Sexual offense laws: What does the future hold?

By Ken Abraham and Brenda Jones . . . Over the past 25 years, the U.S. has developed a pernicious system of sexual offense laws, including increased sentences and public registries of offenders. Based largely on unfounded hysteria surrounding a tiny fraction of high-profile cases, these laws today are a tangled mess and cause considerable injustice. The problems are caused in…

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Sex offender registries endanger the lives they’re meant to protect

By Miriam Aukerman . . . Our communities deserve effective public-safety measures that are based on facts and sound research, not wasteful and counterproductive measures born of fear. We all want to be safe. We have to demand our legislators pass laws that work and actually keep us safe. That’s especially true when it comes to sexual offenses. A Michigan…

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Reintegration, not registration, key to safer communities

By Bob Munsey . . . No matter how a person may have corrected his or her actions and paid for failures, in the state of Florida, it’s “once a felon, always a felon.” What is such a policy as this supposed to solve? On a recent evening I listened in on a Reform Sex Offender Laws Inc. conference call…

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Audio link: Registries do more harm than good

Listen to University of Michigan law professor J.J. Prescott’s recent Stateside interview with Lester Graham. Professor Prescott’s research was utilized by the Sixth Circuit in its recent decision holding the ex post facto application of sex offender registration requirements unconstitutional.

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