someone outside of NARSOL - NARSOL

NARSOL director given award

someone outside of NARSOL — Fri, 14 Jun 2024 15:29:40 +0000

By Eastern University . . . In 2008, David Garlock ’17 found himself in a hopeless situation. He had served over 8 years of a 25 year sentence in prison, alongside his brother, for taking the life of their abuser after many years of abuse.

A client of the Equal Justice Initiative, David found himself in conversation with Bryan Stevenson ’81, PhD ’99 (HD). Bryan gave David hope for his future and encouraged him to apply to Eastern University to start fresh. David was inspired to consider how his passion for educating the next generation on rehabilitation could lead to advocacy for an effective and equitable justice system. In 2014, David’s parole was moved from Alabama to Pennsylvania, and his journey at Eastern began. . . .

From that point on, David has been an amazing example of how the past does not define the future.

This year, David has been named Eastern’s Distinguished Young Alumnus of the Year. David Garlock is a successful returning citizen, reentry professional, and criminal justice reform advocate. He has made an impact working on campaigns to abolish death by incarceration, create geriatric parole programs, and reinstitute Pell Grant funding for incarcerated students. He serves as a board member for the National Association for Rational Sex Offense Laws, the Pennsylvania Association for Rational Sex Offense Laws, the Pennsylvania Reentry Council, and the Eastern University Prison Education Program.

Read the complete piece here at Eastern University.

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Life and occasional victory as a “sex offender” registrant

someone outside of NARSOL — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 17:00:54 +0000

Originally published in the CT Mirror; reprinted here in full with the author’s permission.

By James Cornelio . . . I was born in Torrington in 1955, the son, one of four, of a successful small-town automobile dealer and a stay-at-home mom. After graduating from Cornell University in 1977, I moved to Manhattan, attended Fordham Law School and, upon graduation from Fordham, practiced real estate and private banking law in Manhattan for over 20 years. Upon my release from a New York prison in 2007, I moved back to Connecticut and, as the law required, registered as a sex offender.

Understanding the power of those two words, I have tried elsewhere to explore, as best I could, why and how those words have come to forever define who I am. Here, however, I’m going to explore the effect of those words not just on me but on the legal system which, trained as I was, I had come to respect.

On April 22, 2018, I was arresed in my home because of a warrant issued at the request of the sex offender registry unit of the Connecticut State Police (SORU) for failing to file an email address with them which, as a registered offender, Connecticut law also required. Notably, it was an email address which, though I hadn’t ‘filed’ with SORU, I had used multiple times over several years in communicating with them prior to their request for a warrant. So why did they nonetheless seek my arrest?

In part, because they could.

Thankfully, they no longer can, at least not for that crime.

On Sept. 14, 2023, a Federal District Court held in Cornelio v. CT, a case I initially brought pro se, that the Connecticut law requiring that registrants file their email addresses and all other “internet identifiers” with the police or risk being charged with a class “D” felony violates the First Amendment. Consequently, the court permanently enjoined the state from enforcing the law. Less thankfully, because I had not fashioned my case as a “class action” lawsuit, the court, notwithstanding our request to do so, refused to extend that First Amendment protection to any registrant in the state other than to me.

But given that the court itself acknowledged that “the reasons that the law is invalid as to Cornelio would appear to apply with equal force to all other sex offenders,” we fully expect that a class action lawsuit, to be filed as soon as resources allow, will extend the protection provided to me by my case to all other registrants in the state.

That law, it should be said, is duplicated in states across the country. Moreover, it is but one of many other laws which, of all those who have committed a crime and served their time, apply only to those of us who have committed a sex crime. In fact, it was SORU’s earlier enforcement of one of those other laws, and my reaction to that enforcement, which, most certainly, was the reason why SORU sought my arrest for my subsequent ‘email crime.’

Briefly, in July, 2015, I was arrested because I failed to confirm my home address within the 10-day statutory time period set forth in a Connecticut law requiring registrants to provide written confirmation thereof every three months or face a felony charge. Once the state prosecutor was convinced I would not ‘cop a plea’ to any charge because of my late mail, the case was dismissed. I then, in what was surely a first for them, brought my first pro se case by suing SORU in Federal Court for violating my Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure.

In my court papers, I pointed out that SORU, in seeking my arrest, had not only ignored both their own (reasonable) protocol on late confirmation letters and the relevant law’s direction that they refer late letters to local police but, more pointedly, they had ignored that the presumptive purpose of the law was to assure a registrant hadn’t moved. I hadn’t. And they had no reason because of a late letter or otherwise to believe that I had. And if, for some reason, they were concerned that I had moved, there were far simpler and more effective, and far less punishing, ways of determining that risk to the public than by seeking my arrest.

Well, I learned that, per the statutory language adopted by Connecticut lawmakers and interpreted by the state’s highest court, it doesn’t matter whether one has moved or not. Nor does it matter whether the police have a reasonable suspicion that a registrant has moved. Nor even whether the late return of a confirmation letter was unintentional or otherwise excusable. No, under that law as interpreted by that court, a registrant can be arrested and be held strictly liable for a Class D felony simply because their mail is late. Think about it. The elements of this felony are established by two postmarks.

Suffice it to say, with reasonableness rendered irrelevant, my Fourth Amendment case was dismissed. Not long thereafter, I was arrested for my email crime.

I write this not to bemoan my fate but to shine a light on the fact that laws which were meant to protect the public have, with little significant push-back, been weaponized by lawmakers, the courts and those tasked with enforcing those laws. Beyond my personal experience are these other examples: here, strict residency requirements wreak havoc and hardship: or here, even visiting registrants must beware; or here, Halloween horrors abound; and then there’s this; and this; and this; and this; and … more.

Given all that, let me suggest that the reasoning by the Supreme Court in its 2003 decision in Smith v. Doe was, at best, naïve if not willfully blind to what cruelty it might unleash. In that seminal case, the court ruled that an Alaska law establishing a public registry and requiring convicted sex offenders, who have already served their court-imposed sentences, to thereafter routinely re-register on that public registry was merely “regulatory” and not punitive in nature. In effect, the court’s decision meant that judges and juries — that is, those familiar with the particulars of the who, what, when and where of the crime — need not even be aware of, let alone weigh in on, whether the defendant before them may become subject to those “regulatory” reporting requirements. Instead, as I personally experienced by being required to register for life, a sweeping, harshly crude, paint-by-numbers formula for determining one’s “risk” to the public is unilaterally imposed by those who write the laws — and who answer only to the voters.

Not only voters but any empathetic human being understands, and would seek to allay, the pain and abiding distress of those who have been sexually victimized and the fear of others, especially parents, about their own potential victimization or that of their children. But an uniformed belief that so-called “stranger danger” is widely prevalent and that but for public registries the recidivism of convicted sex offenders would be out-of-control have served to further inflame sexual fears already ignited by a competitive media seeking clicks and ambitious politicians seeking power, both more-than-ready to exploit those fears.

The result is a legal system which has gone well beyond the deeply unfortunate, if somewhat less punitively oppressive, Alaska law at issue in the Doe case to one which now embodies the modern equivalent of banishment for a whole class of citizens.

The post Life and occasional victory as a “sex offender” registrant first appeared on NARSOL.

Law enforcement officers routinely break the law

someone outside of NARSOL — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 16:01:55 +0000

By Bonnie Burkhardt . . . It is a felony and a federal crime to impersonate someone else and intercept private communications intended for them, 18 U.S. Code § 2511. There is no exception for police, and no exception if written permission is obtained. Yet impersonating others online is the basis for police sting operations across the country. Law enforcement must be able to investigate criminal activity, but they cannot commit their own crimes while doing so. It is now customary for officers to violate Fourth Amendment law, and it is happening more frequently.

Without a warrant or report of a crime, male officers create fake profiles on adult-only dating sites using photos of attractive ladies (or young men). Men often see a profile and begin a conversation.

During the chat, the officer claims to be an underage 14-year-old girl/boy, even if it is obviously an adult pictured. The officer uses entrapment to lure the man to meet. The officer’s goal is to catch someone who might solicit a minor. Why not use a Disney site instead of an adult-only dating app? Since role playing is common online, most men believe they are talking to an adult. They agree to meet in a public place to confirm the person pictured is of legal age.

Read the full piece here at The Opinion Pages.

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Call to action from Florida Action Committee

someone outside of NARSOL — Mon, 12 Feb 2024 23:11:43 +0000

AMENDED CALL TO ACTION #3 FOR SB 1230 and HB 1235:

SB 1230 has been referred to Senate Fiscal Policy Committee and HB 1235 added to Second Reading Calendar.

We have met with some success because of the emails, calls, and in-person visits with legislators. Both bills (SB 1230 and HB 1235) have removed the language that could have made it impossible for anyone to ever petition to be removed from the registry. Our teamwork is showing some positive results, and now is not the time to quit as we have more work to do.

What you need to know about SB 1230 and HB 1235:

At the time of posting/emailing this Call to Action, no dates or times for future votes have been published, but we assume that they will be coming.
SB 1230 and HB 1235 are an attempt by FDLE and our legislators to amend the Sexual Predators Act (FS 775.21) and the Sexual Offenders Act (943.0435).
The sponsor of SB 1230 is Senator Jennifer Bradley, representing District 6 (Columbia, Baker, Union, Bradford, Clay, Gilchrist, and Northern Alachua Counties). The sponsor of HB 1235 is Representative Jessica Baker, representing District 17 (part of Duval County).
The verbiage “a day includes any part of a calendar day” is back in these bills. “For the purpose of calculating a temporary residence under this paragraph, the first day that a person abides, lodges, or resides at a place is excluded and each subsequent day is counted. A DAY INCLUDES ANY PART OF A CALENDAR DAY.”
ANY duration of travel outside the USA is reportable (previously 5 days or more). The line “5 days” has been struck out.
Lines 1034-1036 and 1600-1602 in SB 1230 and lines 1034-1036 and 1601-1602 in HB 1235 state that EACH instance of a failure to register or report changes of the required information constitutes a SEPARATE offense. A single misstep carries a maximum sentence of 5 years. Someone on the registry could be facing decades in prison for one unintentional, paperwork violation, as it would be unreported each time you register.
These entire bills are retroactive in the sense that they will apply to all people on the registry regardless of when they were convicted. However, they are not retroactive in the sense that someone who did NOT register 4 cars a month before the law passed (if it passes) could be charged with 4 separate offenses. That part would only apply to registration violations committed after the bills’ effective date.

Please do the following:

Email or call members of the Senate Fiscal Policy Committee first. Then contact as many of the 120 House Representatives as you can. Paul Renner is the Speaker of the House.
You will need to give your name.
IF YOU DO NOT LIVE IN THE STATE OF FLORIDA, YOU COULD MENTION THAT AS IDEAL AS FLORIDA IS FOR VACATIONING, YOU DO NOT WANT TO VISIT A STATE THAT PASSES UNCONSTITUTIONAL AND VAGUE LAWS AS THESE TWO BILLS ARE.
If you are a constituent for any of the senators you are contacting, make sure you mention that you are. You can click on these links to find your senator and representative.
Let the legislators know the reasons you OPPOSE a particular part of these bills. Tell them what could happen to you and your family if these bills are not amended. TELL YOUR STORY.
If you call in the evening or on a weekend, voicemail will pick up. Leave a message. Aides say that voicemails are counted.
Always be cordial in your communications with the legislators as they are more likely to listen to us.

Talking points:

The legislators are asking that we let them know how SB 1230 and HB 1235 will impact our lives. TELL YOUR STORIES. If you do not have a story to tell, then give a hypothetical story that could happen to you if the above-mentioned concerns we have with these bills are NOT removed. More than one story would be great to share.

We also need for family members, friends, or anyone who would be negatively impacted by the changes being proposed in these bills to tell our legislators what will happen to them if the language is not removed from SB 1230 and HB 1235.

Do not try to use every suggestion or piece of information given in this Call to Action. Pick out what is most important to you. If you have time to write more than one email or make more than one call, then you could include additional information.

PERTAINING TO THE DEFINITION OF A DAY:

Representative Baker (the sponsor of HB 1235) recently gave the following example of how the definition “part of a day” is intended to be used in HB 1235:
1st day at temporary residence counts as Day 0. Does not count.
2nd day at temporary residence counts as Day 1.
3rd day at temporary residence counts as Day 2.
4th day at temporary residence counts as Day 3. Triggers obligation to register.
Representative Baker continued with her interpretation of HB 1235: Let’s say that you check out on the 4th day (also referred to as Day 3) at 8 am and return home. Because you have stayed “any part” of Day 3, you have now triggered the obligation to register. Had you left before midnight on the 3rd day (also referred to as Day 2), you would NOT have triggered the obligation to register.
Representative Baker said that the “day includes any part of a calendar day” would only apply to Day 3, but these bills do NOT say that. Some in law enforcement are saying there will be chaos in their departments if this passes.
Nowhere in these bills does it state that Days 1 and 2 cannot be considered as “parts of a calendar day.”
Baker told the FAC members who met with her that the intent of this bill was NOT to keep people from visiting places or going to a barber shop, but the bill does not say that. It says that a day includes “any part of a calendar day,” with a possible implication being that any PARTS of Days 1 and 2 would be considered a day in these bills.
One possible scenario: You are in your sister’s wedding which involves being at a temporary residence for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. Since Friday is the first day, it would not count, but you would technically have to leave by 12:00 am (midnight) on Sunday as any part of Monday would count as a “day.” What if your flight is canceled? Use other scenarios that you can think of that would apply to your life if this part of these bills is not amended. TELL YOUR STORY.
What do you do if it is a 3-day holiday weekend and your registration office is not open? And your car breaks down late Friday afternoon, causing you to have to rent a car? This is one reason we need for these bills to use the words “business day” rather than “day.” TELL YOUR STORY. If you do not have one, then describe hypothetically how such a situation could be disastrous for you. Include family members’ stories.
If Florida legislators want people on the registry to remain compliant, then change the word “day” to “business day.” In lines 571-575 of SB 1230 and HB 1235, “If the sexual predator is in the custody of a local jail, the custodian of the local jail shall register the sexual predator within 3 BUSINESS DAYS after intake of the sexual predator…” If the custodian of a jail is given 3 business days, then why aren’t people on the registry, who are trying to remain compliant, also given 3 business days? TELL YOUR STORY OF WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU OR A FAMILY MEMBER WHO COULD NOT RE-REGISTER OR REGISTER A CHANGE BECAUSE THE OFFICE WAS CLOSED.

PERTAINING TO HAVING EACH INCIDENCE OF FAILURE TO REGISTER OR REPORT CHANGES COUNTING AS A SEPARATE OFFENSE:

These are paperwork felonies with each offense coming with a maximum of 5 years in prison.
One possible scenario: Your wife receives a new license plate with her renewed car registration and forgets to tell you. You re-register 3 times, not knowing that her car has a new license plate. Law enforcement comes to your home and sees the license plate that you have not registered at any of your 3 previous re-registrations. You have now committed 3 paperwork felonies that could land you in prison for 15 years. TELL YOUR OWN STORY ABOUT WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO YOU OR COULD HAPPEN TO YOU IN THE FUTURE IF THIS LANGUAGE STAYS IN THESE BILLS.
Other benign violations that could land someone on the registry in prison for years if there is more than one occurrence:
Failure to maintain a driver’s license or identification card;
Failure to provide an email address or an internet identifier;
Failure to provide a phone number.
If the wording “each incident is counted as a separate offense” remains in these bills, some people on the registry who are not sexually re-offending could end up with longer prison sentences than that for some violent offenders. How is sending people on the registry to prison for years for these paperwork felonies making society safer?
If this language in SB 1230 and HB 1235 is not deleted, it is conceivable that someone could end up with a lifetime sentence for failure-to-register violations. The Georgia State Supreme Court ruled that a lifetime sentence for failure to register is unconstitutional. Decisions of state supreme courts, especially those of adjacent or nearby states, are persuasive authority, especially for matters of first impression, in another state.
FDLE has expressed significant concerns in previous years: “…sexual offender and predator registration is a civil and regulatory process, not punishment…If the impact on sexual predator and offender registration is viewed as punishment…, the FDLE advises that these concerns may lead to significant litigation…Such litigation may jeopardize constitutionality, and therefore the viability, of Florida sexual offender and predator registration laws.” (Florida Department of Law Enforcement, 2022 Agency Legislative Bill Analysis for SB 512, at 3 (Nov. 15, 2021))
The “every mistake is a separate offense” shows that even the intent of the law is to be punitive.
There are already lawsuits in Florida against the registry, and more are coming if the Florida Legislature is not reined in concerning passing even more punitive laws that affect the thousands upon thousands of law-abiding citizens on the Florida registry.
FDLE is asking for the proposed changes in current statutes (943.0435 and 775.21). They are focusing only on the small minority of people on the registry who have sexually re-offended after release from prison for a previous sex crime. Focus on this minority of sexual re-offenders only, but why continue to punish the tens of thousands of people on the Florida registry who are NOT sexually re-offending and never will?
It is time for Florida to begin using empirically-validated risk assessments (not the offense) to remove the thousands of people on the Florida registry who are now law-abiding citizens. Then law enforcement could focus all resources on the small minority that continue to sexually re-offend. Then and only then will society become safer. (Florida is one of only three states in the United States where placement on the registry is for life.)

Contact information for members of the Senate Fiscal Policy Committee for SB 1230:

Senator Travis Hutson (R) Chair: Hutson.travis.web@flsenate.gov (850) 487-5007
Senator Linda Stewart (D) Vice Chair: stewart.linda.web@flsenate.gov (850) 487-5017
Senator Ben Albritton (R): Albritton.ben.web@flsenate.gov (850) 487-5027
Senator Lori Berman (D): berman.lori.web@flsenate.gov (850) 487-5026
Senator Jim Boyd (R): boyd.jim.web@flsenate.gov (850) 487-5020
Senator Colleen Burton (R): burton.colleen.web@flsenate.gov (850) 487-5012
Senator Alexis Calatayud (R): calatayud.alexis.web@flsenate.gov (850) 487-5038
Senator Jay Collins (R): collins.jay.web@flsenate.gov (850) 487-5014
Senator Nick DiCeglie (R): diceglie.nick.web@flsenate.gov (850) 487-5018
Senator Ileana Garcia (R): Garcia.ileana.web@flsenate.gov (850) 487-5036
Senator Shervin D. Jones (D): jones.shevrin.web@flsenate.gov (850) 487-5034
Senator Debbie Mayfield (R): Mayfield.debbie.web@flsenate.gov (850) 487-5019
Senator Rosalind Osgood (D): Osgood.rosalind.web@flsenate.gov (850) 487-5032
Senator Ana Maria Rodriguez (R): rodriguez.anamaria.web@flsenate.gov (850) 487-5040
Senator Corey Simon (R): simon.corey.web@flsenate.gov (850) 487-5003
Senator Geraldine F. Thompson (D): Thompson.geraldine.web@flsenate.gov (850) 487-5015
Senator Victor M. Torres, Jr. (D): torres.victor.web@flsenate.gov (850) 487-5025
Senator Jay Trumbull (R): Trumbull.jay.web@flsenate.gov (850) 487-5002
Senator Tom A. Wright (R): wright.tom.web@flsenate.gov (850) 487-5008
Senator Clay Yarborough (R): yarborough.clay.web@flsenate.gov (850) 487-5004

For your individual representatives, click here.

The post Call to action from Florida Action Committee first appeared on NARSOL.

The horrors behind “sex offender” civil commitment: “Don’t get sick”

someone outside of NARSOL — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 13:56:35 +0000

By Barbara Koepel . . . For the 6,000 men confined in compounds in the 20 states with civil commitment laws—which keep sex offenders behind bars and out of sight for decades after they complete their prison terms and often until they die—the mantra has got to be “don’t get sick.” (See “Sex Crimes and Criminal Justice”, The Washington Spectator, May, 2018).

If they’re sick, whether with kidney disease, Covid or cancer, medical care is delayed, deficient or denied. It doesn’t matter if the facility is in “blue” states, such as New York, Massachusetts and California, or “red” ones, such as Texas and Virginia. Also, it doesn’t matter if it is run by the state or a private corporation (such as the Management and Training Corporation—MTC).

I interviewed 15 men in Minnesota, Texas and California (one has since died) as well as nurses and therapists who work in these facilities. I’ve also corresponded with men in Massachusetts and New York. All agree the medical care is deplorable and far better in regular prisons—where the men completed their sentences before being sent, indefinitely, into civil commitment.

Coalinga, California

At Coalinga, California’s civil commitment compound, one resident (we’ll call him Robert to shield his identity) said he “had severe stomach pain, was wetting himself and urinated frequently.” Still, he had to wait over a month to get an appointment at the medical clinic where the nurse practitioner (NP) told him his PSA numbers were high and he should see a specialist. That was in October 2018. But since the men aren’t allowed to book their own appointments, Coalinga must make the referrals. So it wasn’t until February that Robert saw a urologist—whose tests showed he had Stage 3 prostate cancer and needed chemotherapy and radiation immediately. “Still, seven months passed before Coalinga arranged for my treatments, and then, only because the court intervened,” Robert said.

Fast forward to August 2022. Robert saw blood in his urine and the NP said he should see an oncologist; still, it took Coalinga’s clinic five months to write a referral and get him an appointment. “In January 2023, the oncologist said I needed a PET scan to see if the cancer returned—which took Coalinga another four months to arrange. Because the scan, which was in June 2023, showed a new spot on my kidney, the oncologist said to see a urologist right away. It’s now December, and Coalinga hasn’t made the appointment,” he says. His lawyer is seeking a court order to make it happen. . . .

Littlefield, Texas

At the Littlefield, Texas civil commitment facility, the medical clinic handled Covid in a way which ensured that many of the 390 inmates would get it. According to Mandi Brady, a security officer and medical assistant at Littlefield from 2018 to 2021, “Covid spread like wildfire every few days. It was the worst in 2021, when at least half the men had it and 12 died.”

Brady says those who tested positive weren’t quarantined from those who tested negative; the clinic didn’t sanitize the examining room between patients; the sick and non-sick were sent back to their rooms, which hold two, four or 14 men. “We passed food trays through their doors and the infected and uninfected ate together in their rooms. Also, they weren’t permitted to do their own laundry. Instead, staff threw their dirty clothes into the same sacks and washed them together,” she adds. . . .

Moose Lake and St. Peter, Minnesota

As in Texas and California, the men in Minnesota’s sex offender program (MSOP) at its two facilities in Moose Lake and St. Peter wait months for medical care; nine months is the norm to see an outside doctor. This happens because Moose Lake doesn’t have a full-time in-house doctor. Daniel Wilson, who has a para-legal certificate and has been an inmate for six years, says “besides the long wait, clinic staff don’t tell us the truth about our diagnoses. We can submit something like a FOIA request to see our test results and doctors’ notes, but you have to know how to do it and most of the men don’t.”

Wilson says “one man had abdominal pain and was examined at Essentia (a nearby hospital) in July 2022. The hospital sent his medical records to Moose Lake where the nurse who read them told the inmate ‘nothing was wrong.’ As his pain worsened, he asked Essentia to send him the records directly: they showed he had Stage 5 kidney disease (end-stage renal failure).” . . .

Read the full piece at The Washington Spectator.

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The nonsense of “sex offender” employment restrictions

someone outside of NARSOL — Sun, 22 Oct 2023 17:22:50 +0000

Reprinted in full with permission; first published October 19 at Filter.

By C. Dreams . . . In the month since I was released from Georgia Department of Corrections custody, I’ve been offered four different jobs. I could have been an account lead at a prominent insurance agency; a receptionist at the same agency, different location; an accountant at another insurance agency; and a paralegal assistant at a law firm. I submitted each offer to my local sheriff’s department, where each was promptly rejected. It appears there are only two available positions in the entire county I’d be allowed to work, one of them at Taco Bell and the other also at Taco Bell.

People who aren’t impacted by sex offender registry (SOR) restrictions typically think they ban you from schools. They do, but they also ban you from living or working within 1,000 feet (as the crow flies, no matter how long the actual route) of churches, gyms, community centers, parks—public parks, even. Pretty much any job in any moderately urban area is going to be within 1,000 feet of at least one of those.

The insurance company jobs were salaried positions in the $30,000s, with health insurance and dental and monthly bonuses. The paralegal assistant job paid $21 per hour, but in the field I’m actually passionate about and qualified to pursue, and even if that weren’t true it still would have been $6 more than Taco Bell.

The highest-paying offer, $38,000 with potential for advancement up to $80,000, would have had me working from home—that is, the partially constructed boarding house for people on SOR where I rent a room. I would have only had to physically go into the office for four hours on Mondays to do paperwork. Alas, a few hundred feet down the road from that office there is a church.

I’m allowed to go to church to attend Sunday services. I’m allowed to pay $45 to go to church when my weekly SOR classes are held in basement. But I’m not allowed to go once a week to a building that is not even a church, just in the vicinity of one, if the purpose of my being there is the gainful employment I desperately need. Not having enough money is a parole violation.

Within the next few weeks, my SOR fees will begin flooding in. The first is the mental health evaluation—best guess, it’ll cost around $300. My parole officer said there’s another county where I might be better off taking it instead, because it’d be a lot more expensive in this one. How much more expensive? I asked. To which she replied: “…Like, a lot.”

The evaluation is to clear me for the SO rehabilitation classes, which will probably be $45-$50 each week for at least a year.. Every couple of months I’ll have to pay $250 to take a polygraph. I have no idea how much the random drug tests will cost, but they will cost something. Not to mention the $800 for rent each month and another $125 for insurance—car, not health. I still haven’t been approved for Medicaid. Or food stamps.

The best job that people on SOR around here are geographically eligible to get is at the Kea manufacturing plant. The job that just about everyone actually gets is at the poultry processing plant. There are a few openings doing other kinds of manual labor, or scattered across the fast food industry. I’ll be alright because I intend to marry someone fabulously wealthy, but most people are stuck hauling chicken carcasses.

I’m frustrated. During the 13 years I lived in a cage, I put myself through college. I clerked at the prison law library, completed courses in paralegal studies and civil litigation, filed five lawsuits against the Georgia Department of Corrections and in three of them represented myself. I earned my Doctor of Theology, from a program where the rest of the students were not incarcerated and I had to complete the same coursework in the brief windows it was safe to take out my contraband Android. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think I’m too good for Taco Bell. But I do think it’s fair to say that I’ve driven myself into the ground for years out of determination to transcend my circumstances. And for what?

The SOR rhetoric purports to be about rehabilitation and second chances. I would like that second chance very much. What exactly am I supposed to be doing that I haven’t already done? Why do they even bother letting people out, when all roads lead right back in?

The post The nonsense of “sex offender” employment restrictions first appeared on NARSOL.

The truth behind “460,000 kids go missing each year”

someone outside of NARSOL — Sat, 07 Oct 2023 14:07:03 +0000

By Lenore Skenazy . . . Stunned joy is what most of us felt when we learned that Charlotte Sena, the 9-year-old abducted while riding her bike in upstate New York, has been found and returned to her family — alive.

The alleged perp has been seized, bringing the number of active Amber Alerts in the entire USA to… one: Keshawn Williams, a 15-year-old from Cleveland, not seen since June. One is one too many, obviously. But it is a far cry from the hundreds of thousands that the media mentioned in the coverage of Charlotte’s disappearance.

The Washington Post reported that “(a)bout 460,000 children in the United States are reported missing each year, according to the Justice Department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.”

The reporter added that “most are found and returned to safety.” But that phrasing made it seem to me, at least, as if “most” had been taken by someone, because “returned to safety” sounds as if the cops or someone else found the child and returned them to their parents. (And by the way, “most” seems to imply that at least a sizable chunk never made it home.)

Read the rest of the piece at creators.com.

The post The truth behind “460,000 kids go missing each year” first appeared on NARSOL.

New survey

someone outside of NARSOL — Mon, 25 Sep 2023 18:58:31 +0000

Survey Of Insurance and Travel Rentals As a Person Forced to Register

Some Persons Forced to Register on the public “Sex Offense” Registry have reported difficulties in obtaining certain types of insurance. The purpose of this survey is to find out if this is a common problem amongst Persons Forced to Register.

The following questions will ask questions about applying for insurance and travel-related rentals and services (transportation, hotels, etc.). This survey will not ask questions regarding demographics or about certain forms of vacation travel like cruises or international travel.

The criteria for taking this survey is as follows:

1. You or your loved one MUST currently be on the sex offense registry, or have been forced to register at some point, AND
2. You or your loved one MUST have applied for insurance AND/OR have attempted to engage in domestic travel planning such as buying a travel ticket, renting transportation (including moving vans), or staying in a hotel or short-term lease, since placement on the sex offense registry.

This survey contains 18 questions plus a bonus question.

It should only take 5-10 minutes to complete.

This survey was created by Derek W. Logue of OnceFallen.com

Here is the link to the survey:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/26B6DJZ

The post New survey first appeared on NARSOL.

CT senator and NARSOL’s CT affiliate work to defeat retroactive inclusion on registry

someone outside of NARSOL — Sun, 10 Sep 2023 15:23:53 +0000

By Jaden Edison . . . During counseling programs he’s attended throughout adulthood, Aaron Kearney has been told not to let mistakes define him and not to let the past hijack his future. But for a quarter-century, the 52-year-old has worn a label making it burdensome to live up to those ideals: “registered sex offender.”

“The only thing I feel is that I’m just existing. I’m not living,” said Kearney, on a recent windy Thursday at Bridgeport’s St. Mary’s-by-the-Sea, sitting at a picnic bench with the Long Island Sound as his backdrop. “At the end of the day, you should have sentenced me to death.”

The Bridgeport native never imagined that his name would live on the state’s public sex offense registry for the world to see. The Connecticut Mirror could not locate records outlining specific details in his case, but available documents show he was charged in 1997 with third-degree sexual assault for what he describes as assaulting a sex worker. Promptly after, he pleaded guilty and served eight months in prison.

Months following his release, however, Kearney received notification that Connecticut had recently enacted legislation creating the public registry. The new policy, approved during the 1998 legislative session, was retroactive, meaning people convicted of a “sexually violent offense” in the decade prior to the law’s passage would have to enroll.

Whether or not the person had served time, sexually reoffended or posed a serious risk was insignificant under the new law. That wasn’t the end of it for Kearney. The state first required people convicted of a violent sex offense to register for at least a decade, where a court would grant them relief if they could prove they weren’t likely to reoffend. But in 1999, the legislature amended the law, extending the enrollment mandate to a lifetime.

Read the rest of the piece here at the CT Mirror.

The post CT senator and NARSOL’s CT affiliate work to defeat retroactive inclusion on registry first appeared on NARSOL.

What did the Supreme Court do?

someone outside of NARSOL — Sat, 26 Aug 2023 21:35:16 +0000

By Jacob Sullum . . . Sunday, March 5, [2023] marks[ed]the 20th anniversary of Smith v. Doe, a U.S. Supreme Court decision that approved retroactive application of Alaska’s sex offender registry, deeming it preventive rather than punitive. That ruling helped propagate several pernicious myths underlying a policy that every state has adopted without regard to its justice or effectiveness.

Writing for the majority in Smith, Justice Anthony Kennedy took it for granted that collecting and disseminating information about people convicted of sex offenses made sense as a public safety measure. But that premise was always doubtful.

The vast majority of sexual assaults, especially against children, are committed by relatives, friends or acquaintances, and the perpetrators typically do not have prior sex-offense convictions. That means they would not show up on a registry even if someone bothered to check.

It is therefore not surprising that research finds little evidence to support Kennedy’s assumption that publicly accessible registries protect potential victims. Summarizing the evidence in a 2016 National Affairs article, Eli Lehrer noted that “virtually no well-controlled study shows any quantifiable benefit from the practice of notifying communities of sex offenders living in their midst.”

Read the rest of the piece at the Chicago Sun-Times.

The post What did the Supreme Court do? first appeared on NARSOL.