when a family member goes to prison, the family serves the sentence, too

On Vox, Dominique Matti writes about how her father's incarceration punished the whole family. She writes beautifully about cruel circumstances.

For every man in a cell missing the birth of his child, there is a woman delivering alone. My uncle took me to my elementary school's father-daughter dance. No one asked why — everyone already knew. While I was grateful for my uncle's attendance, my dad's absence was a much larger presence, a yawning chasm at the core of my childhood. His absence was something we were all trying to accommodate, to build a life around, to cope with.

...his absence remained an elephant in every room we entered. His absence marked us. We had to compensate for it, compartmentalize it, and normalize it. ...

When my father was released, we tried to live like he had never been gone. But it was impossible. His goneness was as integral a piece in our relationship as his presence. ...

Despite the vast number of Americans dealing with it, having a loved one in prison is lonely. I had to deal with the absence of my father alone. My mother dealt with the absence of her co-parent alone. My grandparents dealt with the absence of their son alone. Incarceration has different implications on everyone it affects, and it often feels like no one understands.

There is a stigma attached to having a loved one in prison that makes it difficult to talk about openly. At sleepovers, speaking about it earned me looks of pity from my playmates' parents. At school, kids were amused by the stories. I was a stereotype fulfilling itself, and there was very little genuine empathy for what I was going through. I was confronting the reality that one misstep meant anyone I loved could be taken and locked away in a box for years. I needed understanding. 

Instead I found that many people believe it's our fault for loving the incarcerated — that we deserve the suffering inextricably linked to that love. People think we are foolish or unfortunate.

 And it feels selfish to speak to the person in prison about it. It's hard to fret for yourself when you know the reality an incarcerated person endures each day. I told my father I missed him. I did not tell him I was scared. People on the inside need strength and support, and much of that strength comes from the people on the outside — despite the fact that they need the same. And so the processing of all of the heavy emotions that come with incarceration is largely internal, and largely traumatic; it's largely done alone.

I sat through many callous remarks, many fairy tales about "good guys" and "bad guys," feeling like I was on the wrong side of existence. I was not aligned with the people protected by the system; I was being punished by it. And if I spoke up about its flaws — the traps of race and poverty, the evidence of unjust sentencing, the incentive to take a plea, the industrialization of prisons — I was silenced with nullifiers like, "You do the crime, you do the time." I learned quickly that many people are unwilling to hear about the humanity of prisoners and the people who love them. Human suffering requires confronting — "criminal" suffering does not exist (or, worse, it's justified).

The United States, with 2.2 million people incarcerated, is finally acknowledging the problem of overcrowded prisons. What we have yet to acknowledge is the problem of overcriminalization.

A 2014 Chicago Tribune editorial talks about how that problem leads directly to deaths like that of Eric Garner, the Chicago man who was killed by police when they arrested him for selling cigarettes:

On the opening day of law school at Yale, I always counsel my first-year students never to support a law they are not willing to kill to enforce. Usually they greet this advice with something between skepticism and puzzlement, until I remind them that the police go armed to enforce the will of the state, and if you resist, they might kill you.

The Chicago police may not have meant to kill Eric Garner but in their zealous attempt to enforce a silly law against selling "loosies", indivdual cigarettes, they did. Without that law, they would not have killed Garner.

The legal scholar Douglas Husak, in his excellent 2009 book "Overcriminalization: The Limits of the Criminal Law," points out that federal law alone includes more than 3,000 crimes, fewer than half of which found in the Federal Criminal Code. The rest are scattered through other statutes. A citizen who wants to abide by the law has no quick and easy way to find out what the law actually is — a violation of the traditional principle that the state cannot punish without fair notice. 

In addition to these statutes, he writes, an astonishing 300,000 or more federal regulations may be enforceable through criminal punishment in the discretion of an administrative agency. Nobody knows the number for sure.

Too many laws make it too easy to put people in prison, to put families into the awful black hole of having a family member in prison. As Ms. Matti makes painfully clear, even when the family member returns home from prison, that black hole remains a presence in the family.

Part of the problem, Husak suggests, is the growing tendency of legislatures — including Congress — to toss in a criminal sanction at the end of countless bills on countless subjects. It's as though making an offense criminal shows how much we care about it. 

The Adam Walsh Act, Jessica's Law, and Megan's Law all came from efforts to show how much legislators care for children. If only those legislators would acknowledge publicly that the laws have done more damage than good to children.

Legislators tend to nod solemnly when they hear how families suffer under those well-meant laws but we need more than sympathetic nods.

We need legislators with backbone, legislators willing to risk their legislative seat on behalf of families in their constituency.

I quoted a great deal of Ms. Matti's piece but please read the whole thing. Read the Tribune editorial, too.

People tend to think that incarceration issues concern only those who have someone in prison. Those of us in that category laugh a little ruefully at that way of thinking because we remember clearly the days when we didn't need to think about incarceration,either.

Overcriminalization increases the odds that your family will be touched, too.

failure-to-register charges draw excessive punishment

A man with one leg was assigned an upper bunk; he injured himself getting off the upper bunk and after the ACLU sued, the sheriff's department owes the man $40,000. Simple enough.

In the second paragraph, the article tells us that the man is a registered sex offender. What sex crime did he commit to end up in jail?

[The man] was incarcerated at the time of his alleged injury for failing to register as a convicted sex offender. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six years in the Indiana Department of Correction, with an earliest possible release date of September.

 Six years for failure to register. Not a fine, not a week or a month in jail: six years.

But he was arrested again in November for failure to register, and he was sentenced to serve the remainder of his probation in the DOC.

[The man], 30, was 15 years old in 2000 when he was adjudicated as a delinquent child for criminal sexual abuse in Macon County, Illinois, according to Tippecanoe Superior Court 1 records.

 Ah. His sex offense--his only conviction for a sex offense--was 15 years ago.

He was ordered to register as a sex offender for 10 years but failed to do so in 2006, 2009 and 2013, court records state.

He was sentenced to prison for each conviction, and his decade on the sex offender registry started over each time he was released. [My emphasis.]

In and out of prison for 15 years. Half  his life. The "crime" that sent him back to prison three times
was failure to register. Without the registry, this man would have lived a crime-free life after his initial offense of criminal sexual abuse.

What is criminal sexual abuse?

A 2014 Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (JJIE) article explains.

Illinois uses four broad categories to describe youth sexual offenses, three of which require juveniles to register as sex offenders for life. Only one charge (criminal sexual abuse, which usually refers to touching or fondling) garners a registration of 10 years.

Criminal sexual abuse carries the least punishiment of the four categories and yet this man is still paying for his misdeeds 15 years later.

Some would look at him and wonder why he hasn't learned his lesson yet. Register and get it over with!

Others would look at him and wonder why Illinois hasn't learned its lesson yet. Convictions for failure to register draw excessive punishment.

what does this hysteria teach our children?

A 74-year-old grandfather was denied entrance to a school where he had been invited to have lunch. His step-grandson had invited him to celebrate Grandparents' Day.

The hangup? The school uses Raptor, a system used to check identification; it alerts the school when it identifies a sex offender. The grandfather's crime was 16 years ago and he has committed no further crimes since then.

Listen to the hysterical tone of the article:

A Rutherford County elementary school was put to the test two weeks ago when a registered sex offender attempted to get inside Brown’s Chapel Elementary School during lunch. 

...attempted to get inside... 

Was he trying to break in through a window or picking a lock?

No, he was entering the school just like all the other grandparents were.

The man never made it past the front office on Sept. 11, thanks to a computer software system designed to keep sex offenders out. 

...never made it past the front office...

This old Hertz commercial comes to mind. The grandfather wasn't trying to get away with anything. He just came for lunch.

The incident occurred on Grandparents Day at the school. 

He was invited by his step-grandson. The grandson had not been told that sex offender grandparents were not welcome and there is a very real possibility that the boy did not even know about the crime that occurred years before he was born.

“An elderly person not really the standard that you would think you have to be concerned about,” said Principal Kellye Goostree.

Consider this: The person who made that unbelievably stupid statement is the principal of a school.

School personnnel should be better educated about sex offenses. 

Does the principal not know that a third of sexual assaults against children are perpetrated by children...whom her school welcomes with open arms? Does she not know that it is more likely that her students will be molested by someone on her staff--someone who has daily contact with students--than by a one-time visitor who stopped by for some chicken nuggets?

Schools accept those risks without blinking an eye and yet the risk of someone on a list--a list with an extremely low rate of reoffense--is seen as so great that it requires large investments in hardware and software.

The clueless principal blathers on:

“How amazing that we were able to prevent a convicted sex offender from having lunch with people’s children,” Goostree said.

Not "with people's children". With his grandson.

So far, Raptor has been a proven success.

How so?

“We’ve had four hits in the seven years,” Goostree said.  “It’s a huge safety feature for our students.”

If Raptor costs $6,000 per year (an estimate drawn from this), the school has paid $10,500 to catch each registered sex offender. Not to detect a sex offense, mind you; to identify someone on a list.

Was it worth $10,500 to single out this boy and make him known as the kid whose dangerous grandpa is not allowed in the school?

In all the years the school managed without the wonders of Raptor, how many times did a visitor to the school sexually assault a student or a staff member? 

What does the hysteria about registered sex offenders teach children? 

It teaches children that people on a list are the ones to fear. When over ninety percent of sex offense arrests are of people not on the list, we are directing children to be wary of the wrong people.

It teaches children that they are wrong to love and admire a grandparent who has come through a difficult time and has lived a law-abiding life since.

It teaches the community that it is acceptable to single out and embarrass children who love sex offenders.

Raptor stopped a man from having lunch with his grandson and the principal crows about the great success, without a single thought about the effect on the grandson.

Not a single thought that the boy might be hurt or confused by this turn of events. Not a single thought that exposing the grandfather as a registered sex offender may also expose the child to details of a crime he is too young to understand.

Instead of encouraging pointless hysteria, we ought to be upset about school boards deciding to throw away taxpayer funds on wrongheaded nonsense.

We ought to be upset about thoughtless principals who think it is acceptable to treat the children and grandchildren of registered citizens as if they do not matter.

prison should be our last resort and this is one reason why

Prison offers an opportunity for some to practice their sadistic tendencies on the defenseless, as we see in this story from The Marshall Project about the New York prison system.

... the guard escorted him past a set of double doors out of view of other inmates and the prison’s electronic surveillance cameras. Fabian said the officer, Michael Bukowski, a seven-year veteran, had then ordered him to face the wall and brace himself in the “pat-frisk” position, arms outstretched and legs spread. As he did so, Fabian recalled, he looked down and saw the toe of a boot swinging up between his legs. 

He saw a flash of light, felt a piercing pain and collapsed. “He told me to get up, but all I could do was crawl back to my cube,” Fabian, who is now 21, told investigators later. He lay on the floor in his cubicle in the prison’s dormitory, groaning and crying, for almost an hour before hobbling to lunch. In the mess hall, a sergeant sent him to the prison’s medical unit. He was soon loaded into a van and driven 80 miles north to a hospital in Albany. Doctors there performed emergency surgery, removing part of his right testicle.

 If you are thinking that surely that guard was fired, you are wrong.

More than a year later, however, Bukowski is still a state employee. His disciplinary case remains unresolved, although he faces a criminal charge of assault. His case, described in court documents and interviews, offers a stark example of the intricate protections that shield New York’s 20,000 corrections officers, even when there is compelling evidence of abuse. 

Since 2010, the state has sought to fire 30 prison guards accused of abusing inmates through a convoluted arbitration process that is required under the union contract. Officials have prevailed only eight times, according to records of disciplinary cases released under state Freedom of Information Law requests. Those records show that most abuse allegations never reach the arbitration level: Another 80 cases brought against corrections officers, sergeants and lieutenants since 2010 were settled directly with their unions for penalties other than dismissal, such as suspension.

Power in the hands of the unfit should be taken away as quickly as possible but that is not what happens when prison guards misuse power over inmates. The system is set up to keep the unfit employed in the very position for which they are least suited, a position that lets them do real damage to real people.

This is why we ought to use prisons only as a last resort.

Building more prisons and incarcerating more people means we have more corrections officers in a position where they can abuse other human beings. In a system where those who abuse their authority are rarely fired, we cannot be surprised when COs go bad.

If you can stomach it, read the whole thing.

doing what's best for the students...if only

A Virginia Beach school got wind that a parent is on the sex offender registry and banned him from school property. He petitioned for permission to attend events that parents usually attend--parent-teacher conferences, athletic events. The school gave him permission, though it restricted him from chaperoning field trips and having lunch with his child.

"Ultimately, we're looking to do what's best for the students," said Shirann Lewis, director of elementary schools, one of three division officials who review appeals.

However, the next Virginia sex offender who fights to be able to enter school property will have a different kind of fight.

As of July 1, state law requires that offenders trying to gain access to schools buy an advertisement in a local newspaper alerting the public that they plan to petition the court. Also, members of the public now may submit testimony.

An advertisement!

"How many parents are going to be willing to humiliate their children by publicizing their situation in the newspaper?" asked Mary Devoy, a volunteer advocate for data-driven reform of Virginia’s sex offender registry and laws.

How is that best for the students? Legislators seriously didn't think about the child of the sex offender when they came up with this boneheaded idea?

Shelly Stow, in a comment on the article, points out the obvious.

Aside from the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever supporting the efficacy of proximity restrictions keeping registrants away from schools, etc., this is just cruel. Giving a registrant who is a parent the choice between participating in this ridiculous and humiliating charade and being a part of his child's school life is a scheme that had to have been concocted at midnight around a cauldron. Someone please do some checking as to the last time a registrant entered a school and abducted or molested a random child. And then do the same looking for instances where a child at school was victimized by a member of the faculty or staff. Please report back what your investigation yields.

If only state legislators would think this clearly.

Once we have a sex offender registry, we have a list of people it is acceptable to torment. As this story shows, children of sex offenders are acceptable to torment. Anyone with a brain--or a heart!--should be able to see that no child deserves public humiliation, no matter what crime his parent committed.

Abolish the sex offender registry.

Reason #472 why prison should be last resort

An article in The Guardian talks about how feminine hygiene products are doled out to female inmates.

...each cell, which houses two female inmates, receives five pads per week to split. I’m not sure what they expect us to do with the fifth but this comes out to 10 total for each woman, allowing for only one change a day in an average five-day monthly cycle.

Women, and men who pay attention, will see the problem in this.

Inmates in Michigan filed suit last December alleging that pads and tampons are so scarce that their civil rights have been violated.

Why so scarce?

The reasons for keeping supplies for women in prison limited are not purely financial. Even though keeping inmates clean would seem to be in the prison’s self-interest, prisons control their wards by keeping sanitation just out of reach. Stains on clothes seep into self-esteem and serve as an indelible reminder of one’s powerlessness in prison. Asking for something you need crystallizes the power differential between inmates and guards; the officer can either meet your need or he can refuse you, and there’s little you can do to influence his choice. 

Prison puts inmates at the mercy of correctional officers.

To ask a macho guard for a tampon is humiliating. But it’s more than that: it’s an acknowledgement of the fact that, ultimately, the prison controls your cleanliness, your health and your feelings of self-esteem. The request is even more difficult to make when a guard complains that his tax dollars shouldn’t have to pay for your supplies. You want to explain to him that he wouldn’t have a paycheck to shed those taxes in the first place if prison staff weren’t needed to do things like feeding inmates and handing out sanitary supplies – but you say nothing because you want that maxi pad. 

In the United States, there are 2.2 million people in prisons, under the thumb of correctional officers. People who become correctional officers are not inherently bad but giving them such intimate power over others leads to broad opportunities for abuse of power.

The 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment showed us how easily and quickly that abuse of power can develop. The experiment tried to answer a couple of questions.

What happens when you put good people in an evil place? Does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph?

Briefly, the experiment assigned some students the role of  prison guard and some the role of prisoner, put them all in an improvised prison setting. Over the time of the experiment, it became clear that bad things were happening.

We had created an overwhelmingly powerful situation -- a situation in which prisoners were withdrawing and behaving in pathological ways, and in which some of the guards were behaving sadistically. Even the "good" guards felt helpless to intervene, and none of the guards quit while the study was in progress. Indeed, it should be noted that no guard ever came late for his shift, called in sick, left early, or demanded extra pay for overtime work. 

The experiment, planned to run for two weeks, was called off on the sixth day.

I ended the study prematurely for two reasons. First, we had learned through videotapes that the guards were escalating their abuse of prisoners in the middle of the night when they thought no researchers were watching and the experiment was "off." Their boredom had driven them to ever more pornographic and degrading abuse of the prisoners.

Six days.

What happens to people incarcerated for years or decades?

What happens to people who work as prison guards for years or decades?

As I said before:

We have a moral imperative to consider--and thoughtfully reject--a long list of alternatives before we put someone in prison.

That goes for prisoners and correctional officers.

phone companies overcharge inmate families

It will not come as a surprise to many inmate families to learn that prison phone service providers have been overcharging them.

Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell is asking that millions of dollars in telephone charges illegally collected from families of Louisiana’s 40,000 jail inmates be refunded. 

“The Public Service Commission regularly orders refunds when utilities overcharge customers,” Campbell said. “Companies that operate inmate telephone systems in Louisiana jails and prisons must be treated no differently.” 

Campbell’s request is on the PSC’s agenda for its July 22 meeting in Baton Rouge. Jails and prisons hire specialized firms to run telephone systems used by inmates. Family members on the outside pay for the calls.

Families cannot shop around for a better deal.

A PSC investigation in 2011-12 concluded that the rates for inmate calls were an average of 30 times higher than calls on the outside. 

Thirty times higher. Can you hear me now?

The investigation also found that telephone companies routinely ignore commission orders and tack on a variety of illegal fees. Examples include $10 to buy a $50 block of time, $2.50 to add a telephone to the account, and $5 to obtain a refund. 

Inmate families often have greatly reduced income when a family member goes to prison and anyone who would take advantage of their vulnerability is a scoundrel, through and through.

“These practices are dishonest and immoral. Jail telephone companies prey on inmate families, who have no choice in the provider of service and little to no ability to fight back.”

It is hard to imagine the discussions in the board rooms of Securus and City Tele-Coin, the two unscrupulous phone companies servicing Lousiana prisons, when this thievery was approved.

Speaking of thievery, there's more:

“Some of these companies also confiscate any money left in consumer accounts after a period of time,” Campbell said.

All but a small minority of inmates will be released from prison at some point. To reduce their ability to maintain contact with those they left at home is to make their homecomings more difficult.

The United States, as everyone should know by now, has around 2.2 million in jail or prison. If you went to prison tomorrow, how many people would miss you? How many people would you like to call from prison? Multiply that number by 2.2 million.

That's the number of people who are at the mercy of companies like Securus and City Tele-Coin.

Kudos to Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell for taking up this fight for Louisiana families.

UPDATE: Added a link. (July 15, 2015)

ninety days plus life

Julie Bosman, in today's New York Times, tells the story of a 19-year-old who meets another teen online; the teens meet and have sex. Not the recommended way to conduct relationships but common behavior now. It turns out that the partner who said she was older than the age of consent was not. 

[The 19-year-old] was arrested and charged and, after pleading guilty to fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct, was sentenced to 90 days in jail and probation.

Ninety days. That slap on the wrist, however, is accompanied with lifetime on the sex offender registry.

Lifetime punishment for a single sexual encounter. How did we ever come to this?

...his story is a parable of the digital age: the collision of the temporary relationships that young people develop on the Internet and the increasing criminalization of sexual activity through the expansion of online sex offender registries. 

“The whole registry is a horrible mistake,” said William Buhl, a former judge in Michigan who has publicly argued that laws governing registries ought to be relaxed. “I think it’s utterly ridiculous to take teenage sex and make it a felony. This guy is obviously not a pedophile.”

That's the opinion of one retired judge, of course. The judge in this case thought differently.

“You went online, to use a fisherman’s expression, trolling for women, to meet and have sex with,” he said. “That seems to be part of our culture now. Meet, hook up, have sex, sayonara. Totally inappropriate behavior. There is no excuse for this whatsoever.”

Harumph. Totally inappropriate behavior.

Totally appropriate, though, to make sure young people are punished with life sentences for hooking up with a willing partner.

For some reason, [the prosecutor] told the judge in court, this generation seems to think it is “O.K. to go online to find somebody and then to quickly hook up for sexual gratification.” 

“That’s not a good message to send into the community,” he said.

 Tsk tsk. Not a good message to send into the community.

So much better to send the message that if you have consensual sex even once, you can pay for it for the rest of your life.

Times change and, wouldn't you know it, young people still like to have sex. The online hookup might very well be a bad way to use the Internet, though there is a worse way to use the Internet: The sex offender registry.

Using the Internet to prevent people from moving on with their lives after they have learned hard lessons about bad judgments is totally inappropriate behavior, a milktoast description of the unbelievable cruelty imposed on those who have paid their debt to society.

Ninety days in jail? Done.

Punishment and public shaming? Never ending.

Abolish the registry.

love and hope redeem

Something we must remember: We have no reason to be ashamed of the sex offenders in our families.

Some of them have done things they ought to be and probably are ashamed of doing. Repentance and atonement can alleviate that shame but harsh sentences that include a lifetime on the public shaming registry make it difficult for offenders ever to feel that relief.

Other offenders have done nothing that should result in cruel public shaming. I'm thinking of a young man who had sex with a fifteen-year-old girl when he was seventeen. When a mandated reporter heard that the young woman had had sex with a young man, he called law enforcement. The young man is awaiting sentencing on multiple felony charges, one of which is rape. His unwise but natural choice about sex--a choice made by countless others--should not leave him shadowed by shame for years to come.

Families of sex offenders have nothing to be ashamed of. Carrying love and hope in our hearts for troubled friends and family members is good. Could we be wrong in thinking that the offender deserves all the love and hope we offer? Of course; just as we can be wrong offering our love to those who aren't sex offenders.

When family members carry the burden of shame for someone else's crimes and misdeeds, it is difficult for them to reach out for the help they may need desperately. When family members are treated as if they are supposed to carry that shame, the family suffers in cruel isolation.

I urge families and friends to stand tall and remember they did nothing to deserve the public shaming that comes with sex offenses. Do not let the imposed shame stop you from asking for the help you need. Tell your story and ask for help.

Shake off those who want you to feel shame for what someone else did. Shake off their certainty that you deserve what you are getting. Tell your story and ask for support.

Give someone the chance to do the right thing. Give them the information they need to understand what is the right thing. Remind them that they can do good by loving and hoping. Tell your story and ask them to stand with you.

Your story is different from the offender's story. Your story doesn't include wrongdoing. I hope it doesn't include the painful remorse and self-loathing so often part of the offender's struggle to return to society.

You have chosen to love someone who is or has been in terrible trouble.

Tell your story.

Registered citizens reoffend only rarely, even when love and hope are withheld. Even when housing is difficult to find, even when employment is elusive, even when families have abandoned them...yes, even then the rate of reoffense remains low. Sex offenders can be redeemed.
.
Love and hope redeem. Pile it on.

knee-jerk response serves our sense of outrage, not victims

When people think of children who are victims of sex abuse, imaginations run wild and thoughts turn to the horrific stories we've heard. Criminal actions that are labeled sex abuse cover a wide range, though. Not all sex abuse--no matter how wrong--leaves the victims damaged for life.

Most child sex abuse is perpetrated by a family member or by a trusted friend or acquaintance, circumstances that must surely complicate family situations.

We often assume that the victims share the revulsion we feel toward the perpetrator but some victims know that the abuser is more than an abuser. Not all victims want the perpetrators to be removed from the family. Getting the abuse to stop would be enough.

If a child understands that exposing Dad's criminal behavior will result in Dad being removed from the family for years, the victim may be less likely to ask for help. If a child understands that telling someone about what happens at home will break up the family, the victim may be more likely to keep the dirty secret.

Not every victim, not every family, not every instance of child sex abuse is like this, of course, but we ought not ignore those victims who feel different from how we expect them to feel.

We don’t support or acknowledge victims grappling with shame, confusion, love for the perpetrator and guilt. We don’t want to view this through the eyes of children who are afraid they will break up their families if they take action to make the abuse to stop. 

We don’t want to accept the real human actors and emotions that accompany these situations; we seem only capable of labeling them as inhuman crimes committed by inhumane people. 

That label can also stick to the victim, a monumental injustice. When Grandpa is on the registry for abusing a child and when his crimes were already the subject of salacious news coverage, there is very little protection for the child who would rather not be known forever as Grandpa's victim.

Society has created an expectation that once someone has committed a sex offense he or she should be hated, but this attitude leaves little room for victims to come forward. 

Sometimes, a victim’s experience is, “I want the abuse to stop, I want the abuser to be accountable for his actions, but I care for this person, and I’m afraid people will try to make me hate him.”

Outrage on behalf of the victims can steamroll right over the child's needs. Authorities whose job it is to protect the child sometimes do not know the best course, no matter how sure they are. How can they, if they ignore the child's response to the situation?

Victims of sexual abuse need us to make room for their emotions, even when they include love, concern or confusion about the offender. Until we do, we are contributing to an environment that unintentionally silences them. 

Our outrage does not offer support to the many thousands of victims who love the person who has harmed them and simply want the abuse to stop.

Removing the abuser from the family may be necessary. Instead of knee-jerk reactions, though, careful consideration is due before destroying a family to protect a child--a child who needs that family.

Reason #326 why prison should be last resort

Aramark serves food from the garbage to Michigan prison inmates.

Despite threats to terminate its contract, Gov. Rick Snyder (R) won’t let go of the company, which claims it will save taxpayers $12-16 million.

Saving $12-16 million? Imagine how much we could save if we closed prisons, instead.

My husband, who is not in Michigan, tells me of meat served long past its expiration date at the prison where he is assigned.

Prisons are a punishment because inmates are separated from their friends and family. That is the punishment. Piling poor treatment--extreme cold, extreme heat, spoiled food, sleep deprivation--on top of that is egregious.

We have a moral imperative to consider--and thoughtfully reject--a long list of alternatives before we put someone in prison.

prison is a "deep wound"

Jean Trounstine, professor at Middlesex Community College in Lowell, Massachusetts, writes about taking her class to visit a prison. 

...the students take a tour of Billerica House of Correction, where they experience confinement to some degree and listen for an hour to an incarcerated man talk about his life and what it is like to be behind bars.

...to some degree.

The tours are perfunctory, showing the students what a prison looks like on the inside and letting them feel what it is like to be there, though a short visit where all the students know they are free to leave cannot possibly convey that.

This time, when the twenty of us entered, there were only a few men in their brownish beige uniforms sitting at tables. Another two were talking to the guards who policed the room, two perched at a computerized station at one end. The students all took turns entering a cell to see what it is like, a rather disturbing experience on many levels for most of them. One student, we’ll call her Sofia, suddenly turned toward me as Spanish was heard above us. She pointed up at a window where a man smiled widely and pressed his face against the [window]. 

“That’s my brother,” Sofia said, her eyes filling with tears. 

I looked up and he waved at me, his sister’s teacher. Sofia looked away. 

I asked the young woman if she had known he would be here, and yes, Sofia said, she knew he was in this  facility but no, she had no idea she might see him. She seemed torn, wanting to look, wanting to hide. She said under her breath as others continued their entrance into cells, as far as she knew, he had no hope of ever not doing drugs. She’d lost touch, she said. She couldn’t imagine he might be doing OK.

This tour was suddenly anything but perfunctory.

Prison became about loneliness, about being apart, about the kind of pain that happens when families break up. It was no longer just about this space or this room or that hallway. Sofia’s brother, as close as he was, was nowhere near his sister. And would not be for a long time, perhaps never. She understood that and so did I.

Prison incorporates all kinds of discomforts--punishing a man for complaining about the cold by confiscating his thermal underwear for the winter, turning on lights that shine into each cell all night long.

People think of that kind of discomfort and try to decide how they would withstand those challenges. Could I deal with strip searches? Could I keep my mouth shut when a guard calls me a faggot? Could I get used to sleeping on a mattress only a couple of inches thick? Could I stay sane crowded into a cell with five other men?

The real misery, though, is being apart from family and friends. A prison tour usually cannot even touch that fact.

When we exited Billerica that day, Sofia told the other students about her brother behind bars. Now, after walking through Billerica, and after being with Sofia, they understood why prison is not just a physical place, but a deep wound.

Families who have someone in prison too often cope with that deep wound alone. Those who know we have a family member in prison don't know what to say, so they say nothing. We say nothing because--...wanting to look, wanting to hide...-- letting on that we are hurting can elicit the simplistic and cruel "if you do the crime, you do the time". If anyone understands the true meaning of that breezy platitude, it is prison families.

Prison sentences are handed out like candy at a classroom Valentine party. We should be sure the sentence is worth a broken family.

reporter, dazzled by pastel eggs, shows no interest in facts

In Greensburg PA, a man hired to be the Easter Bunny was fired when his status as a registered sex offender was disclosed. 

Parents are demanding answers after learning that a registered sex offender worked as the Easter bunny at a Pennsylvania mall.

When the sex offender label is given to an entire category of crimes without regard to what the actual offense was, and when the media continues to sell the idea of scary sex offenders, people do not think straight.

He was fired after three days on the job, and now he’s speaking out about what happened.

Brave man, speaking out.

“I can understand, you know, where they’re coming from, about them being upset. But what a lot of people need to realize is, you know, I wasn’t put in jail for touching little kids,” said Michael Paul Jacobs. 

Jacobs, spoke about his jobs here at Westmoreland mall as the Easter bunny and his conviction as a Megan’s law violent child sex offender.

Violent! Will no one think of the colorful plastic eggs?

“My case — it revolved around having consensual sex when I was a teenager myself, with another teenager,” Jacobs said. 

But records show that Jacobs was convicted in two different cases of having sex with a 15-year-old girl when he was 19.

Oh, the reporter relishes that fact. Two different cases of "having consensual sex when I was a teenager myself."

An adult having sex with a minor is a crime, no matter how you slice it.

Smug self-righteousness will not allow the reporter to question whether it makes sense to make a crime of consensual sex.

“Because I’m on Megan’s Law, everybody looks at me different, and this is where I have trouble getting a job. And just, didn’t touch no kids or anything like that,” he said. 

He is right: everybody looks at him differently because he is on the registration website, not because he had sex with a girlfriend or two. Think about that.

Jacobs said he never hid his convictions when he applied for the Easter bunny job.
It just never came up. 

“They didn’t ask for my background on the application that I filled out. It didn’t say anything about a criminal background,” Jacobs claimed. 

So who dropped the ball?

The ball dropped when no one stopped to wonder if this young man poses a danger to children.

A spokesman for Westmoreland mall tells us Cherry Hill Photo Enterprise leases space to take Easter photos in the mall and said. “It is regrettable that one of their local employees failed to follow their stringent background screening procedures.” 

As for Michael Paul Jacobs, he’s out of work again.

That happens too often to sex offenders.

“I think it’s messed up that people judge me for me just being on that site, basically,” Jacobs said. 

It is definitely messed up. To label a young man a violent sex offender for having consensual sex is messed up.

To pretend that he is a danger to small children when he has no history of harming children is patently dishonest.

Don't open those plastic eggs, kids. They were filled by dishonest people who are happy to pretend there is no difference between chocolate and rabbit droppings.

Ohio Supreme Court argues that the registry can be cruel and unusual punishment

From Nebraskans Unafraid, comes a link to a video of arguments in the Ohio Supreme Court about whether a young man convicted of a sex offense could be excluded from the sex offender registry.

He was 21 when he had consensual sex with a 15-year-old girl. His public defender argued that a psychologist had found that he is "not a sex offender" and so should not be required to register. The psychologist had evaluated him using the Static 99, a checklist that purports to show recidivism risk. It is not a psychological evaluation.

The Court clarified with her that he is a sex offender because the law and his conviction are what make him a sex offender, not his psychological condition nor his recidivism risk no matter the level.

The Court gently nudged the attorney along the way to saying that the registry would be cruel and unusual punishment. The Ohio Supreme Court had already found that the registry is punitive in nature, so arguing whether the punishment of being on the registry is proportionate is a natural question.

When the prosecutor blithely said that the young man does deserve to be on the registry for having sex with a 15 year-old, the justices asked him to explain why the registry should not be considered cruel and unusual punishment. His answer? There are cases of worse punishment that the courts have said are not cruel and unusual. 

That's like telling a kid to eat his peas even if he doesn't like them because the kids down the street have to eat brussel sprouts which taste even worse.

Strange arguments from a public defender who seemed unclear about what a sex offender is (hint: it is not something discovered by a psychologist) and strange arguments from the prosecutor who said the young man should be on the registry because, well, because the law says he should. 

Watch the video, though, and you'll be encouraged by the questions and reasoning followed by the Ohio Supreme Court justices.

parking lots, bridges, and lean-to's: no home-sweet-home in Florida

Florida has extremely tough residency restrictions for sex offenders. Do they make the community safer? You tell me.

As a convicted sex offender, [he] was ordered to live in a small parking lot on Channelside Drive. 

[He] had been prosecuted for impregnating his 14-year-old girlfriend when he was 23, was sentenced to community control and probation. 

For refusing to stay for more than a few weeks in the empty lot, [he], 27, was sentenced to 10 years in state prison. 

On Friday, the 2nd District Court of Appeal reluctantly upheld [his] punishment. 

“We are troubled by the fact that the terms of [his] community control have rendered him homeless,” the court wrote. “This does not appear to facilitate the goals of sex offender community control which are 'treatment of the offender and the protection of society.' ”

He had a van to sleep in but sleeping in a parking lot comes with its own dangers. How many of you would be willing to sleep in a parking lot for months or years? How secure would you feel?

His sentence for leaving the parking lot for the home of a family member--a safer location--was ten years; his original sentence for statutory rape didn't even include prison time. Insane that probation violations can draw a more severe sentence than the original crime did.

Richard Sanders, this man's public defender said this case is...

“not as unusual as you might think.” 

“These people that get these sex offender charges have very severe restrictions on where they can live, particularly if they're poor, as a large number of them are,” he said. “You only have a limited number of places where you can live. And if you can't afford to live there, what are you going to do?” 

Sanders previously represented another Hillsborough County sex offender, [ ] a house painter with an amputated arm and trouble finding a home and a job. [He] was forced to live in a lean-to next to a trash bin behind the probation office. 

The building owner didn't want [him]to live there, and he was told to find somewhere else to live.

Leaving sex offenders only parking lots, bridges, and lean-to's as living space certainly does nothing for community safety.

If the residence restrictions are not about safety, then it is clear that they are about marginalization and punishment. Sex offenders are easy targets because defending them is not generally well-received, even when facts show that registered sex offenders rarely commit another sex offense, that residency restrictions would not prevent anyone from committing another crime if he were so inclined and even when the facts show that stability--a home, a job, friends and family--is the best predictor of success for former offenders.

Marginalization is not about safety; it is about being allowed to be cruel to those on the registry.

Sanders, the public defender, said,

“Who wants to be the one to introduce a bill in the Legislature that relaxes some of these requirements? Soft on child molesters — who wants that? I think we're kind of stuck with this situation that's going to keep going and getting worse and worse and worse.”

Craven cowardice in the Legislature or deliberate evil?

You tell me.

elderly sex offenders to be turned away from nursing homes?

Iowa State Representative Helen Miller introduced a bill that would create a separate facility for elderly sex offenders who are turned away from private nursing homes and assisted living facilities because of their sex offender status.

“I don’t care how old they are,” Miller said. “You cannot turn them onto a population that cannot protect themselves in any shape or form.”

The idea of a loved one in a nursing home being abused sexually is heart-wrenching. Nursing home residents are vulnerable for many reasons--illness, weakness, dementia, unlocked doors to residents' rooms, inadequate staffing, poor management, among others.

Before we make generalizations based on the one case mentioned in the Omaha World-Herald article of an elderly resident being abused by another resident who was a sex offender, perhaps we should find out how often this happens. It goes without saying that even a single incident is unacceptable so we must protect residents from those who would abuse the elderly.

The first question ought to be, who does perpetrate sex abuse against elderly nursing home and assisted living residents? Are elderly sex offenders the biggest risk?

It seems not.

Very little research exists regarding perpetrator risk factors because commentators cannot agree on who are the most common perpetrators. One study found that the majority of perpetrators were nursing home employees, and that other residents abused only three in twenty victims. This finding reinforces the widely-held perception that most elder sexual abuse is committed by the people charged with the elder's care. In contrast, another study found that the most frequent perpetrators of sexual abuse in the institutional setting are other residents, rather than staff members.Perpetrators frequently suffer from untreated psychiatric conditions or abuse drugs or alcohol Ten to fifteen percent of nursing home employees abuse drugs or alcohol, which increases the likelihood of sexual abuse in nursing homes.

Nurse aides, who comprise the largest proportion of nursing home employees, not surprisingly are the most frequent perpetrators of abuse. However, these employees are not the only employees with access to residents. Laundry aides, security guards, and maintenance workers also have been accused of abuse.

While dementia and mental illness may make some elderly sex offenders dangerous, dementia and mental illness can make other elderly residents just as dangerous.

Turning away sex offenders who need care at a nursing home or an assisted living facility simply because of a conviction committed years if not decades earlier is cruel.

The first line of defense should be within the nursing home: better training for staff, locked doors to keep intruders out of residents' rooms, cameras in the hallways, improved caregiver-to-resident ratios, better pay for staff...all of these measures could help to reduce the incidence of abuse.

Until it is proven that sex offenders pose more risk than other nursing home residents, we should not write legislation as if they do.

Once again, imagining something does not make it real.

Once again, hysteria about sex offenders gets in the way of measures that would definitely improve community safety.

Legislators need to ask themselves what they are trying to do: Demonstrate their disgust for sex offenders or actually reduce sexual assaults in nursing homes?

"...we don't ever see Jesus rejecting. Ever."

Here's an interesting little piece that includes a story about a pastor who learns a hard lesson about excluding gays from his church. I like the story well enough to quote most of it.

The pastor, after kicking gays out of his church because of his understanding of their sins, dies and arrives at the Pearly Gates. God talks to the pastor about his work:

“... So, I’m looking over your life here… seems like you threw people out of your church, let’s see, because they were gay. Is that right?” 

Pastor smiles proudly and nods. 

“And it says you did this in my name… let’s see here… and you threw their families out too…” Looks up from notes. “Why in heaven’s name did you do all that?” 

Pastor stops nodding and smiling. “Um… because I was doing what you wanted!” 

“What I wanted?? Where did you get that idea? I never threw anyone out.” 

Pastor looking down now. “Well, uh, I thought…” 

“No, you didn’t. You didn’t think about what this would [mean] to them.”  Waits. “I never once told anyone to throw anyone out. 

Pastor shuffles his feet. “But… that was how we’d show them tough love and get them to change.” 

“Did any of them change?” 

Pastor is silent. Then quietly. “I don’t know.” 

“You don’t know?? You’re the pastor in charge of leading these people. How would you lose track of them and not know what happened? Do you remember the story I told you about leaving the 99 sheep to go after the one because each one matters?” 

Pastor looks puzzled. 

“Yeah, that’s what I was talking about. And you not only didn’t go get them, you shut and locked the gate behind them. You told them they were condemned to hell!”  Another pause.  “Do you want to know what happened to those people you and your church sent away?” 

Pastor speaks quietly. “…yes.” 

“Three of them committed suicide. They believed you when you told them they were wicked evil sinners, abominations. They’re here now… in case you wondered.  Most of the others wanted nothing more to do with God. They also believed you that God hated them and had no use for them. I sent some of my beloved faithful people to talk to them, to tell them the truth, to draw them back into God’s unconditional love.” 

Pastor looks up. “I thought my job was to stop people’s sin.” 

“No. In fact, I told you the opposite. I said for you to love them – just love them – and point them to me. I told you to serve them… even if you didn’t feel like it.”

Beautiful. 

Substitute sex offenders for gays in the story and the story is still beautiful. I left a comment suggesting just that and the author, Susan Cottrell responded:

I assume you're being sarcastic. Sex offenders -- broadly meaning those who molest children or rape anyone -- are not the same as two adult men or women in a relationship. If you don't see the difference, there is much more to talk about.

The author is very involved in LGBT issues so I understand that she has paid little attention to the facts about sex offenders; she can't know everything.

After I explained my position a little more clearly--that I was not comparing homosexuality with a crime but that I was comparing sinners with sinners, Susan Cottrell acknowledged my point:

Marie, I am sorry. I misunderstood part of your other comment. I agree with you. : )

Whew. I feel much better. Ms. Cottrell wrote so clearly about how the role of the church and the pastor is not to stop sin but to love sinners, I hated to think that she had a knee-jerk rejection of sex offenders without even asking what the offense was or if the offender was repentant.

Every day, people from the pews and the pulpits are realizing the deadly result of their attitudes. 

Every day, people are becoming welcoming, loving, and affirming. 

Every day, people are choosing the heart and truth of God.

The deadly result of their attitudes are as deadly for sex offenders as they are for gays.

Churches need a reminder that when sex offenders are rejected, the family of the offender feels the rejection, too. Families who want to worship together, to be involved in church life together, should be able to do so even when the sins of one family member are made public through the registry.

Redemption. Isn't it still a thing in the church?

Yes. 

Do you remember the story I told you about leaving the 99 sheep to go after the one because each one matters?

Most definitely.

will victims of child sexual abuse become abusers?

It is impossible to predict with certainty which convicted sex offender will reoffend after completing his or her sentence. Predicting which childhood circumstance or trauma will lead someone to commit a sex crime in adulthood is just as impossible.

From the abstract of a study published on the JAMA(Journal of the American Medical Assciation) Network:

The widespread belief that sexually abused children are uniquely at risk to become sex offenders was not supported by prospective empirical evidence. These new findings suggest that early intervention programs should target children with histories of physical abuse and neglect. They also indicate that existing policies and practices specifically directed at future risk for sex offending for sexually abused children may warrant reevaluation.

That widespread belief can be dangerous.

Not only do children of sex offenders have to endure knowing that a family member is listed on the registry, if those children are victims of the offender, the registry can expose them to the world as victims of sexual abuse. In some jurisdictions, the victim can be identified on the registry as "granddaughter" or "nephew", often enough information to identify the child. 

Imagine growing up having been sexually abused and living in a world that has a widespread belief that you will abuse a child yourself. 

Children who have been sexually abused deserve better than to live under suspicion and fear that they will be abusers themselves.

Via Families Affirming Community Safety (FACTS).

UPDATE:
This is exactly the kind of cruelty that children of registered citizens must endure.

The right of children to be free of the imaginary threat posed by a registered sex offender does not trump the right of other children--children of sex offenders--to have their parents freely take part in school activities with them.

ignoring prison rape

Anyone with a family member or friend in prison grows to hate the inevitable "don't drop the soap" joke. Jokes about prison rape are rife when discussing someone convicted of a sex crime.

The idea seems to be that someone in prison for a sex crime is so evil that it is acceptable for another inmate to commit a sex crime against him.

In this manner, rape is treated as a feature of our justice system when it happens to prisoners, rather than what it is: another grave crime.

Sexual assaults in prison are not only inmate on inmate. No, they too often include assaults by prison staff. In his article in The Week, Michael Brendan Dougherty quotes from Colorlines.com: 

Roughly 200,000 men, women, and children reported being sexually abused in detention facilities in 2011, the most recent year for which the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) has anonymously self-reported data from inmates.

If the jokesters are any indication, this is acceptable. Instead, let's recognize those jokes for what they really mean.

Acceptance of prison rape is a stinking corruption. No conception of justice can include plunging criminals into an anarchic world of sexual terror. And obviously it thwarts any possibility of a rehabilitative justice that aims to restore criminals to lawful society. Inmates are not improved or better integrated into society through physical and psychological torture.

Dougherty reminds us that what the government does to prisoners, it does in our name. In a moral world, that in itself is reason to work toward reducing prison populations. The larger the prison population is, the more we will see stinking corruption.

Prison rape ... vitiates any sense of retributive justice, since rape is not a proper punishment for a crime. Allowing prison rape is just a vindictive horror, and when accepted under the name of punishment makes criminals the victims of justice.

Prison inmates--save for a very few--are released back to society and we ought to want them to come back ready to be part of our society. Do our prisons prepare them for the return? 

Absent major and drastic reform of our prison system, however, the "lesson" our justice system teaches is not that crimes will be punished, but that getting caught may send you to unpredictable horrors; that our society's primary way of dealing with criminality is plunging you into more of it; and that the rod of the law comes in the form of supermax cruelty.

The statistics Dougherty uses show that prison rape is all too common. If it is, that is a problem that can be tackled with more oversight of and accountability for prisons.

How to solve the more insidious problem of people horrified by rape losing that sense of horror when it happens behind the razor wire? 

once and always

The sex offender registry is often touted as a way to protect children. Which children? Not the children who end up on the sex offender registry. In 2013, Human Rights Watch published Raised on the Registry, a report about children on the registry.

Throughout the United States, children as young as nine years old who are adjudicated delinquent may be subject to sex offender registration laws. For example, in Delaware in 2011, there were approximately 639 children on the sex offender registry, 55 of whom were under the age of 12. In 2010, Michigan counted a total of 3,563 youth offenders adjudicated delinquent on its registry, a figure that does not include Michigan’s youth offenders convicted in adult court. In 2010, Michigan’s youngest registered sex offenders were nine years old. A 2009 Department of Justice study, which focused only on sex crimes committed by children in which other children were the victims, found that one out of eight youth sex offenders committing crimes against other children was younger than 12.

For a child, the psychological impact of being on the registry can be devastating. Deadly, in fact.

Nearly a fifth of those interviewed (58 people, or 19.6 percent) said they had attempted suicide; three of the registrants whose cases we examined did commit suicide.

Josh Gravens, a young man who was on the registry beginning at age 13, talks about being labeled a sex offender. 

Three and a half years in Texas juvenile prisons and four years after that on parole, intensive and abusive sex offender “treatment.” While none of those things should be done to a child or adolescent, by far the worst penalty I experienced was being placed on the Texas Sex Offender Registry. I would not realize the life-changing consequences of being registered until I grew up and had children of my own. ...

Speaking from personal experience, I can say that once my juvenile record was public, there was no way to restore privacy protections. Even though I was removed from the public registry, my information was still readily available on for-profit websites. In this day and age, once online, always online. 

We warn kids about sexting because once online, always online and yet kids are listed on the registry with little thought about what that label will do to them.