How “Risk Assessment” Tools Are Condemning People to Indefinite Imprisonment

“Yet, the fact remains: Most of the people in civil commitment facilities, like Lieberman, sexually assaulted children or women. If released, some of these folks might harm again. Others will not. But regardless of that uncertainty, once they have completed …

Making the Case Against Banishing Sex Offenders

photo credit: the texas observer

[Justice] Kennedy’s “frightening and high” line was based on a 1988 Department of Justice guide for treating sex offenders, which cited an unfounded conjecture in the magazine Psychology Today. Further studies have shown the ineffectiveness …

Expanding Incarceration Is Not the Best Way to Fight Rape Culture

Photo: Gabrielle Lurie/AFP/Getty Image

“The United States imprisons a higher proportion of its population than any other developed country. The American incarceration rate is roughly 3.5 times as high as the median rate in Europe, according to a 2013 report …

Wrongfully Convicted of Rape, a New Jersey Man Finds More Punishment After Prison

Mark Makela for The New York Times

Nearly 30 years ago, at 22, Mr. Harrell was arrested on suspicion of raping a teenage girl and later served four years in a New Jersey prison. But when he was released on …

Judge Critical of Sex Offender Registry Confirmed to Massachusetts High Court

“Making a mild criticism of sex offender registries looked like it could have hurt a Massachusetts judge in her bid to serve on the state’s Supreme Judicial Court. But on Wednesday the Governor’s Council, an eight-member elected body responsible for …

Don’t Believe the fearmongering about perverts using Pokemon Go

“Parents, it’s time to panic: Kids who venture outside to play Pokémon Go are going to end up in the clutches of sex offenders, unless we do something pointless, political and pathetic.

“We must fearmonger!”

Read the article by NCRJ …

Bogus “Sex Offender” Labels are Ruining Lives

What’s the most common age of sex-offenders?

It’s not a trick question, but unless you follow this stuff closely you’ll almost certainly answer wrong.

In fact, most people are shocked to learn that the most common age of people charged …

Beyond Panic and Punishment: Brock Turner and the Left Response to Sexual Violence

“The Turner case exemplifies a problematic pattern in American policymaking. The case, similar to other sensationalized instances of leniency for sexual assault, has animated calls for harsher punishments, mandatory minimums and removing judicial discretion. All of these law-and-order responses, coming …

Program to corral ballooning sex offender registry failing

“So-called Romeo offenders, convicted of sex with an underage girlfriend or boyfriend, exist side by side with rapists. There is no consideration as to whether a molestation occurred within a family — and thus, experts say, is statistically unlikely to …

How a Plano legislator’s remarks bred strict sex offender laws

July 1997: State Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, a former schoolteacher and proponent of the state’s strict 1995 Ashley’s Laws for sex offenders, attends a conference in Bellevue, Wash., about sex offender registries. She begins her speech by noting that “putting …