply skeptical of Billy Doe and his stories. The detective who led the Philadelphia district attorney’s investigation into Gallagher’s allegations against the priests and teacher also has some disturbing doubts. In a confidential deposition …

Kids As Young As 9 Are on the Sex Offender Registry…for Life

“Recidivism rates — the rates at which juvenile sex offenders re-offend — are so low as to be indistinguishable from the rate that non-offenders offend. But that’s not what the public believes. Instead, it believes that juvenile sex ‘criminals’ (including …

The yellow star, the scarlet letter and ‘International Megan’s Law’

“There is something truly odious — “Scarlet Letter”-esque, one might say — about requiring people to bear, for their entire lives, this conspicuous badge of dishonor, whatever their prior crime (for which they have already been duly punished) may have …

Congratulations Emily!

“Protecting Our Kids: How Sex Offender Laws Are Failing Us by Professor Emily Horowitz has been named among the Outstanding Academic Titles of 2015 by Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries.”

See this post at the Crimcast blog.…

Are Sex Offender Registries Cruel and Unusual Punishment?

“And what is absolutely mind-blowing is that the SOR’s have been proven not to work, and they cost the taxpayers gobs of money (see reference ‘a’ above). But now that they’ve become institutionalized in the justice system, they’re a political …

Two Articles About the Sex Offenders of Pahokee Florida

“Today, though, the town of Pahokee does more than tolerate the sex offender colony. It has come to embrace it. And nowhere is that turnaround more evident than at the United Methodist Church, where many offenders attend service.”

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