As I huddle down in the cold of winter and times of quarantine, I’ve been watching far more TV than I should.  I recently watched, for maybe the 15^th time, the movie “A Time to Kill” based on the book by John Grisham.  I remember reading this book back in the late 90s (and yes, the books are always better than the movies).  The concept of this movie is that a young black girl was raped and left for dead by two white men.  These men were arrested and taken to court, where the girl’s father shot and killed them.  The father chose a young passionate white lawyer to defend him.  There was a speech by the lawyer in the final scenes which resonated with me strongly.

“You see, in all this legal maneuvering something has gotten lost, and that something is the truth.  Now, it is incumbent upon us lawyers not to just talk about the truth, but to actually seek it, to find it, to live it…..”

“….What is it in us that seeks the truth? Is it our minds or is it our hearts?

I set out to prove a black man could receive a fair trial in the south, that we are all equal in the eyes of the law. That’s not the truth, because the eyes of the law are human eyes — yours and mine — and until we can see each other as equals, justice is never going to be evenhanded. It will remain nothing more than a reflection of our own prejudices, so until that day we have a duty under God to seek the truth, not with our eyes and not with our minds where fear and hate turn commonality into prejudice, but with our hearts — where we don’t know better.”

Now, reread that quote and replace “black man” with “registered person.”  Understand what a “prejudice” is.  Prejudice:  a preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience.  Isn’t that what happens more often than not – that those accused of a sexual crime have automatic prejudices when it is not based on reason or experience, but more what we think we know from the media?

I will again adhere to my beliefs that guilt carries punishment.  What I continue to struggle with are the automatic prejudices and beliefs of guilt for anyone accused of sexual misconduct in any form.

State and national statistics show us that most registered citizens are not violent predators.  The media wants us to believe that they are, but data proves differently.  Until I became knowledgeable about the registry laws and people impacted by them, I regrettably was one of those who believed what the media told me. Yes, I am ashamed.  Now I know there are real people and real stories behind every case.  So many examples of consensual young relationships, of young people making poor choices that will scar them the rest of their lives, of revenge accusations, of embarrassment, and many cases that are accusations and not truth.

So back to the quote from the movie – does our society seek the truth when it comes to sexual crimes?  Are we all equal in the eyes of the law – or are those accused of sexual crimes automatically assumed to be guilty?  Does our legal structure seek the truth or an easy plea?  Do we assume everyone is guilty or do we give them a fair chance?

We at NCRSOL are blessed to have found legal representation who believe in fairness, who believe in people, who believe in making laws that are both enforceable but that make sense.  As John Grisham portrayed in this book and movie, there are committed lawyers whose passion for their causes drive them.  Attend our conferences and you’ll meet them!

Many of you may wonder what NCRSOL does.  They hear stories from registered persons.  They work with lawyers and groups who believe in second chances.  They investigate housing restrictions.  They support fair treatment of people.

It continues to be a challenge for us, as members of society, to help one another…help one another find jobs, find housing, rehabilitate, support and encourage one another.  I encourage each reader to join NCRSOL and renew your membership yearly. It takes our members to support our leadership team in making change.

Let’s continue to work with our lawmakers, media, employers, and our society as a whole to leave behind the prejudices against those accused of a crime.  This is a call to action – tell your stories so people understand that many situations are mistakes for which people have paid the penalty and are looking for redemption.

Be the change you wish to see in the world.  Be a Change Agent.
-Phoebe

It’s a chilling image: the sex predator skulking in the shadows of a swing set, waiting to snatch a vulnerable child.

Over the past two decades, that scenario has led to a wave of laws around the country restricting where people convicted of sex offenses may live — in many cases, no closer than 2,500 feet from schools, playgrounds, parks or other areas where children gather. In some places, these “predator-free zones” put an entire town or county off limits, sometimes for life, even for those whose offenses had nothing to do with children.

Protecting children from sexual abuse is, of course, a paramount concern. But there is not a single piece of evidence that these laws actually do that. read full editorial in NY Times

What sounds like a good law in a twenty-second sound bite sometimes turns out to be less clear when one digs below the surface. Such is the case with International Megan’s Law, which President Obama recently signed into law. International Megan’s Law requires those who committed a sex offense against a child to have a permanent stamp placed on their passport. While this may sound like a no-brainer if we consider the media’s portrayal of the sexual predator, reality is far more complicated.

International Megan’s Law means a teenager who was convicted of distributing child pornography for sexting with her boyfriend may not be allowed to do a semester abroad in college. A budding architect who plead no contest to child molestation for having sex with his freshman girlfriend when he was a high school senior may never be able to marvel at the Grand Pyramids. A father may not be permitted to cheer on his daughter as she competes for her country in the Olympics because he touched a 12-year-old boy over the clothes some thirty years ago and has remained law abiding ever since.

The stated rationale for International Megan’s Law is two fold: (1) Individuals who have offended against a child pose an extremely high risk of reoffending, and (2) Megan’s Law will stop them from doing so.

The first premise (dangerousness) is demonstrably false. Study after study has shown that sex offenders actually have a low recidivism rate. A 2003 Department of Justice study followed 9,691 sex offenders released from prison in 15 states across the country. It found just 5.3% were rearrested for a new sex crime within 3 years, and only 3.3% of child molesters were rearrested for a new sex crime against a child.(Source.) Juveniles pose even less of a risk. A 2009 study of 1,275 juvenile male sex offenders in South Carolina found just 7% were rearrested for a new sex crime within nine years of original offense.(Source.) Women pose the lowest threat. A 2010 meta-analysis of ten studies found only 1% to 3% of women recidivated sexually.(Source.) This premise also ignores that what counts as a sex offense against a child can include a high school senior having sex with his 15-year-old girlfriend, behavior that should be discouraged but which does not deserve the designation of international pariah.

The second premise (effectiveness) is wrong as well. Studies show that Megan’s Law has had little to no impact on the incidence of sex offending. Indeed a 2008 analysis by the Department of Corrections in New Jersey concluded, “Given the lack of demonstrated effect of Megan’s Law, the researchers are hard-pressed to determine that the escalating costs are justifiable.” (Source.)

Read the rest of the article at the Huffington Post.

When something I write references something read elsewhere, especially when I use direct quotes, I always link to the other piece. Due to my refusal to give the other piece or its publisher any credence or recognition, this post will be the exception to that rule.

In a major election year, one expects nasty, attack campaign ads. The last few years the level of sleaze has deepened and this year threatens, like a spewing volcano, to engulf the entire political process in its roiling, broiling morass.

Interesting parallel — each year the level of sleaze leveled at the entire class of those who are required to be on a sex offender registry deepens, with the list of “cannots” against them growing and spreading, much like the deadly lava of a volcano.

They cannot live where they wish or, often, be where they wish.
They often cannot get/keep employment.
They cannot assume their normal rights as parents or as citizens.
They cannot assume the right to travel freely.
They cannot live free of fear and anxiety for their own and their family’s safety.
Some cannot hide their infamy from anyone viewing their drivers’ licenses or, soon and for all, their passports.
Most importantly, they cannot — ever — be forgiven.

And now, due to an interesting convergence of both political and sex offender sleaze, it seems a new cannot has been added.

In a political ad pretending to be actual journalism, one designed not to directly promote a specific candidate but to destroy one, a candidate was linked with an organization renowned for fighting for unpopular causes in matters of civil rights.

It seems that this organization is “an organization that has an appalling history of providing legal support for sex offenders throughout the nation.”

And the candidate? “Shockingly…like the ACLU, has a history of defending sex offenders as well.”

Appalling history? Shocking? The inference here is that those facing charges for sexual offenses should not be allowed legal support, and that anyone who dares provide it is doing something unconscionable and beyond the pale.

So a new cannot joins the others: Those accused of sexual offenses even though, like everyone accused of any crime, considered innocent until proven guilty, CANNOT be represented by counsel because no attorney worth the name would represent such a person.

Much about the public registry and all that it has spawned plays fast and loose with many of our constitutional protections. Now, with this, the Sixth Amendment is not just biting the dust but being stomped, ground, and broken upon the cold, hard earth.

“I actually met with a group of people in New Jersey and sat across from Megan Kanka’s grandfather,” Longo said.

The 1994 murder of 7-year-old Kanka gave rise to the public disclosure of sexual offender registries through what are commonly known as Megan’s laws.

“I told the grandfather of the young girl, Megan Kanka, who was raped and murdered, that I appreciate what happened to his granddaughter but this law is not going to make people safe,” Longo added. “Those laws did nothing. It didn’t prevent anything.”

That has not stopped an article he co-wrote in Psychology Today 30 years ago from being used to uphold and provide evidence for the “public’s need” for the registries.

“I just think it’s unfortunate,” Longo said. “What can I say?

“People use statistics and they will twist statistics,” he added. “People are going to take anything that works to their advantage, or twist a quote, to make it work to their advantage and I just think it’s unfortunate.”

Article

An anecdotal quip of Longo’s from the March 1986 article, that up to 80 percent of untreated sexual offenders go on to commit more sexual crimes, has helped shape the modern view of these offenders as being immutable. This is a view that Longo opposes, and he has spent roughly four decades treating and rehabilitating these very same offenders.

“With treatment we were getting these people down to recidivism rates of 20 percent and below,” Longo said. “My belief then, as is my belief now, is that treatment should be mandated for these people because we can treat them and treat them successfully, and reduce the amount of sex crimes in America.”

The Psychology Today article was the sole reference in a 1988 U.S. Department of Justice field practitioner’s guide for treating incarcerated sexual offenders cited by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in a 2002 opinion upholding compelled treatment based in part on the “frightening and high” re-offense rate of up to 80 percent for sexual offenders, according to Ira Ellman, a professor of Law at Arizona State University who first noted the connection to Longo’s writing in a recent Constitutional Commentary article.

In the same article, in which Longo touted a treatment program he headed at the time to rehabilitate incarcerated sexual offenders at the Oregon State Hospital, he wrote that re-offense rates for untreated sexual offenders could be anywhere from 35 to 80 percent.

Kennedy again referenced the “frightening and high” re-offense rate a year later when the court upheld an Alaska law that subjected offenders who had been convicted prior to the sexual offender registry’s creation to placement on the registry.

“Alaska could conclude that a conviction for a sex offense provides evidence of substantial risk of recidivism,” Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion for Smith v. Doe. “The legislature’s findings are consistent with grave concerns over the high rate of recidivism among convicted sex offenders and their dangerousness as a class.”

The U.S. Department of Justice now states on its website that the rate at which released sexual offenders are rearrested for new sexual offenses is as low as 3 to 10 percent.

Both of the opinions penned by Kennedy overturned lower court decisions opposing the state laws, according to Ellman.

In the Smith decision, the two individuals bringing suit were released from prison in 1990, remained offense-free for more than a decade, and one had been given custody of his daughter after being deemed rehabilitated by the courts, Ellman wrote.

A spokeswoman for the Supreme Court declined comment, stating only that “as a rule, the Justices do not elaborate upon or discuss the opinions of the Court, which speak for themselves.”

Statistics

As Ellman points out, Psychology Today is not an academic journal and is written for a lay-audience. As such, Longo’s article does not provide any citations regarding where the information came from.

“Anything I would have said would have been based on the science at that time and things that were factual and not my opinion,” Longo said. “… That statistic, at that point in time, was the best statistic we had at that point in time in the history of the field. That recidivism rate is probably higher than we would say today. I don’t think the recidivism rate for untreated sex offenders is necessarily 80 percent. I don’t know exactly what it is, but I would say that’s a very high estimate.”

So, how does this article make its way to be one of the linchpin facts in two Supreme Court cases?

The simplest answer is that the courts just assumed it was true.

“I don’t think (the Supreme Court) knew that’s where it came from,” Ellman said. “The solicitor general filed an amicus brief saying there was an 80 percent re-offense rate and cited a justice department manual. I suspect that Justice Kennedy and the clerks never went beyond that.

“The (solicitor general) has a lot of credibility and he’s citing a justice department manual, which you might assume has credibility,” he added. “I think they just burrowed the reference from the amicus brief.”

Ellman, who clerked for Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, said the court staff likely only looked to see if the information was stated in the cited manual, and never checked the veracity of the underlying claim.

“In this case, if you went to the justice department manual … the justice department manual does say that,” he said. “My guess is a clerk checked it that far, but just because the justice department manual said that, the justice department didn’t do any independent research on its own.”

The editor of the field manual herself, Barbara K. Schwartz, has rebuked the current policies and use of public registries.

In a 2010 essay titled “No More Victims,” which Schwartz used as the preface to an updated “Handbook of Sexual Offender Treatment,” she called the current public policies “very expensive” and “ineffective at preventing sexual assault.”

Schwartz wrote that the policies, like public registries, are counter-intuitive and interfere with the factors known to reduce re-offense rate.

“Having worked in the field of sex offender treatment since 1971, I now feel that I have fallen down the ‘the rabbit hole’ and am watching the Red Queen scream, ‘Off with their head,’” Schwartz wrote. “Is there no end to the counterproductive response to sex offenders and the problem of sexual assault … If individuals who found inappropriate ways to achieve basic human needs before they committed a sexual assault cannot fulfill their needs after they have offended, is that a setup for reoffending?”  (republished from The Sentinel)