8-14-2010 National:
JoAnn Wypijewski Interviews RSOL Moms for CounterPunch
Early this summer an organization representing arguably the most despised people in America, and calling itself obliquely RSOL, for Reform Sex Offender Laws, met in Washington D.C. to allow people from across the country to talk strategy, lobby Congress and simply step from the heavy shadow of fear and shame.
From the looks on their face, it seems never to have occurred to Congressional aides that the 700,000-plus people on America’s sex offender registries might have loved ones, or might themselves finally have grown sick of keeping quiet. The aides surely were as clueless as I had been that in Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico some of these people have been stopping ever more punitive legislation or revising existing law in the direction of sanity, and that the wives and, mostly, mothers of people on the registry had discovered the radical essence of simply speaking up.
I talked to three women. Only one, Mary Duval, who started a group called SOSEN in Oklahoma and co-hosts a weekly radio talk show, wanted to be identified by her full name. For the remainder of this article:
August 14, 2010
Defending the 700,000 Most Despised People in America: The Mothers' Rebellion
June 30, 2010
Sex Offenders Meet Media
6-30-2010 Washington DC:
A group of former sex offenders and experts in the field of sexual offense met with members of the press Monday, following the 2nd Annual Conference of Reform Sex Offender Laws (RSOL). RSOL seeks to reform or repeal legislation like the Adam Walsh Act, which has a current deadline for implementation of July 1st but has only been completely adopted by 4 states.
Surprisingly RSOL does not seek for the immediate abolishment of the Sex Offender Registry but for a more directed approach to Registration and other sex offender related laws. According to Dr. Chrysandi Leon, University of Delaware, Professor of Sociology and an Expert on Sex Offender recidivism who presented at the conference, “the limited resources of law enforcement are being diluted by the blanket registration of all sex offenders.”
“Credible statistical studies over the last 15 years “since the registry was implement show that “it has had no impact of the recidivism rate.” We can go back to studies from the 1940’s on, long before the registry was implemented, and show that the rate of offenses has remained remarkably consistent over the intervening years.
RSOL advocates a more directed and individualized approach to registration using scientifically based data to identify those offenders who pose a significant treat to society and who are truly “dangerous.” Right now it is impossible for parents or even law enforcement to accurately determine an offender’s potential risk because of labels such as “sexually violently predator” which are blanketedly applied to all offenders who have committed a specific set of offenses rather that using individualized assessment to apply that designation. Having over 700,000 people on the registry nation-wide makes it difficult for law enforcement to narrow the field quickly when a child goes missing.
“We are as concerned about the safety of children as anyone else” says Kelly Piercy, a former offender, and chairman of Georgians for Reform, but “we don’t believe that the current legislation is effective in doing so, it wastes resources and punishes those who are trying to reintegrate as productive citizens.”
Interestingly several children both of non-offender presenters and children of former offenders attended and roamed freely about the conference seemingly without fear of any kind.
Besides Dr. Leon, and Piercy other presenters at the conference included: J.Tom Morgan, former prosecutor and sex offender registry sponsor from Georgia who now states that “the registry no longer serves the purposes for which it was created;” Norman A. Pattis, Connecticut defense attorney, Nancy M. Steele, PhD, a Clinical Psychologist and sex offender treatment specialist, and Rev. James L. Powell, PhD, DD, a Methodist Minister whose Atlanta- based church welcomes sex offenders but under strict perimeters. Powell is also a licensed clinical psychologist and regularly counsels with former sex offenders. “There is much that the church and other community based organizations can do to mentor and help former sex offenders who want to reform,” thus increasing the net of safety that we all seek when dealing with those who have previously offended, particularly when the offense involves children.”
Another presenter Mary Duval of Oklahoma, CEO of SOSEN, another sex offender advocacy group, became vehement in her fight for change, when her teenaged son Ricky was convicted of having sex with a younger teenaged girl. At that time there were no “Romeo and Juliet” laws which exempt consensual teenage sex from prosecution. Duval’s lobbying efforts help create these laws. Though completely blind, Duval actively lectures and campaigns throughout the United States, she also co-hosts weekly radio shows on ARC Talk Radio which focus on human rights and sex offender issues.
The conference concluded Monday after concentrated lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill. Portions of the Conference were recorded and links will soon be available online. These and other information about RSOL are available at their national website www.reformsexoffenderlaws.org . ..Source.. by Michael Machinatious
June 28, 2010
UD study says state wastes millions of dollars on treating low-risk juvenile sex offenders
6-26-2010 Delaware:
An examination of Delaware's approach to juvenile sex offenders finds the need for reform. Research released today shows the system costs taxpayers millions each year, treating many kids as high risk who simply do not fall into that category, while distracting the state from the truly risky offenders.
University of Delaware professor Chrysanthi S. Leon, J.D., Ph.D., will speak about the overuse of sex offender registration and residency laws in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, June 26 in the opening session of the conference of the national group, Reform Sex Offender Laws.
On Monday June 28, Leon and others will lobby Sen. Tom Carper and other members of Congress to amend the federal Adam Walsh Act, which can withhold funding from states that do not comply with its terms. At noon, Leon will participate in a press conference across from the Hart Senate Office Building, 245 2nd Street, NE. Leon and Smith College professor David L. Burton, Ph.D., authored, “Net Widening in Delaware: The Overuse of Registration and Residential Treatment for Youth Who Commit Sex Offenses,” which will be published in an upcoming issue of the Widener Law Review.
Last year, Delaware spent more than $5.1 million to send 62 youths out of state for treatment (FY09). In FY04, that expenditure was $2.9 million. These costs, Leon and Burton say, can only be justified if the youths are serious offenders who cannot be treated in the community and pose high risk of re-offense. But, the Delaware Youth Needs Evaluation, included in the article, shows they are low-to-moderate risk.
Leon and Burton argue Delaware's compliance with the federal Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act goes far beyond what is necessary. The unintended consequences of Delaware's registration laws are forcing the state to pay for unneeded treatment out of state. In total, Leon and Burton write, “the juvenile sex offender registry is the exact opposite of evidence-based corrections.”
They say the law needs revision, using methods proven effective in other states. Doing so would not entail new costs to the system. In fact, it would likely provide a cost-savings by properly focusing resources. ..Source.. Newark Post
June 26, 2010
Sex Offenders, Lawyers and the Burden of a Voice
6-26-2010 Washington DC:
by Norm Pattis, from his blog: Defending Sex Crimes. (If folks wish to respond to Mr. Pattis please visit his blog and respond there. Thank you. eAdvocate)
Almost every time I stand in the presence of a group of people to talk about sex offenses and accused sex offenders I face the scorn of those assembled. Few crimes are as reviled. But today was different. I stood in the auditorium of a church in Washington, D.C., and faced a friendly group. Imagine, a hundred or so folks looking upon me with approval.
I was a guest of the second annual conference on the reforming sex offender legislation sponsored by a group called, appropriately enough, Reform Sex Offender Legislation. It felt good to be among friends. I know the sorrow they and their families have faced in the relentless and indiscriminate prosecution of these cases.
One thing is abundantly clear: Our laws fail to discriminate between and among the various forms of sex offenses. There simply is a difference between a violent sexual offender and a young man who looked at a few pornographic images of children online or engaged in consensual sex with a young neighbor close in age. But the law requires a one-size-fits-all response to these offenses once a person is released from prison: requiring everyone to register as a sex offender is draconian.
I said as much and more to an audience already persuaded. They've lived on the front lines of this war against over-criminalization and hysteria. I felt today like a prosecutor: preaching to the choir.
At the end of my part of the presentation, someone asked what it would take to get a committee or group of lawyers together from around the country to serve as an intellectual catalyst for change. I told the speaker that I thought there was such support, although it might not yet have taken shape in the form of a formal committee. "You are closer than you think," I said. "You might just be the foot; and I might just be the ass."
I'm sitting on a train thinking about that remark. I've never really trusted movement lawyers. The law is not philosophy. Individual clients come to me and I do not want to be encumbered to anything than the very discrete and tangible interests of my client. No two clients are alike, each brings his or her own menu of issues to the table.
But I wonder, just now. I responded to the call to attend the event because I had seen one client after another socially decimated by the law's unfeeling and unthinking rigidity. I believe reform of sex offender laws is necessary. At this stage, I do not think that there is much the courts are willing and able to do. Most judges adopt a form of intellectual cowardice when things get tense: Like junior officers in the Nuremberg dock, they plead that they were just following orders when they mete out justice with a sledge hammer. They blame legislators for the rules they are sometimes ashamed to enforce.
I believe the front lines of reform will come in the state legislatures. That is where ordinary family members of those harmed by over-harsh laws can tell their stories to those with eyes open to the truth. We say of federalism that the states are laboratories of change. I believe this to be true. I do not believe the federal government is a progressive instrument for change: Its scope is so broad it panders to the lowest common denominator. John Walsh is a hero on the national set; I for one find the 25-year wake for his murdered son to be maudlin.
I don't know whether I am willing to join a committee of lawyers dedicated to changing the law. In confessing this, I acknowledge a certain moral and intellectual cop out. I left a promising academic career at its inception due to a certain epistemological weariness. If there were no larger truths, what was there to teach? The practice of law has liberated me, if not from the dark ghosts inhabiting a dark world, then at least I am liberated from the paralysis and seeming nihilism that comes of a too close familiarity with the leavings of what I sometimes feel is a spent Western intellectual heritage.
But the good people I saw in Washington, D.C., today issued a challenge that echoes. What can be done, they asked, about the suffering their families and friends endure? Implicit in their question was a request for help. I've some soul-searching to do. It's been perhaps too easy to sit on the sidelines and toss gratuitous scorn at visions of the good. Even if there is no certainly as to what goodness requires, that does not prohibit one from opposing unintended consequences resulting in something just this side of evil. I am not saying that sex offenders ought not to be punished; I am simply saying that not all offenses are alike. Voiceless people need others to speak for them.
Whether to become such a voice is a hard question to contemplate. ..Source.. Norm Pattis
