By Guy Hamilton-Smith . . . Perhaps the most irrefutable statement that can be made about modern day America is this: we have a penchant for putting people in cages. More than any other nation on the planet, we rely on incarceration as the fix for our social ills. America’s unprecedented prison boom spawned advocates who work tirelessly to put the police…
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By Lincoln Caplan . . . DONALD TRUMP’S TWITTER account now has 40 million followers. It ranks 21st worldwide among 281.3 million or so accounts. It’s no secret that Trump is proud of his ability to use the account to communicate directly with his constituents. This summer, the president tweeted, “My use of social media is not Presidential—it’s MODERN DAY…
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By Michelle Ye Hee Lee . . . “Repeat sex offenders pose an especially grave risk to children. ‘When convicted sex offenders reenter society, they are much more likely than any other type of offender to be rearrested for a new rape or sexual assault.’”-Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., concurring opinion in Packingham v. North Carolina, June 19,…
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By Adam Liptak . . . Last week at the Supreme Court, a lawyer made what seemed like an unremarkable point about registered sex offenders. “This court has recognized that they have a high rate of recidivism and are very likely to do this again,” said the lawyer, Robert C. Montgomery, who was defending a North Carolina statute that bars…
Read MoreBy Steven Yoder . . . In the early 1980s, rehabilitation counselor Robert Longo could hardly have known that his work with convicted sex offenders would make him a minor celebrity. At the time, he was running a program at the Oregon State Hospital to treat and rehabilitate prisoners who had committed sex crimes. It was a new field, and…
Read MoreBy Joshua Vaughn . . . Licensed Professional Counselor Robert Longo has been vocally opposed to public registries for convicted sexual offenders for years. “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…
Read MoreBy Radley Balko . . . In the 2002 case McKune v. Lile, the Supreme Court upheld a Kansas law that imposed harsher sentences on sex offenders who declined to participate in a prison rehab program. The substance of the Kansas law the court upheld isn’t as important as the language the court used to uphold it. In his opinion,…
Read MoreBy Ira Ellman . . . Proponents of criminal justice reform never talk about sex offenders. They’re political untouchables subject to lifelong restrictions that continue long past their confinement, restrictions justified as necessary to protect the public from their propensity to re-offend. Two Supreme Court decisions established that justification. But they rely on a scientific study that doesn’t exist. “Frightening…
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