The age you peak at.....

10-8-17 Life Cycle:

When I moved to England at eight, I had no trouble learning fluent English. Turns out there’s a reason for that.

A recent article published by Business Insider reveals “the age you peak at everything, according to science.” I bet you’ve wondered why you were really quick at math at 18, but have a hard time concentrating at 35 — nothing to worry about, at 43 you’ll peak at your ability to focus.

The ages marked are averages, and not all have been done under controlled trial conditions. Some results are from surveys, but match up to multiple studies done on the same subject.

It all goes to show that you shouldn’t fear getting old. You’ve got more energy and brain processing power when you’re younger, but it turns out growing older means growing wiser — and happier.

..Spurce..

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

Falsely accused of satanic horrors, a couple spent 21 years in prison. Now they're owed millions.

8-27-17 National:

Long before the age of the Internet and the fleeting spasms of mass hysteria that came with it (Remember Jade Helm? Pizzagate?), and going back to the late 20th century, when irrational fears moved slower and lasted longer, there was Satan.

The "satanic panic," some call it now. It began some time in the 1980s, when newscasters and fundamentalist Christian cartoons warned of the evils of the role-playing game "Dungeons & Dragons," and stretched into the 1990s, when police and psychiatrists saw thousands of unfounded accusations of ritualistic sex abuse and children were seized from British parents accused of devil worship.

One case still stands out.

"This country hasn't seen anything like it since the Salem witch trials," Texas Monthly wrote in 1994, in a profile of Austin, Texas, day-care operators Dan and Fran Keller, who had been thrown in prison two years earlier. ..Continued..

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

Inside the minds of women who have sex with boys

8-20-17 National:

Laura Lynn Cross, 36, charged with sexual battery in Ohio after giving birth to her former student’s child, joins the growing number of women accused or convicted of having sex with adolescents. About two weeks ago, a Georgia woman, Angelene McAnulty, 25, was charged with having sex with a 15-year-old boy. Last week, Lee Annette Williams, 50, of North Carolina, was charged with statutory rape of a former student when the now-22-year-old man was 14.

What is going on in the minds of these women?

First, there is the obvious: In order for an adult to manipulate an adolescent to have sex, that adult has to have little regard for free will. The adolescent in such a scenario — relatively new to sexual encounters and potentially worried about the consequences of saying no — would be ill-equipped to refuse the advances of his teacher.

What sort of women have so little regard for the autonomy of others? Generally, they are women whose own boundaries were shattered in childhood or adolescence. It is cliché, but also true, that sexual offenders were most often victims themselves (whether of sexual misconduct or physical violence or significant emotional violence).

As I have said before, there’s no original evil left in the world; everyone is just recycling pain now. ..Continued..

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

Are sex offender registries reinforcing inequality?

8-9-17:

The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Trevor Hoppe, University at Albany, State University of New York

(THE CONVERSATION) Public sex offender registries are at the forefront of what I’ve described in my research as a “war on sex.”

Offenders convicted of sex crimes are now singled out for surveillance and restrictions far more punitive than those who commit other types of crime. More than 800,000 Americans are now registered sex offenders. Tracking them has created a booming surveillance industry.

In my work on sex offender registries, I have found that black men in the U.S. were registered at rates twice that of white men – resembling disparities found in the criminal justice system at large. However, these findings speak to the scope of the problem of American sex offender registries, as approximately 1 percent of black men in the U.S. are now registered sex offenders. My research suggests that inequality is deeply tied to sex offender policies.

Studies have found that rates in sex offender registration have ballooned more than 24 percent between 2005 and 2013. I wondered, is this in line with other trends in American corrections? ..Continued..

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

MAJORITY OF HATE CRIME VICTIMIZATIONS GO UNREPORTED TO POLICE

8-1-17 National:

WASHINGTON — U.S. residents experienced an average of 250,000 hate crime victimizations each year from 2004 to 2015 and the majority of these were not reported to police, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced today. There was no statistically significant change in the rate of violent hate crime victimization (about 0.7 per 1,000 persons age 12 or older) during the 12-year period.

Findings are from BJS's National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which collects data on nonfatal crimes both reported and not reported to police. Hate crimes in the NCVS are defined according to the Hate Crime Statistics Act, which specifies hate crimes as those that manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, gender or gender identity, religion, disability, sexual orientation or ethnicity.

Nearly half (48 percent) of hate crime victimizations were motivated by racial bias during the 5-year aggregate period from 2011 to 2015. This was down from the earlier 2003-07 period, when nearly two-thirds (62 percent) of hate crime victims perceived the victimizations to be motivated by racial bias.

During 2011-15, about a third of hate crime victims believed they were targeted because of their ethnicity (35 percent) or gender (29 percent). More than a fifth of victims believed the hate crime was motivated by bias against persons or groups with which they were associated (23 percent) or their sexual orientation (22 percent). Seventeen percent of victims perceived the hate crime was motivated by religious bias and 16 percent thought the bias against them was because of a disability. ..Continued..

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

From porn to contact: does viewing child porn lead to assault?

5-28-17 National:

Research on whether viewing child pornography leads to sexually abusing children is limited, but several studies and many law enforcement officers and prosecutors support the idea that there is a high correlation.

Consider:

Forty percent of more than 1,700 child pornographers were “dual offenders,” meaning they both possessed child pornography and sexually abused children, according to the National Juvenile Online Victimization Study in 2005. An additional 15 percent attempted a sex crime against a child.

Eighty percent of those who purchase child pornography have sexually molested children, according to the U.S. Postal Service.

Seventy-six percent of offenders convicted of internet crimes admitted to contact sex crimes, with an average of 31 victims each, according to a 2000 study by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. ..Continued..

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

Jacob Wetterling Resource Center: We Spend Too Much Money Watching Sex Offenders

5-28-17 National:

Thursday (5-25) was National Missing Children's Day, a day meant to highlight the problem of child abduction.

And while there have been advancements in laws and technology to keep children safe and help families, an organization known for protecting kids thinks says we spend too much money in at least one area.

"There is huge hysteria around released sex offenders when they are not usually the problem," said Alison Feigh, the program director at the Jacob Wetterling Resource Center

Feigh said children are harmed most often by people they know, trust and have access to - not convicted sex offenders.

According to the Department of Corrections, 5.3 percent of level-three sex offenders re-offend. Ninety percent of convicted sex offenders are first-time offenders.

"And if we can support them in their ability to not hurt kids, we're all going to be better off” Feigh said. “As opposed to turning up the heat when they move in and creating this cauldron of fear."

Feigh thinks people get emotional about sex offenders.

"And I get why people jump to that idea of 'Not in my backyard,' because no one wants to think about it," she said. "But our kids aren't better off when we do that."

She believes society is stuck on the idea that when a sex offender is released from jail and we know where they are, our kids must be safe.

But she said there are sex offenders in every community and we don't know where they are. So we need to focus on prevention.

"We need to use our resources differently," she said. "And it shouldn't be all-in on using resources to watch sex offenders."

The problem, according to Feigh, is prevention efforts don't get a lot of money.

"We have so few resources in prevention; we want to use our resources on things that work," she said

The Jacob Wetterling Resource Center trains law enforcement, parents and medical and education professionals how to spot suspicious behavior, and when to intervene to protect kids.

"It's a complicated issue" Feigh said. "I'm never going to go up in front of people and guarantee someone's not going to re-offend. But how can we increase everybody's chances and get on board in prevention in a way that best serves kids?" ..Continued..

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

ICE Forced to Release 600 Sex Offenders in One Year

5-20-17 National:

Criminal illegal aliens set loose after nations of origin refuse to take them back

ICE was forced to release nearly 600 illegal aliens convicted of sex crimes in the fiscal year 2015, first reported by the Washington Examiner on Friday.

A total of 564 illegal alien sex criminals were released for various reasons, including the refusal of their home countries to take them back.

The revelation comes from documents obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request made by the Immigration Reform Law Institute. While the individual criminals and their crimes are not detailed in the report, it does sort the illegal aliens’ crimes into general categories.

The report states that 194 of the criminal illegal aliens were convicted of “sexual assault,” 95 were convicted of a “commercialized sexual offense,” and 275 were convicted of “other sexual offenses.”

Over 150 of the criminal illegal aliens were released because their home countries would not take them back. Twelve of the illegal alien sex criminals were released due to “prosecutorial discretion,” and a further 218 were given bond by an immigration judge.

“Releasing convicted criminal aliens back onto the streets because their government refuses to allow them to return home is simply inexcusable,” Dave Ray, communications director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, told LifeZette. ..Continued.. by Edmund Kozak

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

OPEN STATES for all legislation

5-11-17 National:

We first told folks about this Open States App (Website) way back in 2012, well its still there and we still use it.

In fact you can use it on your computers as well.

Need to know what where and when, give it a try; use for multiple states as well.

Ex: Key in Civil Commitment, and you find everything happening nationally in states with civil commitment laws.

BTW: New York uses the term "Civil Management" rather than "Civil Commitment."

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

How to Call Your Members of Congress When You Have Social Anxiety

5-8-17 National:

If you have phone phobia, you’re not alone. (I’m a recovering member of the club myself.) If the situation in this country is making you anxious, calling your reps is both a step toward a solution, and a way to give yourself a small amount of control over something. But you have to be able to actually make the call.

Calling isn’t the only way to be heard, but it’s one of the most effective. How do you get up the nerve to call? Cordelia Dillon at Echo Through the Fog has a friendly cartoon guide to talk you through the process. First, you block off some time on your schedule, and keep that appointment with yourself. Then you write yourself a script. The guide suggests some words to use. My own calls tend to follow this format:

Hi, I’m [name], a constituent from [place]. I’m calling to ask [Congressperson’s name] to vote [Yes/No] on [bill] because [reason].

The reason can include a personal story, or just your opinion on the most important thing about the bill. You can even skip that part if you’re not feeling up to it. If there’s no vote coming up, replace that part with “to speak out against [bad thing]” or to co-sponsor a certain bill, or whatever you want them to do. If the member of Congress you’re calling has recently done a good thing, feel free to use this:

Hi, I’m [name], a constituent from [place]. I want to thank [Congressperson’s name] for standing up for us by [thing they did].

You get the idea. I’ve never had to say anything more than my prepared speech, except to answer a question or two like:

What is your zip code?
Would you like to leave your full address so we can send you a response?

Say goodbye, and you’re done. I also like to thank the staffer for their time, especially on days I know they’re getting a lot of heat.

Is this sounding a little more doable? Dillon reminds us that it’s okay if you sound nervous. Your job isn’t to put on a perfect performance for the staffer, it’s to get your message through. As she says: “They get a lot of calls, so they don’t have time to judge you for how well you delivered your message.” ..Source..

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

Did the Supreme Court Base a Ruling on a Myth?

If a lawyer for one of the parties, makes a point (citing authority), does that automatically become the holding of the court? Then what happens if the opposing lawyer makes a point, seemingly canceling the first lawyer's point, which becomes the holding of the court? Further, if "Frightening & High" is true of Alaska, what makes that true elsewhere?Research can be enlightening, more folks should engage in it before citing simple sounds good words.

5-7-17 National:

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 sex offenders from using Facebook, Twitter and other social media services.

The Supreme Court has indeed said the risk that sex offenders will commit new crimes is “frightening and high.” That phrase, in a 2003 decision upholding Alaska’s sex offender registration law, has been exceptionally influential. It has appeared in more than 100 lower-court opinions, and it has helped justify laws that effectively banish registered sex offenders from many aspects of everyday life.

But there is vanishingly little evidence for the Supreme Court’s assertion that convicted sex offenders commit new offenses at very high rates. The story behind the notion, it turns out, starts with a throwaway line in a glossy magazine.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s majority opinion in the 2003 case, Smith v. Doe, cited one of his own earlier opinions for support, and that opinion did include a startling statistic. “The rate of recidivism of untreated offenders has been estimated to be as high as 80 percent,” Justice Kennedy wrote in the earlier case, McKune v. Lile.

He cited what seemed to be a good source for the statistic: “A Practitioner’s Guide to Treating the Incarcerated Male Sex Offender,” published in 1988 by the Justice Department.

The guide, a compendium of papers from outside experts, is 231 pages long, and it contains lots of statistics on sex offender recidivism rates. Many of them were in the single digits, some a little higher. Only one source claimed an 80 percent rate, and the guide itself said that number might be exaggerated. ..Continued.. by ADAM LIPTAK

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

Shakespeare And Sexting: Reconsidering Penalties For Teen Sexual Activity

5-2-17:

Worried that the law sometimes imposes too big a penalty on teens who engage in consensual sexual activity, some legislators are pushing to reduce the consequences.

More than 20 years ago, when Russell Foster was 19 and his girlfriend Amber was 15, Montana’s laws tore them apart, sending Russell to prison for four years for having sex with a minor.

Their story mostly has a happy ending. They reunited when Russell got out of prison. They’re married now, with four kids, and living in Glasgow, Montana. And last month, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat, granted Russell clemency. But there have been struggles, too. Russell’s record has made it hard for him to find work, and being a registered sex offender has limited where the family can live.

Hoping to spare other young couples severe consequences like those, the Fosters pushed for a bill the Montana Legislature passed last month that would reduce the penalties for teens caught engaging in consensual sexual activity. The measure also would expand the age range covered by the state’s existing Romeo and Juliet law. Named for Shakespeare’s young lovers, the laws vary from state to state but typically provide legal protections or reduced penalties for teens close in age who engage in sexual activity.

Other states also are considering reducing the penalties for teens convicted of crimes associated with sexual activity. Last year, Kansas enacted a law that gives prosecutors the option of charging minors with a misdemeanor, rather than a felony, for exchanging lewd photos in text messages. Connecticut is considering a similar bill this year, and the New York Legislature is considering a bill that would give teens a pass for consensual sexting. And Nevada is considering a bill that would give judges discretion over whether children convicted of sex crimes need to register as a sex offender.

Tough penalties for teens convicted of illegal sexual behavior were often written into statute over the past 20 years as part of broader efforts by state legislatures to protect children from predators, following federal laws that called for better tracking of sexual offenders.

But more recently, steep penalties for sexual contact between teens have made some prosecutors reluctant to bring charges, said Tom Raynes, executive director of the Colorado District Attorneys’ Council. ..Continued.. by Rebecca Beitsch

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

A major player in law enforcement says it will stop using a method that's been linked to false confessions

4-20-17 National:

You may have never heard of the Reid technique, but chances are you know how it works.

For more than half a century, it has been the go-to police interrogation method for squeezing confessions out of suspects.

Its tropes are familiar from any cop show: the claustrophobic room, the repeated accusations of guilt, the presentation of evidence — real or invented — and the slow build-up of pressure that makes admitting a crime seem like the easiest way out.

That’s why it jolted the investigative world this week when one of the nation’s largest police consulting firms — one that has trained hundreds of thousands of cops from Chicago to New York and federal agents at almost every major agency — said it is tossing out the Reid technique because of the risk of false confessions.

Wicklander-Zulawski & Associates, a consulting group that says it has worked with a majority of U.S. police departments, said Monday it will stop training detectives in the method it has taught since 1984.

"Confrontation is not an effective way of getting truthful information," said Shane Sturman, the company's president and CEO. “This was a big move for us, but it's a decision that's been coming for quite some time. More and more of our law enforcement clients have asked us to remove it from their training based on all the academic research showing other interrogation styles to be much less risky."

Research and a spate of exonerations have shown for years that Reid interrogation tactics and similar methods can lead to false confessions. But the admission by such a prominent player in law enforcement was seismic.

"This is big news in the interrogation world," said Steven A. Drizin, a law professor at Northwestern University and an expert on police interviews. ..Continued.. by Eli Hager, The Marshall Project

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

Dating app boots people with criminal backgrounds

4-13-17 National:

With a swipe of the finger left or right and a quick message, you may have a date. But how do you know your date won't steal your wallet instead of your heart or worse?

"As a girl, I always worry that the person you might be meeting might not be the person in the picture," one dating app user said.

Gatsby -- a new dating app -- helps users steer clear of criminals. Joe Penora came up with the idea. "We are scanning the entire gamut of criminal records if there's a match you can't join," said Penora.

Penora said they do the leg work on each profile because for an individual to do a background check it can be costly. According to their research, most people don't want to date anyone with a criminal history. He said 20 percent of the people in their study say as long as they are not a sex offender they don't care about the person’s history, however, the other 80 percent don’t want to risk dating someone with a criminal past.

While the app might help weed out criminals it only works for those who have a record with the police.

UNLV's Woman Center Cristina Hernandez said many sex offenders aren't charged. While it is unclear if any victims who came to the Woman’s Center were assaulted as a result of using a dating app, Hernandez said last year the facility helped 43 sexual assault victims.

"Most people don't press charges because it is someone they know," said Hernandez.

But the creator of Gatsby also warns online daters should follow some rules. Always meet a potential mate in public, let others know where you are going and who you are meeting. He said men need to be aware as well. Penora said he knows of a case where a woman would meet men, sleep with them and while they were asleep take their credit card and go on a shopping spree. ..Source.. by Christy Wilcox

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

The 20-year-old leading the March Against Revenge Porn

There ought to be a law allowing one to go after, the person who disseminated the pic AND the site which displays the pic. Bet that would quell this problem.

3-25-17 National:

Leah Juliett was 15 years old when nude photos of her first leaked online. It was 2012; at the time, there wasn't a name for what happened to her. It was revenge porn, a new phenomenon where non-consensual pornography is distributed online to shame, exploit or extort its victims.

When Juliett was 14, a male classmate asked her for naked pictures. She was interested in him and sent him four. But he wasn't satisfied with the ones she sent -- he wanted ones that clearly showed her genitals. Juliett declined.

A few months later, a high school lab partner took out his phone and showed Juliett the same nude photos she'd sent. He had found them on an obscure internet site. "Every guy on the football team has them," she recalled him saying. "They have them of a bunch of girls."

Juliett is now a sophomore in college in Connecticut, but she clearly remembers what that violation felt like. "When you're alone and in it, you're so shamed by it that you think you're the only person who has ever been through it," she said.

That's the reason that Juliett, now 20, is organizing a March Against Revenge Porn on April 1 in Brooklyn. She came up with the idea for the event in August: "Every big movement has a march," she said, adding that it was long before the Women's March. "I didn't realize how much marching we'd be doing," she joked.

Juliett went public with what happened to her in 2016, telling her parents and performing a powerful poem about revenge porn. "I was able to tell my story before it got told for me," she said.

There is currently no federal revenge-porn law. Thirty-five states and Washington, D.C., have enacted state laws against it, but online-harassment laws (which include revenge porn) are notoriously weak and rarely match the damage revenge porn creates. For some victims, the only way to get their pictures off the internet has been to copyright their own naked bodies and sue on intellectual-property grounds.

Related: Can a prenup for sex tapes keep you safe?

The vast majority of revenge porn affects private citizens, but the issue has made headlines as celebrities have fallen victim to it. In August, hackers posted nude photos of comedian Leslie Jones on her web page, prompting federal authorities to investigate. Earlier this month, news surfaced that an ex-boyfriend of actress Mischa Barton was shopping around sexually explicit photos of her.

Lawmakers have pushed for reform, like Representative Jackie Speier, who proposed the Intimate Privacy Protection Act in July to criminalize revenge porn. During her presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton cited the bill and the need to fight for the rights of sexual privacy online.

"I fear it's something that would never even be on Trump's radar," Juliett said, adding that it's increasingly important for grassroots efforts to lobby for legislative changes on the state level in the absence of a federal law.

Juliett said she hopes to create a "big spectacle of the issue" with the march. "The more people say: "What is revenge porn?" The better," said Juliett. "At least they'll be asking the question." ..Source.. by Sara Ashley O'Brien

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

ISPs can now sell your browsing history without permission, thanks to the U.S. Senate

Republicans want to let internet providers sell your data without your consent

3-23-2017 Washington DC:

The US Senate has voted to overturn consumer privacy laws enacted last year by the FCC. The rules, which forced internet service providers to actually get permission before selling your data, were overturned using the little-used Congressional Review Act (CRA).

Democrat Senator Richard Blumenthal said before the vote that “This resolution is a direct attack on consumer rights, on privacy, on rules that afford basic protection against intrusive and illegal interference with consumers’ use of social media sites and websites that often they talk for granted.” Hope you enjoyed it while it lasted.

Assuming that this resolution passes through the House, which seems likely at this point, your broadband and wireless internet service provider will have free reign to collect and sell personal data along to third parties. That information may include (but is not limited to!) location, financial, healthcare and browsing data scraped from customers. As a result of the ruling, you can expect ISPs to begin collecting this data by default. Some ISPs may choose to include an opt-out from data collection in account settings.

The privacy rules were adopted by the Federal Communications Commission last October, under Obama-era chairman Tom Wheeler. The new chairman of the FCC, Ajit Pai, is trying to rebrand the Commission as a technological regulator that manages things like spectrum, with the minimum possible amount of regulation of the telecoms industry as a whole.

That might sound like an ideal situation for light-touch regulation, but with the wireless and cable industries both operating as powerful oligopolies, consumers will be left with zero protection against price-gouging, no advocate for net neutrality, and as today demonstrates, far less control over their own data. ..Source.. by Chris Mills

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

'There must be a better way' to look at sex offenses

3-11-17 National:

According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), there are 843,260 (859,500) registered sex offenders listed in the United States. Some will spend five, 10 or 40 years in prison, but in truth, when they get out and reenter society, offenders are doomed to a life sentence without bars.

I’m no bleeding heart. I put hundreds of criminals in jail for serious crimes in my 30-year career, including sex crimes. Anyone who commits a violent sex act against a child (or adult) should be duly punished. Those who have shown a proclivity for stalking or violating children should be restricted from contact with kids. No argument.

My concern is with the offenders who, in reality, have shown no real danger of predatory behavior, yet still fall under the broad brush of all of sex offenders, thereby subject to lifelong registration.

A 19-year-old boy who has consensual sex with a 15-year-old girl and goes to prison, will not only serve time, he will live the rest of his life as a banished sex offender until old age. Never mind that we are living in blatant sexual active times for the young, as denoted by risqué role models, clothing, music and salacious entertainment and open societal behavior, whereby language and sexual references are commonplace.

Recent studies reveal that 46 percent of all high school age kids have had sexual intercourse. (excluding data for non-intercourse sex). By 12th grade, 9 million kids will have had sex. In many states, half of those 9 million are guilty of some crime.

Let’s be honest here: Sex is condoned directly or by inference to kids by the millions. Then the law plays the morality card when it’s easy to secure a conviction.

While we want to do everything possible to protect young teen girls, (or boys) it’s a fact that in many states, simply urinating in public is considered a sex offense requiring registration for life. Most states and the federal court system have imposed minimum-mandatory laws which limit the discretion of judges in handing out verdicts, sentencing and registry requirements. Judges don’t judge anymore; they merely facilitate predetermined rules.

I’m currently in communication with a 52 year-old man who, four years ago, downloaded a kiddie porn site and watched it from his living room. Gross? Yes. He had no history of sexual deviance, no predatory background, and no history of sexual contact with kids. He looked at dirty pictures. Sure, as a consumer, he deserves some punishment. But to this level? He is not only serving a mandatory six-year prison sentence, he’ll have to register – for the next 40-plus years – as a sex offender. That translates to no jobs and nowhere to live.

Have we gone nuts?

Sex offenders cannot live within specific footage of parks, schools, bus stops, recreation centers, and other places children visit. Managers of rental units ban convicted sex offenders of any definition. That leaves offenders no choice but to live homeless, in the woods and under bridges.

For four years, Miami’s Julia Tuttle Causeway became an encampment for banished sex offenders where laws were so strict some offenders chose to live in the Everglades. As many as 140 lived under causeway bridges in 2009, required to be on premises from 6 p.m. to 7 a.m. daily according to the Corrections Department. Most of the living quarters were cardboard shelters and/or tents.

That’s rehabilitation? That’s assisting offenders with re-entry? Where’s the humanity and education?

Yes. Innocent people must be protected from dangerous predators. But we’ve lost perspective when we label nearly everything as a “sex offense” to and including public urination, looking at pictures, and mid-teen consensual activity that’s as rampant as smoking pot. If every “offender” were to be arrested, we would have to build ten times the prisons.

There’s got to be a better way, including isolation, rehabilitation and education, but the focus of lawmakers is narrow. We have lost sight of humanity.

Politicians say: “Fighting crime means more cops, jails and prisons.”

That’s a good punchline at election time, but it solves nothing. ..Source.. by Marshall Frank is a retired Miami-Dade police detective and frequent contributor to FLORIDA TODAY.

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

The big lie about sex offenders

3-9-17 National:

Much of the destructive, extra-punishment punishment we inflict on sex offenders is due to the widely held belief that they’re more likely to re-offend than the perpetrators of other classes of crimes. This has been the main justification for the Supreme Court’s authorization of sex-offender registries and for holding sex offenders indefinitely after they’ve served their sentences. Lower courts have then cited those rulings to justify a host of other measures, from severe restrictions on where sex offenders can live to GPS monitoring of their every move.

The problem, as Adam Liptak writes at the New York Times, is that the claim just isn’t true.

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 sex offenders from using Facebook, Twitter and other social media services.

The Supreme Court has indeed said the risk that sex offenders will commit new crimes is “frightening and high.” That phrase, in a 2003 decision upholding Alaska’s sex offender registration law, has been exceptionally influential. It has appeared in more than 100 lower-court opinions, and it has helped justify laws that effectively banish registered sex offenders from many aspects of everyday life.

But there is vanishingly little evidence for the Supreme Court’s assertion that convicted sex offenders commit new offenses at very high rates. The story behind the notion, it turns out, starts with a throwaway line in a glossy magazine.

The quote came from Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, and it claims that the recidivism rate for sex offenders is 80 percent. If true, that would indeed be “frightening and high.” But it isn’t true. At Slate, David Feige brings the data: ..Continued.. by Radley Balko

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

FBI's FOIA website will make it easier to submit requests in March

2-16-17 National:

The feds won't accept emailed FOIPA requests anymore.

The FBI's decision to stop accepting email-based Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests wouldn't have sounded so bad if the agency didn't present horrible alternatives. Compared to email, snail mailing and faxing requests would take much longer, after all. Plus, the beta version of the eFOIPA submission web portal requires too much personal info and has too many restrictions. Fortunately, the feds seem to have heard the people's complaints and will roll back the portal's worst limitations when it officially opens on March 1st.

An FBI spokesperson told The Daily Dot that the final version of the website won't ask for your phone number -- apparently, the beta only asked for one so the feds could contact you in case something went wrong with the request you sent. You also don't have to indicate your country of origin anymore. The spokesperson said it was only necessary to auto-populate the address fields. More importantly, the FBI will tweak the portal's terms of service to allow you to send an unlimited number of requests, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. ..Continued.. by Mariella Moon

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...

What could happen if you refuse to unlock your phone at the US border?

See also: A Guide to Getting Past Customs With Your Digital Privacy Intact

2-16-17 National:

DHS says agents are in the right to ask for passwords, decryption help.

In recent days, there have been numerous media reports of a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory employee and American citizen who was forced to unlock his phone while returning to the United States at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport.

In that case, Sidd Bikkannavar wasn’t sure what his rights were—he seemingly was unaware that there is a very broad exception to the Fourth Amendment at the border that allows officials to conduct warrantless searches.

Now, let’s imagine that you arrive at the United States border, and a customs official asks you to unlock your digital device and inspect it. You, being a privacy-conscious person, decide to refuse to hand over your password, unlike Bikkannavar. What are the ramifications of telling a Customs and Border Protection agent to go pound sand? What would happen to your device? And, how long could CBP hold you for refusing to comply?

Ars spoke with several legal experts, and contacted CBP itself (which did not provide anything beyond previously-published policies). The short answer is: your device probably will be seized (or "detained" in CBP parlance), and you might be kept in physical detention—although no one seems to be sure exactly for how long.

An unnamed CBP spokesman told The New York Times on Tuesday that such electronic searches are extremely rare: he said that 4,444 cellphones and 320 other electronic devices were inspected in 2015, or 0.0012 percent of the 383 million arrivals (presuming that all those people had one device). ..Continued.. by Cyrus Farivar

Read More of Article...

Article Summary only...