This year’s conference theme is The Road to Independence | Reclaiming FULL liberties and NARSOL is excited to present an impressive list of featured speakers who are looking forward to meeting you there. Among the featured speakers is NARSOL’s very own attorney, Paul Dubbeling, who is returning for his second conference presentation. We’re also very enthused to be hosting attorney and documentarian David Feige (renowned for his award winning work Untouchable and the producer of several micro-documentaries about registered citizens). Another exciting feature presentation will include a mock hearing in front of Ohio state senators John Eklund (R) and Mike Skindell (D), former Ohio attorney general Marc Dann, and Connie Nolder, a legislative consultant. The featured speakers list is rounded out by Atty. Jeff Gamso and Atty. Lea Bickerton, both of whom have been actively involved in litigation efforts on behalf of registered citizens.

Full price for the conference is $199. But if you register before May 1st, you can take advantage of the early bird registration discount of $20. NARSOL members also receive an additional rebate of $50 off the full price of registration. Registration for the entire weekend includes NARSOL’s awards banquet and meal which is scheduled for Friday night. So, if you’re a member of NARSOL and you register before May 1st, the total cost of the conference is only $129! Not a member? Join today!

For more detailed information about the conference, please visit the conference website or view the conference brochure which we encourage you to print and distribute or send as an attachment to anyone you believe may be interested in attending the conference.

You do not want to miss this conference! So be there. Register today! Help NARSOL rock Cleveland on The Road to Independence!

Each year, JustLeadershipUSA (JLUSA) identifies effective and successful advocate leaders throughout the United States and invites them to apply for acceptance into a Cohort of formerly incarcerated individuals in order to participate in a year-long program of training and instruction intended to enhance their skill and capacity to lead others in the movement to drastically reduce our nation’s addiction to prisons.

JLUSA focuses exclusively on leaders who are already engaged in impactful criminal justice advocacy work and who have demonstrated the potential to become more successful reform advocates through exposure to training, new networks of reform, and additional resources from which to draw strength and endurance for the battles ahead.

Robin traveled to New York City in mid-January for the first of four intensive training sessions facilitated by David K. Mensah of DKBWAVE Training and Consulting, an organization that provides leadership training and executive coaching to for-profit and non-profit corporations throughout the United States.

“It was an incredible experience, and I’m still trying to get my head around it. I’m enthused about what JLUSA is attempting to achieve, and I am really thrilled that its leaders understand the importance of including registered citizens in the work of reforming our nation’s burgeoning prison problem,” Robin said.

“It’s really important for everyone to know that I was among friends who understand the terrible harm caused by sex offender registries. These people get it! They want the same thing we want: An end to unreasonable punishment and an opportunity for full and complete restoration of citizens into their communities. I am proud to be included in JLUSA’s 2018 Cohort of leaders.”

Robin W. Vander Wall was active as a campaign manager and consultant on a number of competitive municipal, state, and federal level campaigns prior to his arrest in 2003. At the time of his arrest, Robin was a third-year law student at Regent University School of Law in Virginia Beach and was scheduled to receive joint degrees in Law (J.D.) and Political Management (M.A.) the following Spring. He holds a B.A. in Political Science from The Citadel. From 1993 to 1997, Robin was president and publisher of The Citizen, a weekly tabloid on politics and culture published in Raleigh, NC. Since 2009, Robin has devoted much of his time as an advocate for citizens required to register as sex offenders. He presently serves as vice-chair for NARSOL and is the founder and president of NARSOL’s coordinating foundation, Vivante Espero.

Correction: these ideas have been in existence since the first Dolphin was trapped in the net meant largely for sharks. Craig Hallenstein promotes realism and understanding versus fiction and hatred in his fictive novel The Dolphin. The premise given the audience has to do with the danger of creating large nets which are theorized to catch predatory animals, yet without being evidence-based. Akin to throwing hand-grenades in the proverbial barrel of fish – certainly some will float to the top – but at what cost? Rather than being another uncaring, hyper-fueled yet personally unaware being who spits at those who the net has caught, Hallenstein recognizes in his earth-tilting work of truth-based fiction the unfortunate dolphins trapped in an unfeeling, mindless net.

Nothing but a coffin, the registry and its limitations has been given positive hatred by the uninitiated, the untried.

“Who, me? Couldn’t be,” seems to be what proponents like Mr. John Walsh say when they are caught in the ever-widening sex offender net. What is good for some is not good for others, is his claim when Mr. Walsh defends his past underage sexual partners. Well, that is just the kind of ignorance we were fighting this weekend. Thank you for the illustration of the broken system, from the originator of the Adam Walsh Act.

The Catherine Carpenters, Larry Neelys and Janice Belluccis of the world have a deep understanding of the flawed system which works to uphold the registry. This weekend, the speakers busted myths. Look too carefully at the facts, as we did, and the recidivism rates of registered citizens belie the absurdity of the “registry for safety” falsity.

What did the author learn? That to be a sex offender today, he can learn to refute the unhappy citizens who lose nothing by berating folks unknown yet loathed. Should he fail to refute, should he hide in his basement between visits from the parole agent, there will be only the loud ones shouting. Loud isn’t right. It isn’t best. It is, however, loud. And the only voice. For now.

The attendees gathered to hover around a spark of hope, temporarily restrained, fearful of missteps, ready but lacking certainty. Certainty has apparently been reserved for the other side. The other side is full of judges, both sworn and un-, the job ours to educate. For if we remain on the sidelines, if we fail to organize, those holding the puppet strings will have their way. Their way seems to be downhill and punitive. Ours might be described as hopeful and informed.

A blend of the sublime and ridiculous by necessity, mandatory appearance on the registry was given the thrice-over by Professor Catherine Carpenter, the opening speaker in our Holiday Inn Conference room. Kids who played with other kids were “child molesters”, lovers with the incorrect number of years between their ages were “predators”, and boys who played childish pranks forever labelled “Sexually deviant.”

John Douard taught that metaphors are really a frame for painting folks with one brush. And isn’t it easier to hate all sharks, to empty the sea of the beast, than to understand that not all behavior equals title of “monster”? Let’s discount his slightly erratic closing, as Douard worked to show how unlike the truth are these dangerous labels. The New Jersey professor gave food for thought which will undoubtedly help to feed a movement that is in its infancy in terms of growth, yet making its voice unabashedly heard in its dire struggle for a very real, very humanistic, completely deserved survival.

Janice Bellucci was trans-formative in her complete care for the cause. For her words to this author, gratitude. She stopped long enough to express thanks for a question in a lecture she attended as an audience member. Her gentle yet pressing words revealed to this registrant the need for others with her compassion, prowess, and drive. Ms. Bellucci’s is the attorney atop California’s very pressing civil rights abuses of sex offenders, a fact evident after a quick search of the arguments being brought to appellate courts in Cali on behalf of the under-loved population in attendance in Atlanta. Thanks to Bellucci, audience members learned that dignity is not something the courts can take away.

Mr. Larry Neely was in a number of talks, possibly the most memorable of which entitled Can They Do That? in which he teamed up with Schaffnit, Esq. to describe possible objections to parole/probation conditions and codicils. Memorable for the debate sparked by interested audience members, as well as for Neely’s ability to both organize the event and speak at nearly every break-out session in an impassioned yet entirely reasonable voice.

Steve Yoder gave an impressive refutation of five ill-conceived arguments for the shame(reg)istry. Not only was he clear and concise, Yoder gave those with the will enough firepower to overcome a whole neighborhood of hatred using well-sourced material. His blog is a specimen of authenticity and research.

Don’t believe everything you read. Everyone can change. Sex offenders do not, in general, continue to violate the law. Apparently, we have been chosen to fight legislation and misinformation which has created a toxic mix of angry and scared people. The key here is mis-informed. Let us prepare for an information war; you may not have ever wanted this task, but if not you, then who?

Full of love, we move into the future.