A judge orders a change in tactics used in the city's crime crackdown.
4-25-2007 California:
A federal judge has ruled that some Los Angeles police tactics in patrolling downtown are unconstitutional, raising questions about the city's successful campaign to dramatically reduce the number of crimes and homeless people.
U.S. District Judge Dean D. Pregerson found that officers question — and at times search — parolees and probationers without evidence that they might have committed a crime, which the judge said was unconstitutional. He ordered the LAPD to change its practices.
City officials strongly disputed the judge's decision and said that police were acting within the law. If the city appeals the ruling, a higher court ultimately would have to decide the legal issues in the case.
The Los Angeles Police Department is in the midst of a major crackdown on downtown crime, having made 6,000 arrests in the last six months and recorded a 35% drop in crime. The crackdown has corresponded with a drop in downtown's street dwellers, from 1,800 last September to fewer than 750 last week, LAPD statistics show.
The changes come at a time when the once-blighted city center is undergoing gentrification. The LAPD has vowed to stop the rampant drug dealing on and around skid row, an area in which 20% of the city's drug arrests are made.
City officials have struggled for years to devise a policing policy for downtown that passes legal muster in its treatment of homeless people. A federal appeals court last year found the city's anti-camping ordinance to be unconstitutional, scuttling LAPD efforts to prevent the homeless from sleeping on downtown sidewalks at night.
Some legal experts said that Pregerson's decision had established another serious roadblock to the LAPD's drive to clean up downtown.
"It's an important decision," said Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School. "It sort of resolves an argument percolating out there, that … the LAPD would have permission to stop anybody."
The ruling, she said, reaffirms "the right of the homeless not to be subjected to unwarranted, suspicionless searches. Even if they don't have much to their name, they still have their constitutional rights."
The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the lawsuit that Pregerson ruled on, maintained that police officers routinely stopped people and questioned them about their parole or probation status. Officers often handcuffed them and searched them without any reasonable suspicion of a crime, the organization charged in court papers.
The ACLU in 2003 won an injunction that barred the LAPD from stopping or searching skid row residents without reasonable suspicion that they had committed a crime or were violating parole or probation.
But after the crackdown began last year — with the LAPD adding 50 officers to patrol downtown — the ACLU and some homeless rights advocates charged that officers again were violating the rights of skid row residents by searching people improperly.
"These aren't just isolated instances where an officer was overzealous and crossed the line and searched in a situation where he or she shouldn't have," ACLU attorney Peter Bibring said.
Paul Johnson, a 10-year skid row resident, wrote in a declaration that was included in the ACLU's case that a person's parole status was "the first question they ask after asking your name."
The LAPD countered that officers searched a person on probation or parole only when there was reasonable suspicion of a crime — or when the person was caught for a violation such as littering or jaywalking.
But Pregerson disagreed with the LAPD's contention, concluding that ample evidence indicated that the Police Department had a policy "of searching skid row residents without knowledge of any search conditions imposed."
"The law does not allow such searches. Accordingly, the court finds that, even viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to defendants, they have admitted to an unconstitutional policy," Pregerson wrote in his opinion.
The LAPD had cited a recent U.S. Supreme Court case in which justices upheld the right of police agencies to search parolees without knowledge that they had committed a crime. Pregerson, however, said that in that ruling, the justices stated that such a search could occur only if police first knew the conditions of each individual's parole.
In a statement released Tuesday afternoon, Police Chief William J. Bratton defended the department.
"The streets of skid row are much safer today, thanks to the dedication of the men and women of Central Area," Bratton said in the statement. "The LAPD has a clear policy, based on constitutional requirements, on the rules and regulations relating to citizen stops, which are being followed. The department constantly trains officers and supervisors on those rules and regulations and will continue to do so."
Pregerson ordered the LAPD to comply with all state and federal laws — with another review of the injunction set for August.
The decision comes at a tough time for city officials, who have vowed to clean up the skid row area — long the city's center for homeless camping and drug dealing.
Downtown has seen in influx of high-end lofts, condos and retail business on streets long dominated by homelessness and drug dealing.
The LAPD has won wide praise from downtown merchants and residents for cracking down on crime and blight. Since last fall, the LAPD has made 4,166 felony arrests and 1,727 misdemeanor arrests. "The LAPD is saving lives by the work they are doing here," said Estela Lopez, executive director of the Central City East Assn., which represents businesses and merchants. "There's fewer people exposed to the violence, ensnared in daily drug markets and the inhumanity of the streets that exposes them to the elements."
It remains unclear to what degree arrests would decline as the LAPD complies with Pregerson's order.
"It reins in the use of probation and parole searches as just another authorization for warrantless police activity that would otherwise be governed by constitutional limits," said Gerald F. Uelman, a Santa Clara University law school professor.
James Hurley of the Homeless Health Care Center of Los Angeles' Harm Reduction program said he had seen a dramatic reduction in the number of people using the center's services. He said that people who used the center either had been sent to jail or were staying away from skid row.
"They still have nowhere to go," Hurley said, "and when they are released from custody or decide that it's safe to return, they will come right back into this community. We have created a much larger problem…. And they aren't creating more shelters. We are going to be right back in that situation when these people start to return." ..more.. by Cara Mia DiMassa and Richard Winton
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The unrepentant vigilante
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(.Research Papers
Last August she led the protests against paedophiles in Portsmouth. Many condemned her, but behind the mob fury lies a tale of personal misery. Euan Ferguson meets Katrina Kessell
2-4-2001 United Kingdom:
It's called rough music. 'Saucepans, frying-pans, pokers and tongs, marrow-bones and cleavers, bulls' horns, etc, beaten upon and sounded in ludicrous procession,' according to Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue in 1796; it's been with us for a long, long time, as a weapon - wielded most usually by the women of the community - to humiliate or scare a neighbour suspected of filthy morals. So nobody should, in all honesty, have affected shocked surprise, as if this were some new modern outrage when, for seven days last August, the women and children of the Paulsgrove estate in Portsmouth, led by 33-year-old Katrina Kessell, marched and shouted and swore and bayed for the blood of local paedophiles.
But the scenes were still fiercely ugly, in Paulsgrove and elsewhere, particularly to London commentators, of all political hues, who thought this kind of behaviour had been consigned to history along with buboes and ducking-stools. The condemnation was swift and righteous, and made more sustained by anger at the News of the World's 'name and shame' campaign, and the violent stupidity of the mobs it whipped up in the weeks following Sarah Payne's murder. Innocent families were hounded from their homes while convicted paedophiles went safely awol. A group in Gwent attacked a paediatrician by mistake. And right at the centre of it all, it seemed, was this spiky-haired Portsmouth harridan, self-appointed mouthpiece for the worst of the mobs, who became, last week, the first person to be convicted of public-order offences during that tawdry summer.
What might surprise us instead is the fact that Katrina Kessell possesses not a brutal manipulative cynicism but a distressing naivety. She is far more vulnerable and nuanced than the cuttings - with their talk of 'aliens' and 'monsters' among us - would suggest. She's wrong-headed and self-deluding, and not given to lengthy discussion of such abstract concepts as irony, principle or the Rule of Law, but she's still not the cardboard cut-out tricoteuse of stereotyping.
She's angry, for instance, at that News of the World campaign. 'I think they were wrong; they shouldn't have done it that way. I think it was all too cynical. And I don't think they checked everyone properly, which allowed mistakes, and damaged all of us.' She had been campaigning, she explained, for about a year before the paper's first 'outing', of convicted paedophile Victor Burnett, to have him removed from Paulsgrove. 'We'd been trying for a long time. Parents complained to police. People said things to Burnett. But their statements were just "noted" and nothing happened.
'Anyway, after the paper came out, other people saw his picture and it kicked off. I went down to the green that night with the rest. There were a lot of people there, just chatting. And I suppose I found myself being shoved up the front. Sometimes I have a big mouth, I'm not afraid to say what I want to say, and I knew about Burnett.' And so she became spokeswoman and leader, and so was born Residents Against Paedophiles - and seven nights of foul vigilantism.
Kessell accepts that it wasn't pretty. 'Yes, there can be something ugly about a mob.' And the use of the tiniest of children, chanting 'sex beast!' and 'hang him!'?
'Yes, I know, some of that was out of order; they didn't really know what a paedophile was. But they do now. And you're right, I couldn't control everything. Every protest is going to have hangers-on. We tried to tell some of the teenagers to calm down. But, look, how else do you get noticed? How else is anyone going to listen to a common person like me? Even the local papers weren't interested before, let alone the nationals. At least we were being listened to, and we got something done. Answer me this: if you were a paedophile coming out of jail now, and you were offered a place in Paulsgrove, would you take it? I thought not. This is now the safest estate in England.'
But at what cost? Kessell and her mother, Mavis Canizares, a blowsy fast-lipped blunderbuss of a woman who hardly lets her daughter get a word in, are adamant that no one was wrongly targeted by them; that the list of names of offenders, which they 'kept in our heads', was strictly checked. 'If a name came up we wouldn't do anything until we'd checked the library,' says Kessell. 'If a case went to court it would go in the papers; if it wasn't in the papers it wasn't proved.'
They're wrong, of course. At least four innocent families fled the estate, and at least one convicted paedophile went to ground. One man was targeted because he lived alone and often spoke of how much he loved his mother. A policeman's nose was broken; cars were torched; truly, the mob ruled.
Kessell appears honestly, naively, to believe this was nothing to do with her actions, and that she strove to stop the worst of it. She is also careful to distinguish between types of offence, distrusting the scatter-gun approach which brands anyone who has sex with an under-age girl as a paedophile; 'it's not paedophilia if they're given consent. I'm talking about the little ones. The ones who have no idea what's happening.'
Such as herself. She talks quietly, hesitantly, with her mother out of the room, of the drive behind her anger, her own sexual abuse at the ages of five and six by her paternal grandfather. 'I was convinced I was just getting extra affection and attention. And no, I still haven't dealt with it, and I don't think I ever will. How do you deal with that? I'll take it to the grave.'
Later, she was further abused after she was put into care by her mother. 'I had all of them, all on my own,' says Canizares defensively, 'and her and her brother were legging it off everywhere but I had three babies in the house so I was breaking the law if I went looking for them, so I went to the social services and asked how to cope and they couldn't help so I said fine, take them off my hands.' Did Kessell now, I asked, resent her mother for this? She shook her head. 'Not now, no. I've got children of my own, I know what it's like.' Five, in fact. The first was born when she was 16, after she was made pregnant while in care. Three more followed to a father who is now 'in a mental home. He fucked up on drugs'. The father of the youngest is back in his native Egypt.
It was into this story, and thousands like it, and not into the quiet terraces of London's lawmakers and pontificators, that we dropped the country's convicted paedophiles, as we drop its more violent murderers and rapists on release, only to condemn the residents when they reacted in time-honoured fashion. Katrina Kessell got a result. Wrongly, stupidly, illegally, and helped by some brutal manipulative cynicism from rich journalists, she got a result. Just an everyday story of British council-house folk, from the First World War to 2001 and counting; of rough music, and rough justice. ..more.. by Guardian Unlimited
2-4-2001 United Kingdom:
It's called rough music. 'Saucepans, frying-pans, pokers and tongs, marrow-bones and cleavers, bulls' horns, etc, beaten upon and sounded in ludicrous procession,' according to Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue in 1796; it's been with us for a long, long time, as a weapon - wielded most usually by the women of the community - to humiliate or scare a neighbour suspected of filthy morals. So nobody should, in all honesty, have affected shocked surprise, as if this were some new modern outrage when, for seven days last August, the women and children of the Paulsgrove estate in Portsmouth, led by 33-year-old Katrina Kessell, marched and shouted and swore and bayed for the blood of local paedophiles.
But the scenes were still fiercely ugly, in Paulsgrove and elsewhere, particularly to London commentators, of all political hues, who thought this kind of behaviour had been consigned to history along with buboes and ducking-stools. The condemnation was swift and righteous, and made more sustained by anger at the News of the World's 'name and shame' campaign, and the violent stupidity of the mobs it whipped up in the weeks following Sarah Payne's murder. Innocent families were hounded from their homes while convicted paedophiles went safely awol. A group in Gwent attacked a paediatrician by mistake. And right at the centre of it all, it seemed, was this spiky-haired Portsmouth harridan, self-appointed mouthpiece for the worst of the mobs, who became, last week, the first person to be convicted of public-order offences during that tawdry summer.
What might surprise us instead is the fact that Katrina Kessell possesses not a brutal manipulative cynicism but a distressing naivety. She is far more vulnerable and nuanced than the cuttings - with their talk of 'aliens' and 'monsters' among us - would suggest. She's wrong-headed and self-deluding, and not given to lengthy discussion of such abstract concepts as irony, principle or the Rule of Law, but she's still not the cardboard cut-out tricoteuse of stereotyping.
She's angry, for instance, at that News of the World campaign. 'I think they were wrong; they shouldn't have done it that way. I think it was all too cynical. And I don't think they checked everyone properly, which allowed mistakes, and damaged all of us.' She had been campaigning, she explained, for about a year before the paper's first 'outing', of convicted paedophile Victor Burnett, to have him removed from Paulsgrove. 'We'd been trying for a long time. Parents complained to police. People said things to Burnett. But their statements were just "noted" and nothing happened.
'Anyway, after the paper came out, other people saw his picture and it kicked off. I went down to the green that night with the rest. There were a lot of people there, just chatting. And I suppose I found myself being shoved up the front. Sometimes I have a big mouth, I'm not afraid to say what I want to say, and I knew about Burnett.' And so she became spokeswoman and leader, and so was born Residents Against Paedophiles - and seven nights of foul vigilantism.
Kessell accepts that it wasn't pretty. 'Yes, there can be something ugly about a mob.' And the use of the tiniest of children, chanting 'sex beast!' and 'hang him!'?
'Yes, I know, some of that was out of order; they didn't really know what a paedophile was. But they do now. And you're right, I couldn't control everything. Every protest is going to have hangers-on. We tried to tell some of the teenagers to calm down. But, look, how else do you get noticed? How else is anyone going to listen to a common person like me? Even the local papers weren't interested before, let alone the nationals. At least we were being listened to, and we got something done. Answer me this: if you were a paedophile coming out of jail now, and you were offered a place in Paulsgrove, would you take it? I thought not. This is now the safest estate in England.'
But at what cost? Kessell and her mother, Mavis Canizares, a blowsy fast-lipped blunderbuss of a woman who hardly lets her daughter get a word in, are adamant that no one was wrongly targeted by them; that the list of names of offenders, which they 'kept in our heads', was strictly checked. 'If a name came up we wouldn't do anything until we'd checked the library,' says Kessell. 'If a case went to court it would go in the papers; if it wasn't in the papers it wasn't proved.'
They're wrong, of course. At least four innocent families fled the estate, and at least one convicted paedophile went to ground. One man was targeted because he lived alone and often spoke of how much he loved his mother. A policeman's nose was broken; cars were torched; truly, the mob ruled.
Kessell appears honestly, naively, to believe this was nothing to do with her actions, and that she strove to stop the worst of it. She is also careful to distinguish between types of offence, distrusting the scatter-gun approach which brands anyone who has sex with an under-age girl as a paedophile; 'it's not paedophilia if they're given consent. I'm talking about the little ones. The ones who have no idea what's happening.'
Such as herself. She talks quietly, hesitantly, with her mother out of the room, of the drive behind her anger, her own sexual abuse at the ages of five and six by her paternal grandfather. 'I was convinced I was just getting extra affection and attention. And no, I still haven't dealt with it, and I don't think I ever will. How do you deal with that? I'll take it to the grave.'
Later, she was further abused after she was put into care by her mother. 'I had all of them, all on my own,' says Canizares defensively, 'and her and her brother were legging it off everywhere but I had three babies in the house so I was breaking the law if I went looking for them, so I went to the social services and asked how to cope and they couldn't help so I said fine, take them off my hands.' Did Kessell now, I asked, resent her mother for this? She shook her head. 'Not now, no. I've got children of my own, I know what it's like.' Five, in fact. The first was born when she was 16, after she was made pregnant while in care. Three more followed to a father who is now 'in a mental home. He fucked up on drugs'. The father of the youngest is back in his native Egypt.
It was into this story, and thousands like it, and not into the quiet terraces of London's lawmakers and pontificators, that we dropped the country's convicted paedophiles, as we drop its more violent murderers and rapists on release, only to condemn the residents when they reacted in time-honoured fashion. Katrina Kessell got a result. Wrongly, stupidly, illegally, and helped by some brutal manipulative cynicism from rich journalists, she got a result. Just an everyday story of British council-house folk, from the First World War to 2001 and counting; of rough music, and rough justice. ..more.. by Guardian Unlimited
Vigilantism as community social control: Developing a quantitative criminological model
Article Tags:
(.Research Papers
Abstract:
This paper presents the first systematic quantitative examination of participation in vigilante behavior. Data collected as part of a larger study of Jewish settler violence in the Israeli-controlled West Bank region are used to analyze the factors that lead members of a community to become involved in vigilante violence. Using logistic regression techniques it is found that settlers who fulfill requirements of the vigilante role and those located in outposts where the demand for vigilantes is greatest are most likely to be involved in vigilante activities. In conclusion, it is argued that these findings provide strong support for a criminological model of vigilante behavior that emphasizes the role of the vigilante as an agent of community social control. ..more.. by David Weisburd, School of Criminal Justice, Rutgers University, 07102 Newark, New Jersey
This paper presents the first systematic quantitative examination of participation in vigilante behavior. Data collected as part of a larger study of Jewish settler violence in the Israeli-controlled West Bank region are used to analyze the factors that lead members of a community to become involved in vigilante violence. Using logistic regression techniques it is found that settlers who fulfill requirements of the vigilante role and those located in outposts where the demand for vigilantes is greatest are most likely to be involved in vigilante activities. In conclusion, it is argued that these findings provide strong support for a criminological model of vigilante behavior that emphasizes the role of the vigilante as an agent of community social control. ..more.. by David Weisburd, School of Criminal Justice, Rutgers University, 07102 Newark, New Jersey
Never Going Home: Does It Make Us Safer? Does It Make Sense? Sex Offenders, Residency Restrictions, and Reforming Risk Management Law
Article Tags:
(.Research Papers
This article analyzes whether State laws that place residency restrictions on sex offenders are both constitutional and effective at reducing sex offender risk.
Abstract:
The analysis indicates that State residence restrictions on sex offenders have statistical, political, and constitutional problems. The author argues that uniformly applied residency restriction laws will most likely fail judicial scrutiny and are ineffective at preventing sex offender recidivism. Three main concerns with residency restrictions are identified as: (1) the laws are based on two flawed premises--that sex offenders target unknown children in their neighborhood and that sex offenders reoffend at higher rates than other felons; (2) they are a heavy tax burden on the government; and (3) they provoke two real estate crises--one in the already undesirable communities where sex offenders often end up living and one for low-income sex offenders themselves.
Best practice methods for managing sex offender risk in the community are examined, including the use of risk assessment criteria to match post-release restrictions to prior acts and future risk; indeterminate sentencing; civil commitments; and sex offender reentry courts. The author proposes that a comprehensive risk management system that relies on a mix of methods and focuses most restrictions on the highest risk sex offenders is the most efficient and effective means of sex offender community management.
During the past 5 years, 13 States have passed laws forbidding sex offenders from living within a certain distance of schools, parks, day care centers, and “places where children normally congregate.” Such laws even hold a sex offender in violation if at any point in the future one of the restricted uses, such as a day care center, were to be built within the proscribed number of feet from their current residence. ..more.. by Caleb Durling, published in: Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology Volume:97 Issue:1 Dated:Fall 2006 Pages:317 to 364
Abstract:
The analysis indicates that State residence restrictions on sex offenders have statistical, political, and constitutional problems. The author argues that uniformly applied residency restriction laws will most likely fail judicial scrutiny and are ineffective at preventing sex offender recidivism. Three main concerns with residency restrictions are identified as: (1) the laws are based on two flawed premises--that sex offenders target unknown children in their neighborhood and that sex offenders reoffend at higher rates than other felons; (2) they are a heavy tax burden on the government; and (3) they provoke two real estate crises--one in the already undesirable communities where sex offenders often end up living and one for low-income sex offenders themselves.
Best practice methods for managing sex offender risk in the community are examined, including the use of risk assessment criteria to match post-release restrictions to prior acts and future risk; indeterminate sentencing; civil commitments; and sex offender reentry courts. The author proposes that a comprehensive risk management system that relies on a mix of methods and focuses most restrictions on the highest risk sex offenders is the most efficient and effective means of sex offender community management.
During the past 5 years, 13 States have passed laws forbidding sex offenders from living within a certain distance of schools, parks, day care centers, and “places where children normally congregate.” Such laws even hold a sex offender in violation if at any point in the future one of the restricted uses, such as a day care center, were to be built within the proscribed number of feet from their current residence. ..more.. by Caleb Durling, published in: Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology Volume:97 Issue:1 Dated:Fall 2006 Pages:317 to 364
Internet's not the enemy; it's our choice to misuse it
Article Tags:
(.Research Papers
9-5-2000 Oregon:
Perhaps they said this when the telegraph was invented; surely they said it about the telephone: It saves relationships. No, wait -- it ruins relationships. No, no -- it brings families together. Or it destroys them.
The head spins.
Not long ago a study was released by a professor at Stanford who claimed his research indicated the Internet made people anti-social.
Nonsense, I wrote soon after: the Internet fostered relationships, helped people find one another and made it easier to keep in touch.
A lot of readers responded. But these weren't philosophical replies, or measured opinions. No, people sent accounts of their own experiences with the Web-as-matchmaker, or the Web-as-home-wrecker.
Three times as many people wrote to praise the Net as to condemn it. Some said friendships had been sustained or strengthened because of the Web.
John Phillips moved to the countryside a while back. "Were it not for e-mail," he wrote, "I would have fewer friends. It is too hard to write a letter and lick a stamp and go to the mailbox in the rain. . . . Internet communication is wonderful. I completely disagree with anyone who says it ruins relationships and isolates."
Tom Clardy agreed, and shared his plans to allow friends to vicariously enjoy his upcoming cross-country vacation, on which he'll be "recording highlights of my journey with my digital camera, downloading to a laptop, composing some prose and poetic descriptions of unusual faces and places, to share, via the Web, with interested 'cyberfriends' back in Portland and across the country."
It also brings families closer. A man who asked to remain anonymous sent copies of a recent e-mail exchange with his oldest daughter, with whom he had lost touch until she found his e-mail address on the Internet.
"The Internet makes it easier to start over," he wrote.
Mary Morrell wrote, "Were it not for the Internet I would have found it much more difficult, if not nigh onto impossible, to arrange a birthday party and family reunion for my soon-to-be-80-year-old mother. She lives in Cornelius and I in Watford, England."
Mary also reads The Oregonian over the Net, to keep in touch with her home state.
I heard from people who'd met their mates online in a Christian chat room, a fly-fishing forum and a poetry newsgroup.
Lidiya Cornelius wrote, "I found my husband Darrell by Internet. We connected by e-mail (for) about one year. I arrived from the Ukraine in the Oregon. . . . I live here eight month. Darrell and I married last year in sunny Las Vegas. We are very happy."
A woman named Susan wrote: "Just a week ago today, I looked up an old love on the Internet and e-mailed him. It had been 30 years since we corresponded. . . . I am overjoyed to report that he wrote back, and in this past week we have been exchanging heartfelt e-mails that exceed my expectations. We clearly have found each other again, and all the love and closeness has been renewed. . . . This would not have been possible without the Internet, because I had no idea where he was." On the Net, "I found him within five minutes."
But one in four responses brought sad stories, stories that have become familiar in the last few years, but which still cause enormous pain when your family is affected.
"The Internet . . . has proven very destructive to my marriage," wrote one woman whose husband has become, she says, addicted to the Web. "Our 10-year-old son has stated his father's life is spent at the computer. Family members visit and try to talk to my husband, with him never leaving the computer. People who speak to him on the phone know that he is typing even while conversing."
A metro-area man wrote: "I have worked with computers over 20 years, and would never dream of turning off the connection. However . . . there are problems, and they are serious. I have a co-worker who is in the midst of a divorce due to his wife's online affair with a chat-room buddy. I only found out this morning that my wife of almost 14 years is doing the same. The ability to transfer emotions from face-to-face relationships to a fantasized or embellished reality is all too easy. The Internet is like a buzz saw. It can do as much damage as good."
His point is made even better by Steve, who was in a confessional mood when he wrote.
Steve placed a message for his old high school sweetheart on several Internet sites; within two weeks she responded. Now both were divorcing, and Steve was leaving Oregon to be with his old flame.
"You have heard that cliche, 'Be careful what you wish for,' " he wrote. "Well, in today's high-tech age I would add, be careful who you search for. My search might have been fate or destiny. But it destroyed a 31-year-old marriage. Is it the computer's fault? I don't think so. It is like any new invention, it is all in how you use it."
Tom Clardy quoted Marshall McLuhan: "Electronic circuitry is the extension of the central nervous system."
Readers' stories make that point: The Internet is just a brand new way to make the same old choices. ..more.. by Margie Boulé
Perhaps they said this when the telegraph was invented; surely they said it about the telephone: It saves relationships. No, wait -- it ruins relationships. No, no -- it brings families together. Or it destroys them.
The head spins.
Not long ago a study was released by a professor at Stanford who claimed his research indicated the Internet made people anti-social.
Nonsense, I wrote soon after: the Internet fostered relationships, helped people find one another and made it easier to keep in touch.
A lot of readers responded. But these weren't philosophical replies, or measured opinions. No, people sent accounts of their own experiences with the Web-as-matchmaker, or the Web-as-home-wrecker.
Three times as many people wrote to praise the Net as to condemn it. Some said friendships had been sustained or strengthened because of the Web.
John Phillips moved to the countryside a while back. "Were it not for e-mail," he wrote, "I would have fewer friends. It is too hard to write a letter and lick a stamp and go to the mailbox in the rain. . . . Internet communication is wonderful. I completely disagree with anyone who says it ruins relationships and isolates."
Tom Clardy agreed, and shared his plans to allow friends to vicariously enjoy his upcoming cross-country vacation, on which he'll be "recording highlights of my journey with my digital camera, downloading to a laptop, composing some prose and poetic descriptions of unusual faces and places, to share, via the Web, with interested 'cyberfriends' back in Portland and across the country."
It also brings families closer. A man who asked to remain anonymous sent copies of a recent e-mail exchange with his oldest daughter, with whom he had lost touch until she found his e-mail address on the Internet.
"The Internet makes it easier to start over," he wrote.
Mary Morrell wrote, "Were it not for the Internet I would have found it much more difficult, if not nigh onto impossible, to arrange a birthday party and family reunion for my soon-to-be-80-year-old mother. She lives in Cornelius and I in Watford, England."
Mary also reads The Oregonian over the Net, to keep in touch with her home state.
I heard from people who'd met their mates online in a Christian chat room, a fly-fishing forum and a poetry newsgroup.
Lidiya Cornelius wrote, "I found my husband Darrell by Internet. We connected by e-mail (for) about one year. I arrived from the Ukraine in the Oregon. . . . I live here eight month. Darrell and I married last year in sunny Las Vegas. We are very happy."
A woman named Susan wrote: "Just a week ago today, I looked up an old love on the Internet and e-mailed him. It had been 30 years since we corresponded. . . . I am overjoyed to report that he wrote back, and in this past week we have been exchanging heartfelt e-mails that exceed my expectations. We clearly have found each other again, and all the love and closeness has been renewed. . . . This would not have been possible without the Internet, because I had no idea where he was." On the Net, "I found him within five minutes."
But one in four responses brought sad stories, stories that have become familiar in the last few years, but which still cause enormous pain when your family is affected.
"The Internet . . . has proven very destructive to my marriage," wrote one woman whose husband has become, she says, addicted to the Web. "Our 10-year-old son has stated his father's life is spent at the computer. Family members visit and try to talk to my husband, with him never leaving the computer. People who speak to him on the phone know that he is typing even while conversing."
A metro-area man wrote: "I have worked with computers over 20 years, and would never dream of turning off the connection. However . . . there are problems, and they are serious. I have a co-worker who is in the midst of a divorce due to his wife's online affair with a chat-room buddy. I only found out this morning that my wife of almost 14 years is doing the same. The ability to transfer emotions from face-to-face relationships to a fantasized or embellished reality is all too easy. The Internet is like a buzz saw. It can do as much damage as good."
His point is made even better by Steve, who was in a confessional mood when he wrote.
Steve placed a message for his old high school sweetheart on several Internet sites; within two weeks she responded. Now both were divorcing, and Steve was leaving Oregon to be with his old flame.
"You have heard that cliche, 'Be careful what you wish for,' " he wrote. "Well, in today's high-tech age I would add, be careful who you search for. My search might have been fate or destiny. But it destroyed a 31-year-old marriage. Is it the computer's fault? I don't think so. It is like any new invention, it is all in how you use it."
Tom Clardy quoted Marshall McLuhan: "Electronic circuitry is the extension of the central nervous system."
Readers' stories make that point: The Internet is just a brand new way to make the same old choices. ..more.. by Margie Boulé
Paedophilia: plague or panic?
Article Tags:
(.Research Papers
Abstract:
A punitive socio-legal policy towards sex offenders against minors has been driven by public demand. The perception of an appallingly high incidence of serious abuse by incorrigible men has been encouraged by press sensationalism, but criminal statistics and recidivism studies fail to confirm either an escalation of sex crimes against minors or the inevitability of recidivism. Retrospective victim studies have given alarming indications of the prevalence of abuse, but they have often included trivial incidents and the experiences of sexually active adolescents that do not involve real paedophiles.
Clinical observation demonstrates the devastating effects of child sex abuse, but community surveys suggest that minor incidents have only minor effects, except when accompanied by other stresses. Statutory changes and prison statistics reveal the increasing punitiveness of criminal justice. Exaggerated perception of risk produces undue restrictions on children's freedom and on their interactions with teachers and other adults. Assumptions of incorrigibility impede the rehabilitation of offenders through vigilantism, stigmatization and barriers to employment. This amplifies deviance and does not protect children.
Keywords: PAEDOPHILIA; SEX; ABUSE; SOCIO-LEGAL; POLICY ..more.. by D. West
A punitive socio-legal policy towards sex offenders against minors has been driven by public demand. The perception of an appallingly high incidence of serious abuse by incorrigible men has been encouraged by press sensationalism, but criminal statistics and recidivism studies fail to confirm either an escalation of sex crimes against minors or the inevitability of recidivism. Retrospective victim studies have given alarming indications of the prevalence of abuse, but they have often included trivial incidents and the experiences of sexually active adolescents that do not involve real paedophiles.
Clinical observation demonstrates the devastating effects of child sex abuse, but community surveys suggest that minor incidents have only minor effects, except when accompanied by other stresses. Statutory changes and prison statistics reveal the increasing punitiveness of criminal justice. Exaggerated perception of risk produces undue restrictions on children's freedom and on their interactions with teachers and other adults. Assumptions of incorrigibility impede the rehabilitation of offenders through vigilantism, stigmatization and barriers to employment. This amplifies deviance and does not protect children.
Keywords: PAEDOPHILIA; SEX; ABUSE; SOCIO-LEGAL; POLICY ..more.. by D. West
The Effect of Megan’s Law on Sex Offender Reintegration
Article Tags:
(.Research Papers
Abstract:
The purpose of this study is to better understand the positive and negative, intended and unintended, consequences of community notification on sex offenders’ rehabilitation and reintegration. A sample of 183 convicted male sex offenders from Florida completed the survey. Overall, about one third of participants had experienced dire events, such as the loss of a job or home, threats or harassment, or property damage. Physical assaultwas a relatively rare occurrence. The majority identified negative effects, such as stress, isolation, loss of relationships, fear, shame, embarrassment, and hopelessness. Some participants noted positive effects of Megan’s Law, including motivation to prevent reoffense and increased honesty with friends and family. Few sex offenders believed that communities are safer because of Megan’s Law, and more than half reported that the information posted about them on Florida’s Internet registry was incorrect. Implications for practice and policy are discussed.
Key Words: sex offender • community notification • registration • Megan’s Law • offender reintegration • offender rehabilitation ..more.. by Jill S. Levenson, Lynn University and Leo P. Cotter, The S.H.A.R.E. Program
The purpose of this study is to better understand the positive and negative, intended and unintended, consequences of community notification on sex offenders’ rehabilitation and reintegration. A sample of 183 convicted male sex offenders from Florida completed the survey. Overall, about one third of participants had experienced dire events, such as the loss of a job or home, threats or harassment, or property damage. Physical assaultwas a relatively rare occurrence. The majority identified negative effects, such as stress, isolation, loss of relationships, fear, shame, embarrassment, and hopelessness. Some participants noted positive effects of Megan’s Law, including motivation to prevent reoffense and increased honesty with friends and family. Few sex offenders believed that communities are safer because of Megan’s Law, and more than half reported that the information posted about them on Florida’s Internet registry was incorrect. Implications for practice and policy are discussed.
Key Words: sex offender • community notification • registration • Megan’s Law • offender reintegration • offender rehabilitation ..more.. by Jill S. Levenson, Lynn University and Leo P. Cotter, The S.H.A.R.E. Program
Managing Unacceptable Risk: Sex Offenders, Community Response, and Social Policy in the United States and Canada
Article Tags:
(.Research Papers
Abstract:
This article compares the community protection–risk management model for the control of sex offenders with the clinical and justice models that preceded it and with a restorative justice alternative based on the principle of community reintegration. The author discusses how this community protection–risk management model reflects the new penology as well as the fusion of panopticism and synopticism. The author also discusses the model’s actual and potential social costs. He concludes with a brief look at circles of support and accountability. This Canadian approach involves setting up support circles of volunteers who enter into a covenant with persons designated as high-risk sex offenders to help them both to integrate into the community and to reduce the likelihood that they will reoffend. ..more.. by Michael G. Petrunik, Criminology Department, University of Ottawa, Canada
This article compares the community protection–risk management model for the control of sex offenders with the clinical and justice models that preceded it and with a restorative justice alternative based on the principle of community reintegration. The author discusses how this community protection–risk management model reflects the new penology as well as the fusion of panopticism and synopticism. The author also discusses the model’s actual and potential social costs. He concludes with a brief look at circles of support and accountability. This Canadian approach involves setting up support circles of volunteers who enter into a covenant with persons designated as high-risk sex offenders to help them both to integrate into the community and to reduce the likelihood that they will reoffend. ..more.. by Michael G. Petrunik, Criminology Department, University of Ottawa, Canada
Paedophiles in the community: Inter-agency conflict, news leaks and the local press
Article Tags:
(.Research Papers
Abstract:
This article explores the leaking of confidential information about secret Home Office plans to house convicted paedophiles within a local community (albeit inside a prison). It argues that a politics of paedophilia has emerged in which inter-agency consensus on the issue of ‘what to do’ with high-profile sex offenders has broken down. Accordingly, the article situates newspaper ‘outing’ of paedophiles in the community in relation to vigilante journalism and leaked information from official agencies. The article then presents research findings from a case study of news events set in train following a whistle-blowing reaction by Prison Officers’ Association officials to Home Office plans. Drawing from a corpus of 10 interviews with journalists and key protagonists in the story, the article discusses both the dynamics of whistle blowing about paedophiles and also what happens after the whistle has blown.
Key Words: inter-agency conflict • local press • news leaks • paedophiles in the community • vigilante journalism ..more.. by Simon Cross, University of Lincoln, UK,
This article explores the leaking of confidential information about secret Home Office plans to house convicted paedophiles within a local community (albeit inside a prison). It argues that a politics of paedophilia has emerged in which inter-agency consensus on the issue of ‘what to do’ with high-profile sex offenders has broken down. Accordingly, the article situates newspaper ‘outing’ of paedophiles in the community in relation to vigilante journalism and leaked information from official agencies. The article then presents research findings from a case study of news events set in train following a whistle-blowing reaction by Prison Officers’ Association officials to Home Office plans. Drawing from a corpus of 10 interviews with journalists and key protagonists in the story, the article discusses both the dynamics of whistle blowing about paedophiles and also what happens after the whistle has blown.
Key Words: inter-agency conflict • local press • news leaks • paedophiles in the community • vigilante journalism ..more.. by Simon Cross, University of Lincoln, UK,
When Due Process Is of No Consequence: Moral Mandates and Presumed Defendant Guilt or Innocence
Article Tags:
(.Research Papers
Abstract:
Most current theories of justice are focused on how social identity, instrumental concerns, or both shape how people decide whether something is fair or unfair. A neglected consideration is that people may also be concerned with justice because they strive to be authentic moral beings by acting on the basis of values closely tied to their personal identity. We posited that self-expressive moral positions or stands (moral mandates) are important determinants of how people reason about fairness. Supporting this notion, we found that (a) people see some trial outcomes in morally mandated terms, e.g., that the guilty must be convicted and punished, and the innocent must not; (b) convicting a defendant believed to be innocent or acquitting a defendant believed to be guilty were seen as unfair, regardless of whether the verdict was achieved by a fair or unfair investigation and trial (Study 1); and (c) a guilty defendant''s death was seen as equally fair, and an innocent defendant''s death was equally unfair, if it was achieved by a trial that led to the death penalty or by vigilantism (Study 2). Procedural propriety only mattered when defendant guilt was ambiguous.
Key Words: moral mandates - fairness - procedural justice - due process - attitudes ..more.. by Linda J. Skitka and David A. Houston, Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
Most current theories of justice are focused on how social identity, instrumental concerns, or both shape how people decide whether something is fair or unfair. A neglected consideration is that people may also be concerned with justice because they strive to be authentic moral beings by acting on the basis of values closely tied to their personal identity. We posited that self-expressive moral positions or stands (moral mandates) are important determinants of how people reason about fairness. Supporting this notion, we found that (a) people see some trial outcomes in morally mandated terms, e.g., that the guilty must be convicted and punished, and the innocent must not; (b) convicting a defendant believed to be innocent or acquitting a defendant believed to be guilty were seen as unfair, regardless of whether the verdict was achieved by a fair or unfair investigation and trial (Study 1); and (c) a guilty defendant''s death was seen as equally fair, and an innocent defendant''s death was equally unfair, if it was achieved by a trial that led to the death penalty or by vigilantism (Study 2). Procedural propriety only mattered when defendant guilt was ambiguous.
Key Words: moral mandates - fairness - procedural justice - due process - attitudes ..more.. by Linda J. Skitka and David A. Houston, Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
Mental Health Professionals' Perspectives on Sex Offender Registry Web Sites
Article Tags:
(.Research Papers
Abstract:
In an attempt to reduce the occurrence of childhood sexual abuse, some state governments have passed legislation allowing the public access to sex offender registries. One of the ways this access is granted is through the world wide web (web). There is, however, limited research on the impact this type of community notification has on actual rates of child sexual abuse. This study investigates the opinions of 133 mental health professionals who work with sex offenders regarding the implications of public sex offender registry web sites. Over 80% of the participants in this study do not believe that sex offender registry sites will affect the number of children who are sexually abused each year. Seventy percent of the respondents also believe that a listing of sex offenders on the web will create a false sense of security for parents, and over 60% of the respondents believe that sex offenders who are listed on these sites will become targets of vigilantism in their community. Implications for future research are provided.
Key Words: sex offender - registry - world wide web - child - sexual abuse ..more.. by Alvin Malesky and Jeanmarie Keim, 100 Ball Education, Counseling, Educational Psychology and Research, The University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee, 38152
In an attempt to reduce the occurrence of childhood sexual abuse, some state governments have passed legislation allowing the public access to sex offender registries. One of the ways this access is granted is through the world wide web (web). There is, however, limited research on the impact this type of community notification has on actual rates of child sexual abuse. This study investigates the opinions of 133 mental health professionals who work with sex offenders regarding the implications of public sex offender registry web sites. Over 80% of the participants in this study do not believe that sex offender registry sites will affect the number of children who are sexually abused each year. Seventy percent of the respondents also believe that a listing of sex offenders on the web will create a false sense of security for parents, and over 60% of the respondents believe that sex offenders who are listed on these sites will become targets of vigilantism in their community. Implications for future research are provided.
Key Words: sex offender - registry - world wide web - child - sexual abuse ..more.. by Alvin Malesky and Jeanmarie Keim, 100 Ball Education, Counseling, Educational Psychology and Research, The University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee, 38152
A Vigilante Model of Justice: Revenge, Reconciliation, Forgiveness, and Avoidance
Article Tags:
(.Research Papers
Abstract:
Once a working relationship is damaged through an act of injustice, how do the victim and offender repair their relationship? What causes the victim to let go of the anger and resentment and then reconcile with the offender? We propose a theory that the likelihood of forgiveness and reconciliation is greatly enhanced, and revenge and avoidance greatly decreased, if justice is first served. That is, forgiveness follows justice; without justice, forgiveness is much less likely. Justice may be served one of three ways: (1) by the victim evening the score; (2) by the organization punishing the offender; or (3) by the offender repenting. We recommend that managers establish a procedurally just climate so that victims of offense seek distributive justice through formal channels rather than seeking it themselves through revenge.
Keywords organizational justice - revenge - forgiveness - vigilantism ..more.. by Thomas M. Tripp (Washington State University Vancouver, 14204 NE Salmon Creek Avenue, Vancouver, WA 98686, USA), Robert J. Bies (McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA), and Karl Aquino (Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada, V6T 1Z2)
Once a working relationship is damaged through an act of injustice, how do the victim and offender repair their relationship? What causes the victim to let go of the anger and resentment and then reconcile with the offender? We propose a theory that the likelihood of forgiveness and reconciliation is greatly enhanced, and revenge and avoidance greatly decreased, if justice is first served. That is, forgiveness follows justice; without justice, forgiveness is much less likely. Justice may be served one of three ways: (1) by the victim evening the score; (2) by the organization punishing the offender; or (3) by the offender repenting. We recommend that managers establish a procedurally just climate so that victims of offense seek distributive justice through formal channels rather than seeking it themselves through revenge.
Keywords organizational justice - revenge - forgiveness - vigilantism ..more.. by Thomas M. Tripp (Washington State University Vancouver, 14204 NE Salmon Creek Avenue, Vancouver, WA 98686, USA), Robert J. Bies (McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA), and Karl Aquino (Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada, V6T 1Z2)
Vigilantism as community social control: Developing a quantitative criminological model
Article Tags:
(.Research Papers
Abstract:
This paper presents the first systematic quantitative examination of participation in vigilante behavior. Data collected as part of a larger study of Jewish settler violence in the Israeli-controlled West Bank region are used to analyze the factors that lead members of a community to become involved in vigilante violence. Using logistic regression techniques it is found that settlers who fulfill requirements of the vigilante role and those located in outposts where the demand for vigilantes is greatest are most likely to be involved in vigilante activities. In conclusion, it is argued that these findings provide strong support for a criminological model of vigilante behavior that emphasizes the role of the vigilante as an agent of community social control.
Key words vigilantism - criminal social control - social control - logit regression - West Bank Jewish settlers ..more.. by David Weisburd, School of Criminal Justice, Rutgers University, 07102 Newark, New Jersey
This paper presents the first systematic quantitative examination of participation in vigilante behavior. Data collected as part of a larger study of Jewish settler violence in the Israeli-controlled West Bank region are used to analyze the factors that lead members of a community to become involved in vigilante violence. Using logistic regression techniques it is found that settlers who fulfill requirements of the vigilante role and those located in outposts where the demand for vigilantes is greatest are most likely to be involved in vigilante activities. In conclusion, it is argued that these findings provide strong support for a criminological model of vigilante behavior that emphasizes the role of the vigilante as an agent of community social control.
Key words vigilantism - criminal social control - social control - logit regression - West Bank Jewish settlers ..more.. by David Weisburd, School of Criminal Justice, Rutgers University, 07102 Newark, New Jersey
Posting of Sex Offender Registries on Web Sets Off Both Praise and Criticism
Article Tags:
(.Research Papers
5-22-2000 National:
Four years after Congress began requiring states to maintain sex offender registries to track the whereabouts of criminals once they leave prison, states around the country are now going a step further, posting that information, along with photographs and sordid details of crimes, on Web pages accessible to anyone with a computer and a modem.
Since 1996, 21 states, mostly in the South and the Midwest, have put the registries on the Internet. Several others, including New York, Maryland and Wisconsin, are planning to begin sex offender Web sites of their own in the next few months. New Jersey's Legislature is now considering a bill that would require the state police to post its sex offender registry online.
''It's the wave; everyone's doing it now,'' said Scott Matson, a research associate with the Center for Sex Offender Management, established by the United States Justice Department in 1997 to train law enforcement officials.
Proponents of the trend, including many state officials, say expanding community notification to the Internet is a valuable and relatively simple way to disseminate widely information on dangerous sex offenders.
Critics say online registries, while popular with the public, are a ''quick fix'' to a complex issue and could stigmatize and victimize marginal offenders and ultimately produce more sex crimes than they prevent.
''They don't tell you how to protect yourself and your children; they don't give the degree of risk this person poses to you or not,'' said David A. D'Amora, the director of a treatment center for sexual abusers in Middletown, Conn., and a national consultant to sex abuse treatment centers. ''If you're going to do any type of registration, then it's really incumbent on the system to go out and educate the community. Just throwing a bunch of things up on a screen is like throwing gasoline on a fire.''
Notification laws have long generated intense reactions from those who believe that they help protect communities from sexual predators and from others who contend that they needlessly stigmatize marginal offenders and keep the most dangerous offenders from getting help.
California, home to about 70,000 registered sexual offenders -- more than any other state -- started the first sex offender registry in 1947. Most other states have followed suit since 1994, when Congress enacted a law, known as the Wetterling Act, to force state officials to create registries of offenders and track their whereabouts.
Two years later, Congress added an amendment, modeled after Megan's Law in New Jersey, named after 7-year-old Megan Kanka of Hamilton Township, N.J., who was raped and killed in 1994 by a twice-convicted pedophile who had quietly moved into the neighborhood. The law forced states to notify communities when sex offenders moved in.
Before there were online sex offender registries, anyone wanting information on specific offenders had to request it from local or state police agencies. That is still the method in New York and California.
In New York, where about 10,000 offenders are registered, people can get information on specific felons by calling a toll number, which costs 50 cents, and supplying an offender's last name, date of birth or ZIP code, for instance. New York State's Criminal Justice Services Division is planning to start its own sex offenders Web site next month. Only data on the most violent criminals, including juveniles, convicted after January 1996 will be posted online.
California's huge database is made available to local police departments on compact disks. To get information on offenders, residents must give their names, allowing the police to track who requests information about whom.
Proponents say moving those sex offender registries online is consistent with the intent of the law that created them, making it easier to make the public aware of sex offenders in their communities.
''These changes should make sex offenders think twice before offending again in Wisconsin and that should certainly make this state a safer place,'' Gov. Tommy G. Thompson said last month when he announced the state's plan to post its registry online.
But many experts say no one has adequately thought through the consequences of the online registries. One worry is that the registries have the potential to lead to retributive violence against offenders. As notification laws become ubiquitous, so have incidents in which ex-offenders were harassed by neighbors, evicted by landlords, fired from new jobs or beaten by revenge-minded mobs.
*Last month, two men beat a 59-year-old convicted child molester with a baseball bat in North Fort Myers, Fla., and threatened to kill him if he came near any neighborhood children.
*In September 1999, four men in Dallas severely beat a 27-year-old retarded man whose address, a group home for the disabled, was erroneously listed on Texas's Internet registry as the residence of a child molester.
*In July 1998, a 23-year-old Linden, N.J., man, reacting to a flier distributed by the police, fired five bullets from a .45-caliber handgun into the house of a recently paroled rapist. No one was injured; the suspect was charged with aggravated assault.
*That same month, neighbors in a trailer park in Washington State burned down a vacant mobile home days before a sex offender was scheduled to move into it, after six years in prison. In 1993, vigilantes in Lynnwood, Wash., burned down the home of a twice-convicted sex offender, Joseph Gallardo, after the police notified neighbors of his release. The advent of Internet-based criminal registries has led to a broader debate over how to increase public safety.
Making identities of offenders available to anyone browsing the Net significantly increases the likelihood of further attacks, many experts say.
Roxanne Lieb, director of the Washington State Institute for Public Policy, said the debate over online registries highlighted two conflicting trends in how law enforcement agencies operate.
On one hand, she said, is ''the desire to have things be easier and easier to access,'' and on the other is ''an interest in having some confidentiality associated and care associated with that information.''
''At least initially, it's very cheap, and so it's a very easy law to pass,'' Ms. Lieb said of online registry laws. But she said there was a great disparity between the amount of information many states put online and the responsibility they took for its accuracy. Many states, including Connecticut, rely on the criminals to update their addresses.
''It's evolutionary, it's awkward and painful,'' Ms. Lieb said of the online migration. ''I think it's important to remember that at least what we started with was not knowing, and that is worse.''
But some critics of putting criminal data online say the Internet will scare people needlessly, lead to retributive violence, and, as a result, create more sex crimes. ..more.. by PAUL ZIELBAUER
Four years after Congress began requiring states to maintain sex offender registries to track the whereabouts of criminals once they leave prison, states around the country are now going a step further, posting that information, along with photographs and sordid details of crimes, on Web pages accessible to anyone with a computer and a modem.
Since 1996, 21 states, mostly in the South and the Midwest, have put the registries on the Internet. Several others, including New York, Maryland and Wisconsin, are planning to begin sex offender Web sites of their own in the next few months. New Jersey's Legislature is now considering a bill that would require the state police to post its sex offender registry online.
''It's the wave; everyone's doing it now,'' said Scott Matson, a research associate with the Center for Sex Offender Management, established by the United States Justice Department in 1997 to train law enforcement officials.
Proponents of the trend, including many state officials, say expanding community notification to the Internet is a valuable and relatively simple way to disseminate widely information on dangerous sex offenders.
Critics say online registries, while popular with the public, are a ''quick fix'' to a complex issue and could stigmatize and victimize marginal offenders and ultimately produce more sex crimes than they prevent.
''They don't tell you how to protect yourself and your children; they don't give the degree of risk this person poses to you or not,'' said David A. D'Amora, the director of a treatment center for sexual abusers in Middletown, Conn., and a national consultant to sex abuse treatment centers. ''If you're going to do any type of registration, then it's really incumbent on the system to go out and educate the community. Just throwing a bunch of things up on a screen is like throwing gasoline on a fire.''
Notification laws have long generated intense reactions from those who believe that they help protect communities from sexual predators and from others who contend that they needlessly stigmatize marginal offenders and keep the most dangerous offenders from getting help.
California, home to about 70,000 registered sexual offenders -- more than any other state -- started the first sex offender registry in 1947. Most other states have followed suit since 1994, when Congress enacted a law, known as the Wetterling Act, to force state officials to create registries of offenders and track their whereabouts.
Two years later, Congress added an amendment, modeled after Megan's Law in New Jersey, named after 7-year-old Megan Kanka of Hamilton Township, N.J., who was raped and killed in 1994 by a twice-convicted pedophile who had quietly moved into the neighborhood. The law forced states to notify communities when sex offenders moved in.
Before there were online sex offender registries, anyone wanting information on specific offenders had to request it from local or state police agencies. That is still the method in New York and California.
In New York, where about 10,000 offenders are registered, people can get information on specific felons by calling a toll number, which costs 50 cents, and supplying an offender's last name, date of birth or ZIP code, for instance. New York State's Criminal Justice Services Division is planning to start its own sex offenders Web site next month. Only data on the most violent criminals, including juveniles, convicted after January 1996 will be posted online.
California's huge database is made available to local police departments on compact disks. To get information on offenders, residents must give their names, allowing the police to track who requests information about whom.
Proponents say moving those sex offender registries online is consistent with the intent of the law that created them, making it easier to make the public aware of sex offenders in their communities.
''These changes should make sex offenders think twice before offending again in Wisconsin and that should certainly make this state a safer place,'' Gov. Tommy G. Thompson said last month when he announced the state's plan to post its registry online.
But many experts say no one has adequately thought through the consequences of the online registries. One worry is that the registries have the potential to lead to retributive violence against offenders. As notification laws become ubiquitous, so have incidents in which ex-offenders were harassed by neighbors, evicted by landlords, fired from new jobs or beaten by revenge-minded mobs.
*Last month, two men beat a 59-year-old convicted child molester with a baseball bat in North Fort Myers, Fla., and threatened to kill him if he came near any neighborhood children.
*In September 1999, four men in Dallas severely beat a 27-year-old retarded man whose address, a group home for the disabled, was erroneously listed on Texas's Internet registry as the residence of a child molester.
*In July 1998, a 23-year-old Linden, N.J., man, reacting to a flier distributed by the police, fired five bullets from a .45-caliber handgun into the house of a recently paroled rapist. No one was injured; the suspect was charged with aggravated assault.
*That same month, neighbors in a trailer park in Washington State burned down a vacant mobile home days before a sex offender was scheduled to move into it, after six years in prison. In 1993, vigilantes in Lynnwood, Wash., burned down the home of a twice-convicted sex offender, Joseph Gallardo, after the police notified neighbors of his release. The advent of Internet-based criminal registries has led to a broader debate over how to increase public safety.
Making identities of offenders available to anyone browsing the Net significantly increases the likelihood of further attacks, many experts say.
Roxanne Lieb, director of the Washington State Institute for Public Policy, said the debate over online registries highlighted two conflicting trends in how law enforcement agencies operate.
On one hand, she said, is ''the desire to have things be easier and easier to access,'' and on the other is ''an interest in having some confidentiality associated and care associated with that information.''
''At least initially, it's very cheap, and so it's a very easy law to pass,'' Ms. Lieb said of online registry laws. But she said there was a great disparity between the amount of information many states put online and the responsibility they took for its accuracy. Many states, including Connecticut, rely on the criminals to update their addresses.
''It's evolutionary, it's awkward and painful,'' Ms. Lieb said of the online migration. ''I think it's important to remember that at least what we started with was not knowing, and that is worse.''
But some critics of putting criminal data online say the Internet will scare people needlessly, lead to retributive violence, and, as a result, create more sex crimes. ..more.. by PAUL ZIELBAUER
Child abuse and the media
Article Tags:
(.Research Papers
[[[[[SNIP]]]]]
NAMING AND SHAMING
Identifying the perpetrators
Throughout the Western world, awareness of child sexual abuse has led to action by members of the public to draw attention to horrific crimes against children (Goddard 1997a). British newspapers have carried many articles on the dangers created for children when convicted child sex offenders are released from prison. The British media demonstrated that they were prepared to identify or "out" the perpetrators. A selective review (Goddard 1997a) demonstrated that tabloid newspapers carried particularly graphic studies.
The Liverpool Echo on 17 June 1997, for example, devoted almost its entire front page to an "exclusive" by Jason Teasdale (1997) to the effect that a "convicted paedophile" would soon be released. Broadsheet newspapers, for example The Guardian, also carried such stories. Interestingly, The Guardian, exactly one week earlier, had carried the news that this particular man was to be released, under the headlines "In a few days this man, a convicted child rapist, will be released. Police say he is ‘incredibly dangerous’. Should you be told if he moves in next door?", and "Nightmare on any street" (Bowcott and Clouston 1997). The story in The Guardian was accompanied by a photograph of the man, who had been detained after being found carrying a bag of books and toys. He admitted to the police that he was searching for a child (Bowcott and Clouston 1997).
The Guardian story summarised the issues in its opening: "Newspapers are ‘outing’ paedophiles and their homes are consequently being fire-bombed. Do child molesters deserve a second chance after they have served their sentences? Or has the public the right to know when such a menace moves in next door? (Bowcott and Clouston 1997: 2)
The role of newspapers in "outing" convicted child molesters is examined in another piece in the same paper by Gary Younge (1997). Paul Horrocks, acting editor of the Manchester Evening News, a paper described as exposing several child molesters, is quoted as saying that a newspaper takes risks when it does so: "The paper must balance children’s safety with the threat of mob rule; it pits the chance that a paedophile may re-offend against the fact that he has served his time and may be denied the right to resume a normal life. ‘There is a risk that people will take the law into their own hands. But there is a greater risk that children will be hurt. If you can’t take risks to protect children, then when can you?’ [Paul Horrocks] says." (Younge 1997: 3)
Risks there certainly are: "One of those ‘outed’ by the Manchester Evening News suffered physical and verbal abuse from his neighbours and moved away as a result. Horrocks describes as ‘regrettable’ a case of mistaken identity in which an innocent man was attacked by an angry mob" (Younge 1997: 3).
The anger and the potential for tragedy are described in the piece by Bowcott and Clouston (1997: 3): "In May 1994, a girl aged 14 called Samantha Penell died after the house in which she had been staying was burnt down. Those who set fire to the building were looking for a paedophile."
They recount other stories: a convicted child molester stabbed to death in Edinburgh, and a man in Manchester badly beaten by a gang who wrongly believed that he was a child rapist(Bowcott and Clouston 1997). Such problems also occur in Australia. The release in New South Wales of convicted child killer John Lewthwaite prompted a considerable degree of media attention. After his release his new home was attacked by local residents, angry at his presence in their community.
[[[[SNIP]]]] ..more.. by Chris Goddard and Bernadette J. Saunders
-------------------------
MONSTERS WITH HUMAN FACES, The Guardian
9-17-1997 United Kingdom:
[[[[SNIP]]]]
Paedophiles are the most feared and loathed men in our society.
All over the country there are groups, some no bigger than a coffee circle of concerned mothers, whose sole aim is to hunt down and hound out paedophiles in their neighbourhoods. The names of these ad hoc campaigns - Campaign Against Paedophiles, Parents Against Child Abuse, People Power, Know Your Neighbour, Parents Aiming to Right Abysmal Sex Offender Laws, Unofficial Child Protection Unit - reveal their simple missionary zeal. It is a movement from the streets upwards. Local newspapers often provide them with the raw material; trawling through back numbers, they turn up details of long-past child abuse cases.
The Oxford Mail and Bournemouth Echo keep informal registers of sex offenders, and the Scottish Daily Record published a "Gallery of Shame" of 38 convicted paedophiles. The Sunday tabloids devote pages and reporters to doing nothing else but hunting "child sex monsters".
Paedophilia has become a national obsession.
Such outings inevitably lead to violence. In May 1994, the home of Dennis Butlin was firebombed and a young girl inside burnt to death; in February 1995, Lawrence Leydon was stabbed to death in Edinburgh; last August in Teignmouth, 44-year-old David Moist was severely battered after vigilantes broke into his flat brandishing a fire extinguisher; in the same month in Belfast, 53-year-old Desmond Moonan was found strangled in his flat. They were all vicious attacks. But when we insert "paedophile" before these men's names, our hearts harden: they got what they deserved.
Whatever has been done to them and however they are treated, we have no sympathy for paedophiles. What they do strips them of any possibility of redemption. Who could defend the rights, the life even, of a man who wants to bugger a four-year-old? Schemes are continually proposed to provide indefinite monitoring, from electronic tagging to chemical castration.
[[[[SNIP]]]]
..more.. by The Guardian
-------------------------
"PEADOPHILES OUT!"
Thanks mainly to 'The Guardian' (19 ii '97), I can begin to provide a historical record of recent paedo-hysteria in Britain.
MAY, 1994. Samantha Pennell, aged 14, was killed after the house of paedophile Dennis Butlin was firebombed. Butlin himself escaped.
FEBRUARY, 1995. Lawrence Leydon, a convicted paedophile, was stabbed to death in his home in Edinburgh, nine months after being released on probation.
JUNE, 1996. Residents on the Kingsmead estate in Hackney, east London, warned of vigilante action if Sidney Coke, part of a paedophile ring that tortured to death a local teenager, was allowed to return.
AUGUST, 1996. The 'Manchester Evening News' publishes details of local paedophiles, following a trend set by the 'Sunday Express' (London) and the Bournemouth Evening Echo. Other local papers followed suit.
SEPTEMBER, 1996. 53-year Brixton mother of mentally handicapped boy bludgeons newly released 65-year "paedophile" with a metal spring and smashed bricks through all his car's windows. (Awarded 4 months prison, suspended for 18 months, plus 18 months probation, plus £150 compensation.) (South London Press, 1 xi '96.)
NOVEMBER, 1996. George Taylor fled his Birmingham flat under police escort after residents discovered he had been jailed for a child sex offence.
JANUARY, 1997. A mob surrounded a Department of Social Security hostel in Stirling, demanding that Alan Christie, a convicted paedophile, be forced to leave.
FEBRUARY, 1997. Parents in Dunoon, Argyll, warned they would take action amid fears that up to 10 convicted child sex offenders had moved in nearby.
FEBRUARY, 1997. 'Anti-Paedophile March' in Manchester used placards drawn up as follows "Peadophiles Out!" {sic} and "COUNSIL PUTTING OUR ChilDREN AT RISK!" {sic, though an effort had been made to correct the mis-spelling}. A pensioner mistaken for a photographed paedophile was assaulted and had his wrist broken.
FEBRUARY, 1997. UK police, civil liberties campaigners and child protection groups....warned that the plan [for a register of paedophiles] would lead to violence against those named while doing nothing to protect children.
MARCH, 1997. The 47-year-old East Lothian father of a newly released paedophile had both his legs broken by a mob.
MARCH, 1997. Lewisham[?] Borough Council (London) release many details of the appearance and convictions of a recently discharged "paedophile" prisoner so that a lynch mob can be prepared for his arrival on a particular council estate. ..more.. by
NAMING AND SHAMING
Identifying the perpetrators
Throughout the Western world, awareness of child sexual abuse has led to action by members of the public to draw attention to horrific crimes against children (Goddard 1997a). British newspapers have carried many articles on the dangers created for children when convicted child sex offenders are released from prison. The British media demonstrated that they were prepared to identify or "out" the perpetrators. A selective review (Goddard 1997a) demonstrated that tabloid newspapers carried particularly graphic studies.
The Liverpool Echo on 17 June 1997, for example, devoted almost its entire front page to an "exclusive" by Jason Teasdale (1997) to the effect that a "convicted paedophile" would soon be released. Broadsheet newspapers, for example The Guardian, also carried such stories. Interestingly, The Guardian, exactly one week earlier, had carried the news that this particular man was to be released, under the headlines "In a few days this man, a convicted child rapist, will be released. Police say he is ‘incredibly dangerous’. Should you be told if he moves in next door?", and "Nightmare on any street" (Bowcott and Clouston 1997). The story in The Guardian was accompanied by a photograph of the man, who had been detained after being found carrying a bag of books and toys. He admitted to the police that he was searching for a child (Bowcott and Clouston 1997).
The Guardian story summarised the issues in its opening: "Newspapers are ‘outing’ paedophiles and their homes are consequently being fire-bombed. Do child molesters deserve a second chance after they have served their sentences? Or has the public the right to know when such a menace moves in next door? (Bowcott and Clouston 1997: 2)
The role of newspapers in "outing" convicted child molesters is examined in another piece in the same paper by Gary Younge (1997). Paul Horrocks, acting editor of the Manchester Evening News, a paper described as exposing several child molesters, is quoted as saying that a newspaper takes risks when it does so: "The paper must balance children’s safety with the threat of mob rule; it pits the chance that a paedophile may re-offend against the fact that he has served his time and may be denied the right to resume a normal life. ‘There is a risk that people will take the law into their own hands. But there is a greater risk that children will be hurt. If you can’t take risks to protect children, then when can you?’ [Paul Horrocks] says." (Younge 1997: 3)
Risks there certainly are: "One of those ‘outed’ by the Manchester Evening News suffered physical and verbal abuse from his neighbours and moved away as a result. Horrocks describes as ‘regrettable’ a case of mistaken identity in which an innocent man was attacked by an angry mob" (Younge 1997: 3).
The anger and the potential for tragedy are described in the piece by Bowcott and Clouston (1997: 3): "In May 1994, a girl aged 14 called Samantha Penell died after the house in which she had been staying was burnt down. Those who set fire to the building were looking for a paedophile."
They recount other stories: a convicted child molester stabbed to death in Edinburgh, and a man in Manchester badly beaten by a gang who wrongly believed that he was a child rapist(Bowcott and Clouston 1997). Such problems also occur in Australia. The release in New South Wales of convicted child killer John Lewthwaite prompted a considerable degree of media attention. After his release his new home was attacked by local residents, angry at his presence in their community.
[[[[SNIP]]]] ..more.. by Chris Goddard and Bernadette J. Saunders
MONSTERS WITH HUMAN FACES, The Guardian
9-17-1997 United Kingdom:
[[[[SNIP]]]]
Paedophiles are the most feared and loathed men in our society.
All over the country there are groups, some no bigger than a coffee circle of concerned mothers, whose sole aim is to hunt down and hound out paedophiles in their neighbourhoods. The names of these ad hoc campaigns - Campaign Against Paedophiles, Parents Against Child Abuse, People Power, Know Your Neighbour, Parents Aiming to Right Abysmal Sex Offender Laws, Unofficial Child Protection Unit - reveal their simple missionary zeal. It is a movement from the streets upwards. Local newspapers often provide them with the raw material; trawling through back numbers, they turn up details of long-past child abuse cases.
The Oxford Mail and Bournemouth Echo keep informal registers of sex offenders, and the Scottish Daily Record published a "Gallery of Shame" of 38 convicted paedophiles. The Sunday tabloids devote pages and reporters to doing nothing else but hunting "child sex monsters".
Paedophilia has become a national obsession.
Such outings inevitably lead to violence. In May 1994, the home of Dennis Butlin was firebombed and a young girl inside burnt to death; in February 1995, Lawrence Leydon was stabbed to death in Edinburgh; last August in Teignmouth, 44-year-old David Moist was severely battered after vigilantes broke into his flat brandishing a fire extinguisher; in the same month in Belfast, 53-year-old Desmond Moonan was found strangled in his flat. They were all vicious attacks. But when we insert "paedophile" before these men's names, our hearts harden: they got what they deserved.
Whatever has been done to them and however they are treated, we have no sympathy for paedophiles. What they do strips them of any possibility of redemption. Who could defend the rights, the life even, of a man who wants to bugger a four-year-old? Schemes are continually proposed to provide indefinite monitoring, from electronic tagging to chemical castration.
[[[[SNIP]]]]
..more.. by The Guardian
"PEADOPHILES OUT!"
Thanks mainly to 'The Guardian' (19 ii '97), I can begin to provide a historical record of recent paedo-hysteria in Britain.
MAY, 1994. Samantha Pennell, aged 14, was killed after the house of paedophile Dennis Butlin was firebombed. Butlin himself escaped.
FEBRUARY, 1995. Lawrence Leydon, a convicted paedophile, was stabbed to death in his home in Edinburgh, nine months after being released on probation.
JUNE, 1996. Residents on the Kingsmead estate in Hackney, east London, warned of vigilante action if Sidney Coke, part of a paedophile ring that tortured to death a local teenager, was allowed to return.
AUGUST, 1996. The 'Manchester Evening News' publishes details of local paedophiles, following a trend set by the 'Sunday Express' (London) and the Bournemouth Evening Echo. Other local papers followed suit.
SEPTEMBER, 1996. 53-year Brixton mother of mentally handicapped boy bludgeons newly released 65-year "paedophile" with a metal spring and smashed bricks through all his car's windows. (Awarded 4 months prison, suspended for 18 months, plus 18 months probation, plus £150 compensation.) (South London Press, 1 xi '96.)
NOVEMBER, 1996. George Taylor fled his Birmingham flat under police escort after residents discovered he had been jailed for a child sex offence.
JANUARY, 1997. A mob surrounded a Department of Social Security hostel in Stirling, demanding that Alan Christie, a convicted paedophile, be forced to leave.
FEBRUARY, 1997. Parents in Dunoon, Argyll, warned they would take action amid fears that up to 10 convicted child sex offenders had moved in nearby.
FEBRUARY, 1997. 'Anti-Paedophile March' in Manchester used placards drawn up as follows "Peadophiles Out!" {sic} and "COUNSIL PUTTING OUR ChilDREN AT RISK!" {sic, though an effort had been made to correct the mis-spelling}. A pensioner mistaken for a photographed paedophile was assaulted and had his wrist broken.
FEBRUARY, 1997. UK police, civil liberties campaigners and child protection groups....warned that the plan [for a register of paedophiles] would lead to violence against those named while doing nothing to protect children.
MARCH, 1997. The 47-year-old East Lothian father of a newly released paedophile had both his legs broken by a mob.
MARCH, 1997. Lewisham[?] Borough Council (London) release many details of the appearance and convictions of a recently discharged "paedophile" prisoner so that a lynch mob can be prepared for his arrival on a particular council estate. ..more.. by
Sex Offender Registry Laws May Cause More Harm Than Good
Article Tags:
(.Research Papers
4-25-2006:
The recent slayings of two convicted sex offenders listed on Maine’s online sex offender database pose serious questions about the consequences of registry laws. But crime experts and defense attorneys doubt whether a considerate national debate on the issue is possible.
In a nation that seeks increasingly stricter punishments and banishment of sex offenders, most are unwilling to evaluate the risks or fairness of offender registry laws.
“We’ve basically dehumanized these people with words such as ‘predator,’” said Fred Berlin, psychiatrist and founder of the John Hopkins Sexual Disorders Clinic in Maryland. “Every decent human being wants to protect children,” he said. But Berlin claims that registries make it extremely difficult to allow criminals who have done their time to rebuild their lives. ..more.. by Criminal Lawyer Source
The recent slayings of two convicted sex offenders listed on Maine’s online sex offender database pose serious questions about the consequences of registry laws. But crime experts and defense attorneys doubt whether a considerate national debate on the issue is possible.
In a nation that seeks increasingly stricter punishments and banishment of sex offenders, most are unwilling to evaluate the risks or fairness of offender registry laws.
“We’ve basically dehumanized these people with words such as ‘predator,’” said Fred Berlin, psychiatrist and founder of the John Hopkins Sexual Disorders Clinic in Maryland. “Every decent human being wants to protect children,” he said. But Berlin claims that registries make it extremely difficult to allow criminals who have done their time to rebuild their lives. ..more.. by Criminal Lawyer Source
Sex Offender Registries: Invitation to Vigilantism
Article Tags:
(.Research Papers
July 2006:
Aiming through a living room window at 3:00 a.m. on April 16, 2006-- Easter Sunday-- Stephen A. Marshall shot and killed Joseph Gray. The victim had been dozing on a couch at his home in Milo, Maine. Five hours later, Marshall knocked on the door of William Elliot's vinyl-sided mobile home in Corinth, 24 miles away. When Elliot appeared, the 20-year-old assassin fired at point-blank range.
Moments later, when Ann Campbell found her boyfriend lying dead by the open door, his murderer still stood outside. Marshall stared at her, then returned to his father's silver pick-up truck and drove away. Campbell wrote down the gunman's license number and called the police.
Marshall's vehicle was found behind a skating rink in nearby Bangor. Discarded bullets linked to his weapon were found in the men's room of the local bus terminal, where employees said the fugitive had boarded a Vermont Transit coach bound for Boston. When officers surrounded the bus outside Boston's South Station, Marshall shot himself in the head with his father's .45-caliber handgun. He died a short time later at Boston Medical Center.
The murders were vigilante strikes against registered sex offenders who were strangers to Marshall and to each other. Marshall had obtained their addresses through Maine's online sex offender registry. He was by no means the first self-designated avenging angel to use such a resource.
His targets appear to have been picked for geographical availability, not for the specifics of their crimes. Elliot, 24, had confessed at age 20 to consensual sex with a girlfriend two weeks short of her 16th birthday. Convicted of "sexual abuse of a minor," he completed a four-month sentence in Penobscot County Jail. Gray, 57, who in 1992 had been sentenced to a four-to-six-year prison term in Massachusetts for sexual contact with a girl under 14, had recently been leading a circumspect existence with his wife.
Records found in Marshall's laptop suggested that during his lethal odyssey, the young vigilante may have visited four more residences where, for reasons unknown, he failed to act. At home in Nova Scotia, he had combed through online sex-offender registries in at least three New England states. Prior to his murder spree, Marshall had requested detailed information on 34 individuals from the Maine Sex Offender Registry, completing his research while visiting his father in Houlton, Maine, on the New Brunswick border.
The much-visited Maine Sex Offender Registry website, www.informe.org/sor, is browsable from link to link and searchable by name, zip code, city or town. The site provides mug shots of 2200 registrants, along with their names, their dates of birth, the generally unenlightening legal terms for their crimes ("unlawful sexual contact," for example), and the names and addresses of their places of employment. Additional details, including home addresses, mailing addresses, physical statistics, and expanded legal descriptions of crimes, are available to persons willing to provide their names and addresses. When Marshall asked for more data, he gave his real name. ..more.. by Jim D'Entremont
Aiming through a living room window at 3:00 a.m. on April 16, 2006-- Easter Sunday-- Stephen A. Marshall shot and killed Joseph Gray. The victim had been dozing on a couch at his home in Milo, Maine. Five hours later, Marshall knocked on the door of William Elliot's vinyl-sided mobile home in Corinth, 24 miles away. When Elliot appeared, the 20-year-old assassin fired at point-blank range.
Moments later, when Ann Campbell found her boyfriend lying dead by the open door, his murderer still stood outside. Marshall stared at her, then returned to his father's silver pick-up truck and drove away. Campbell wrote down the gunman's license number and called the police.
Marshall's vehicle was found behind a skating rink in nearby Bangor. Discarded bullets linked to his weapon were found in the men's room of the local bus terminal, where employees said the fugitive had boarded a Vermont Transit coach bound for Boston. When officers surrounded the bus outside Boston's South Station, Marshall shot himself in the head with his father's .45-caliber handgun. He died a short time later at Boston Medical Center.
The murders were vigilante strikes against registered sex offenders who were strangers to Marshall and to each other. Marshall had obtained their addresses through Maine's online sex offender registry. He was by no means the first self-designated avenging angel to use such a resource.
His targets appear to have been picked for geographical availability, not for the specifics of their crimes. Elliot, 24, had confessed at age 20 to consensual sex with a girlfriend two weeks short of her 16th birthday. Convicted of "sexual abuse of a minor," he completed a four-month sentence in Penobscot County Jail. Gray, 57, who in 1992 had been sentenced to a four-to-six-year prison term in Massachusetts for sexual contact with a girl under 14, had recently been leading a circumspect existence with his wife.
Records found in Marshall's laptop suggested that during his lethal odyssey, the young vigilante may have visited four more residences where, for reasons unknown, he failed to act. At home in Nova Scotia, he had combed through online sex-offender registries in at least three New England states. Prior to his murder spree, Marshall had requested detailed information on 34 individuals from the Maine Sex Offender Registry, completing his research while visiting his father in Houlton, Maine, on the New Brunswick border.
The much-visited Maine Sex Offender Registry website, www.informe.org/sor, is browsable from link to link and searchable by name, zip code, city or town. The site provides mug shots of 2200 registrants, along with their names, their dates of birth, the generally unenlightening legal terms for their crimes ("unlawful sexual contact," for example), and the names and addresses of their places of employment. Additional details, including home addresses, mailing addresses, physical statistics, and expanded legal descriptions of crimes, are available to persons willing to provide their names and addresses. When Marshall asked for more data, he gave his real name. ..more.. by Jim D'Entremont
Criminal Law Beyond the State: Popular Trials on the Frontier
Article Tags:
(.Research Papers
Abstract:
Before the civil war, “lynching” signified all forms of group-inflicted punishments, including vigilantism and mob killings. By this definition, lynchings happen in every country. Only in America, however, was lynching widespread and socially accepted. Scholars say this shows that the American commitment to due process often succumbed to “vigilante values,” that is, the desire for speedy, certain and severe penalties. They contend that vigilante values triumphed over due process on the frontier, where courts were weak and vigilance committees strong. This article demonstrates that this view must be substantially qualified because due process was of great concern to Americans on the frontier, especially with respect to members of their own communities.
The core of the article is a comprehensive study of law in the California gold rush. The thousands of publications on lynching have simply missed this critical chapter in American legal history. Hundreds of accounts of lynchings or “trials” (the miners used the terms interchangeably) indicate that most suspects were tried before a judge and an impartial jury, and some were acquitted. Lynchings or trials in the gold mines thus often resembled those on the overland trail studied by John Reid. This article further suggests that similar trials were common on the frontier. Scholars have failed to distinguish these rather poorly documented proceedings from the activities of vigilance committees, thereby omitting an important factor in their studies of the American legal experience. The importance of due process to Americans, even in crowds, and even beyond the reach of the courts, must now be reassessed. ..more.. by ANDREA MCDOWELL, Seton Hall Law School
Before the civil war, “lynching” signified all forms of group-inflicted punishments, including vigilantism and mob killings. By this definition, lynchings happen in every country. Only in America, however, was lynching widespread and socially accepted. Scholars say this shows that the American commitment to due process often succumbed to “vigilante values,” that is, the desire for speedy, certain and severe penalties. They contend that vigilante values triumphed over due process on the frontier, where courts were weak and vigilance committees strong. This article demonstrates that this view must be substantially qualified because due process was of great concern to Americans on the frontier, especially with respect to members of their own communities.
The core of the article is a comprehensive study of law in the California gold rush. The thousands of publications on lynching have simply missed this critical chapter in American legal history. Hundreds of accounts of lynchings or “trials” (the miners used the terms interchangeably) indicate that most suspects were tried before a judge and an impartial jury, and some were acquitted. Lynchings or trials in the gold mines thus often resembled those on the overland trail studied by John Reid. This article further suggests that similar trials were common on the frontier. Scholars have failed to distinguish these rather poorly documented proceedings from the activities of vigilance committees, thereby omitting an important factor in their studies of the American legal experience. The importance of due process to Americans, even in crowds, and even beyond the reach of the courts, must now be reassessed. ..more.. by ANDREA MCDOWELL, Seton Hall Law School
VIGILANTISM, VIGILANTE JUSTICE, AND VICTIM SELF-HELP
Article Tags:
(.Research Papers
The word vigilante is of Spanish origin and means "watchman" or "guard" but its Latin root is vigil, which means "awake" or "observant." When it is said that someone is taking the law into their own hands, this usually means that they are engaging in vigilante activity, or vigilantism, although sometimes the phrase "taking the law into your own hands" is used to describe what some people call a "secret police" force. The phrase does not make for a good definition. Everyone seems to have an opinion about what vigilantism is, but few people have taken the trouble to define it (Johnston 1996). Worse yet, those of us who teach criminal justice and criminology often warn about the dangers of vigilantism without really understanding or explaining why, and the field of criminal justice is way too silent on this topic, gladly substituting state-by-state comparisons on gun ownership and self-defense for real research on the nature and dynamics of vigilantism.
For better understanding, it's important to obtain some theoretical perspective on vigilantism. From a legal perspective, lawyers sometimes call it extra-judicial self-help, and this perspective may or may not (depending upon your point of view) lend itself to promising new approaches in the sociology of law (Black 1983). Philosophers, like French (2001), frequently equate it with vengeance, and tie it into some sort of definition that sounds like it came from a treatise on ethics -- vigilantism being the righting of a criminal wrong by wrongful means. A recurring theme in philosophical treatises is that the sooner we recognize vengeance as an essential part of our inner human nature, the better. Sociologists are almost always silent on the topic, perhaps because the behavior is not mundane enough, as there seems to be an emerging convention in the last couple of decades where sociologists study the ordinary and criminologists study "rare events." Criminologists, like Zimring (2003), don't really study vigilantism per se. They only study it as a side issue whenever it seems convenient to tie in America's vigilante tradition to something else, like capital punishment. A review of the literature would indicate that there is a good deal of consensus on the fact that vigilantism and a vigilante tradition exist, but there also appears to be no adequate theoretical framework from which to analyze the phenomena in systematic fashion.
To be sure, the study of vigilantism involves some complexities. There are a vast number of controversial issues associated with vigilantism. To list some examples would include Good Samaritan laws, the Right to Resist Arrest, Self-Defense Doctrine, the Militia Clause of the Constitution, the Concealed Handgun Debate, Road Rage as a form of Vigilantism, and Digilantism (getting back at Internet deviants by "digital vigilantism"). On the Internet, there are vigilante groups who claim to be the "true" vigilantees getting back at the "false" vigilantees, and it can become quite confusing who is the real "vigilante." Not many of these complex issues will be discussed here, not because they are unimportant, but because new forms of vigilante behavior are constantly emerging, and it is of primary importance, beforehand, to obtain an adequate conceptualization of basic vigilantism. ..more.. by O'Connor, T. (2004)
For better understanding, it's important to obtain some theoretical perspective on vigilantism. From a legal perspective, lawyers sometimes call it extra-judicial self-help, and this perspective may or may not (depending upon your point of view) lend itself to promising new approaches in the sociology of law (Black 1983). Philosophers, like French (2001), frequently equate it with vengeance, and tie it into some sort of definition that sounds like it came from a treatise on ethics -- vigilantism being the righting of a criminal wrong by wrongful means. A recurring theme in philosophical treatises is that the sooner we recognize vengeance as an essential part of our inner human nature, the better. Sociologists are almost always silent on the topic, perhaps because the behavior is not mundane enough, as there seems to be an emerging convention in the last couple of decades where sociologists study the ordinary and criminologists study "rare events." Criminologists, like Zimring (2003), don't really study vigilantism per se. They only study it as a side issue whenever it seems convenient to tie in America's vigilante tradition to something else, like capital punishment. A review of the literature would indicate that there is a good deal of consensus on the fact that vigilantism and a vigilante tradition exist, but there also appears to be no adequate theoretical framework from which to analyze the phenomena in systematic fashion.
To be sure, the study of vigilantism involves some complexities. There are a vast number of controversial issues associated with vigilantism. To list some examples would include Good Samaritan laws, the Right to Resist Arrest, Self-Defense Doctrine, the Militia Clause of the Constitution, the Concealed Handgun Debate, Road Rage as a form of Vigilantism, and Digilantism (getting back at Internet deviants by "digital vigilantism"). On the Internet, there are vigilante groups who claim to be the "true" vigilantees getting back at the "false" vigilantees, and it can become quite confusing who is the real "vigilante." Not many of these complex issues will be discussed here, not because they are unimportant, but because new forms of vigilante behavior are constantly emerging, and it is of primary importance, beforehand, to obtain an adequate conceptualization of basic vigilantism. ..more.. by O'Connor, T. (2004)
Ala. counties with state prisons say they're burdened by act
Article Tags:
(.Research Papers
3-25-2007 Alabama:
Officials in counties with state prisons say they are being burdened by an unexpected side effect of the Community Notification Act, which requires sex offenders to give authorities a valid address 45 days before their sentence ends.
Under the act, failing to give a residential address that isn't at least 2,000 feet away from a school or childcare facility is a Class C felony. And offenders whose addresses don't comply must remain jailed in the county where the violation occurred until they have a valid address.
That usually means offenders - and their costs - are transferred to county jails, said Sonny Brasfield, assistant executive director for the Association of County Commissions of Alabama.
"They're released from the state prison and as they walk into the parking lot, a sheriff's car is already there to pick them up and take them straight to the jail," he said in a recent interview. "The law makes no provision for them to come back and say 'Sorry, I didn't know my address was bad.'"
"They're not going back to inmates to say this address doesn't work - there's not a way for the inmate to correct his problem," Brasfield said.
County officials say there needs to be some recourse for inmates who are homeless or unknowingly give an address that has become invalid while they were incarcerated. Inmates who are homeless are considered violators and charged with felonies because they don't have a valid address to give.
Ron Smith, chairman of the Bullock County Commission, said so far seven inmates have been taken to the county's jail under the act and the same has happened in St. Clair and Barbour counties, which are home to other state prisons.
Smith said something needs to be done soon to change the act.
"I think that's unconstitutional because what are we holding them on? Suppose they never find a good address?" Smith said. "Suppose he was staying with his mother and God forbid his mother died? Now he doesn't have a place to go. We get no money for housing the state inmates and for a poor county like us, we're going to suffer."
Inmates taken to the county jails are kept there until they have a date to go before a grand jury on the felony charge.
Bullock County Sheriff Raymond Rogers said jail officials worked with family members and community assistance programs to get valid housing arrangements for four of the seven sex offenders who have been affected by the act at his jail. The remaining three are homeless and are still in the Bullock County Jail, he said.
"The longest one I ever kept in my jail was for four months," Rogers said. "Their loved ones don't want them. I have to keep calling the county they live in trying to help them find a place. It's kind of like the jail is turning into a halfway house and we don't have the people or the money for that."
Prisons Commissioner Richard Allen said the corrections department is aware of the problem and he's offered to keep the sex offenders in the state prisons while they wait for their grand jury appearance.
But Attorney General Troy King, who pushed hard for passage of the act last year, said a better idea is to force all sex offenders to serve their full sentences instead of giving them less time for good behavior and parole.
King acknowledged the problem would still exist once the offenders served their full sentence, but said it would give them more time to find a valid address. He said the cost of keeping them in county jails is worth it to keep sex offenders off the streets longer.
"We put people in prisons to punish them. I think most people would say if I can keep a predator away from my children, away from hurting my grandchildren by paying to keep them in prison, I'll pay to keep them in prison," he said. "Yes, we're spending (taxpayer) money, but I don't think anybody would say that's not a good investment."
Allen said plans are already in place to expand programs that help inmates transition from prison to life outside the corrections system. Part of the program will be assisting inmates with housing and that will help them avoid giving addresses that aren't in compliance, he said.
Bullock County attorney Johnny Waters said he's eager to see what will be done to resolve the problem.
"You may have a man who's been in prison for 15, 16 years on a rape charge. Now his family's disowned him, momma and daddy says he can't live with us, and he's got no other family. He doesn't even hardly have bus fare to get home," Waters said. "What does somebody in that scenario do? Nobody can answer that question for me. He's basically thrown to the wind.
"There's pros and cons to the law. Mainly it's to keep people protected and I can understand that side of it. But on the other side you've got a person trying to do right. Somewhere there's got to be a better answer." ..more.. by DESIREE HUNTER
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