driving public policy with personal grief

Reacting to events that happened to SOME as if those events happened to ALL is what has driven sex offender policy. News spreads instantly, details are broadcast endlessly. We are encouraged to react with the same outrage those close to terrible events must feel.

As unthinkably horrible as what happened to Megan Kanka, Adam Walsh, and Jacob Wetterling was, it was a bad idea to look at those individual events and write laws in reaction to them. Those laws would not have stopped the bad things from happening to those children--or to other children--but those laws continue to ruin lives and wreck families all across the country. And most of the laws wrecking lives and families are for crimes not even close to what happened to Megan, Adam, and Jacob.

So...Charleston. Maybe the guy shouldn't have had a gun...but let's not write gun laws as if we can stop the next awful shooting from happening. We won't. Maybe the guy hated black people...but let's not decide policy as if we can control what happens in people's hearts and minds. We can't.

Let's not leverage the grief of the affected community to further our own political aims.

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.

producing child pornography; you'll be surprised how easy it is

A lower court threw out charges of child porn production against a 17-year-old Michigan boy who downloaded child porn. Circuit Court Judge Mark Trusock reinstated those charges.

The kid did not photograph or record sexual images of children so how did the judge decide that the kid should be charged with production?

The judge bought the prosecution's argument that...

...because [the boy] moved the images from his screen delivered by an Internet server onto his hard drive, he was guilty of producing child porn.

Think what that means.

It means that by reading this blog post--which downloads it to your hard drive--you have produced it.

This blogger begs to differ.

The rest of the story is that the boy is also in trouble for making violent threats against people at his school. For the sake of argument, let's say that the kid was making actual plans to hurt people at his school.

His sentence for actual threats of physical violence against people within his reach could possibly be shorter than his sentence for downloading illegal images if he spends any time on the sex offender registry.

sentencing for violent offenders is key to easing prison overcrowding

Legislators everywhere are wrestling with the problem of prison overcrowding. How to reduce our astoundingly high prison population without risking public safety?

Today, nearly everyone acknowledges that our criminal justice system needs fixing, and politicians across the spectrum call for reducing prison sentences for low-level drug crimes and other nonviolent offenses. But this consensus glosses over the real challenges to ending mass incarceration. Even if we released everyone imprisoned for drugs tomorrow, the United States would still have 1.7 million people behind bars, and an incarceration rate four times that of many Western European nations.

Lighter sentences for non-violent offenders will not be enough to make the difference we need. We need to look at how we punish those convicted of violent crimes. 

We could cut sentences for violent crimes by half in most instances without significantly undermining deterrence or increasing the threat of repeat offending. Studies have found that longer sentences do not have appreciably greater deterrent effects; many serious crimes are committed by people under the influence of alcohol or drugs, who are not necessarily thinking of the consequences of their actions, and certainly are not affected by the difference between a 15-year and a 30-year sentence.

Legislators have unnecessarily burdened our judges by eliminating their ability to judge.

...as a result of mandatory sentencing laws, judges often cannot make reasonable distinctions between drug kingpins and street-corner pawns. We ought to empower judges to recognize the difference, and to reduce punishment for run-of-the-mill offenders...

For sex offenders and their families, here is the meat and potatoes of this opinion piece:

Recidivism is also a serious obstacle to reform. Two-thirds of released prisoners are rearrested within three years, and half are reincarcerated. But many of the returns to prison are for conduct that violates technical parole requirements, but does not harm others. And much of the problem is that the scale and cost of prison construction have left limited resources for rehabilitation, making it difficult for offenders to find the employment that is necessary to staying straight. So we need to lock up fewer people on the front end as well as enhance reintegration and reduce collateral consequences that impede rehabilitation on the back end. [My emphasis.]

Sex offenders are not mentioned at all but, for those who study sex offender issues, the absence is big and loud. Sex offenders have an exceptionally low recidivism rate. Those who do return to prison are far more likely to return because of a parole violation that does not harm others.

An honest examination of prison overcrowding will acknowledge this.

polygraphs serve law enforcement, not therapy

Registered sex offenders on parole, probation, or supervised release are regularly subjected to polygraph testing.

Under Pennsylvania law, polygraph results are not admissible at trial because of their unreliability. 

Despite that, the tests are now being used by probation officers across the state to supervise sex offenders.

“It’s really the gold standard,” said Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Jill E. Rangos, who presides over sex offender court. “It is the most accurate way to gauge if treatment is working.”

"Accurate" is an odd word to use when talking about polygraphs. "Treatment" is an odd word to use when talking about probation officers supervising sex offenders.

The tests, advocates say, are designed to help guide an offender’s treatment, to ensure that the offender is following the rules of probation and to reduce recidivism.

Well, no. If there is one thing polygraphs are not meant to do, it is to guide treatment plans. That is what the therapist does. Why therapists don't rise up in protest at having their skills second-guessed by electrodes in the hands of law enforcement, I do not know, unless it is that having a steady stream of paying clients fed to them is more attractive than ethical treatment.

Using polygraphs to reduce recidivism is particularly bizarre. The recidivism rate of sex offenders is already extremely low. 

David Gentile, a psychologist and approved treatment provider in sex offender court, said the polygraph examinations hold defendants accountable for their behavior while on probation. 

As an approved treatment provider, Gentile benefits from the stream of clients mandated to engage in therapy.

Jane Campbell Moriarty, a law professor at Duquesne University, said allowing the use of polygraph evidence in some court proceedings but not in others is illogical.  

“I would disagree with any court letting it in for any reason.”  ...

She is critical of polygraph exams, primarily because they are so subjective, and there are not yet any scientifically accepted methods and standards for administration. 

Among her concerns, Ms. Moriarty has asked examiners if others who administer polygraph tests could interpret their results, and the answer she’s received is no.   

They have come into accepted use in probation cases, she said, because, “I think we’re just terrified of sexual offenders. 

Fear of sex offenders is driven by the sex offender registry. If there were no registry and its label, we would be talking about specific offenders and their specific offenses. Rape, not sex offenders. Public urination, not sex offenders. Sexting teenagers, not sex offenders. Without the registry, we would not be terrified of sex offenders.

“It seems inappropriate to me that their liberties should be taken away because of a test that we find neither sufficiently valid nor reliable to be used at trial,” Ms. Moriarty said. 

Polygraphs are clearly unreliable. Polygraphs are clearly not about therapy. Polygraphs used to monitor sex offenders are clearly about taking away their liberties.

It is appalling that treatment providers allow law enforcement to use them as snitches and enforcers instead of providing effective therapy--uncoupled from law enforcement--for those who need it.

happy mother's day

It is not easy to handle all the day-to-day business when so much energy goes toward dealing with grief and fear.

It is not easy to wonder who knows our story and how they feel about it.

It is not easy to look and feel like a normal family.

Happy Mother's Day to those doing double duty on the outside while they wait for their partner to come home.

sex on the beach

A man convicted of having sex on a Florida beach is facing 15 years in prison and his girlfriend, convicted of the same, will do some jail time. Both will be on the sex offender registry for life. 

...Assistant State Attorney Anthony Dafonseca said they will pursue a harsher sentence for [the man] than [the woman], since [she] has no prior record and [the man] has been to prison for almost eight years for a cocaine trafficking conviction. 

The state will ask for jail time for [the woman] and prison time for [the man]. Dafonseca said due to [the man] being out of prison less than three years before committing another felony, he's looking at serving the maximum time of 15 years. 

"We gave them a reasonable offer, what we felt was reasonable, and they decided it wasn't something they wanted to accept responsibility for," Dafonseca said. "Despite the video, despite all the witnesses."

The prosecutor's reasonable offer was rescinded when the couple decided to see whether a jury would interpret the video and hear the witnesses differently. If it was reasonable to offer them a lesser sentence, how does a decision to go to trial make the lesser sentence less reasonable? 

If the prosecutor thought the initial offer was reasonable, the actual sentence is, by his own judgment, unreasonable. After all, the crime has not become any worse between the offer and the decision to go to trial.

To accept responsibility for a crime is to plead guilty. It is not a crime to go to trial. The prosecutor is punishing the couple for choosing to make the justice system work the way it is supposed to work.

It is clear that the initial sentence was for sex on the beach and the eventual sentence is for making the prosecutor prove his case.

The judge has little to no discretion, in this world of mandatory sentences.

Ed Brodsky, elected state attorney for the 16th judicial district, joined Defonseca in prosecuting the case. When asked why the case was an important one to the state attorney, Dafonseca said it was important that the community knew what wouldn't be tolerated on public beaches.

Because no one knew that openly having sex on the beach was a bad idea until this case. 

"We're dealing with basically tourists, that came from Brandon and Riverview and West Virginia, and they're here on the beaches of Manatee County, our public beaches," Dafonseca said, referring to the witnesses. "So you want to make sure that this isn't something that just goes by the wayside. And that it is well known to the community, what will be tolerated and what won't be."

Kicking people off the beach when they misbehave is so old fashioned. Today, everything deserves prison.

Publicity like this--15 years in prison for canoodling--could scare away more Florida tourists than seeing suggestive behavior on the beach ever could, especially in the state with a reputation for wild spring breaks for college kids.