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 …

When Junk Science About Sex Offenders Infects the Supreme Court

An important op-ed in the New York Times by David Fiegle.…

A “Frightening” Myth About Sex Offenders

Current sex offender laws have no scientific basis.

View this video by David Feige at the New York Times web site.…

Betsy DeVos could change sexual assault policy for the better

(Mike Theiler/Reuters)

“And yet it is also true that the current regime under which campus sexual-assault allegations are investigated and adjudicated is seriously flawed. Before the Obama administration instructed colleges and universities that they had to take sexual-assault allegations seriously …

The Bad Science Behind Campus Response to Sexual Assault

Peter Yang

I talked with Richard McNally, a psychology professor at Harvard and one of the country’s leading experts on the effects of trauma on memory, about the assertions Campbell made in her presentation. He first said that because assaults …

Colorado sex offender registration act is unconstitutional, federal judge declares

“The fear that pervades the public reaction to sex offenses — particularly as to children — generates reactions that are cruel and in disregard of any objective assessment of the individual’s actual proclivity to commit new sex offenses,” Matsch wrote. …

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 …

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, …