Friends:

I have just read Paul Shannon's fine article, "It's Time To Reform Sex Offender Laws" (CounterPunch, July 10, 2007).

Reproduced at the bottom of Shannon's article is a copy of the Reform Sex Offender Laws Now! petition.  It "call[s] for the immediate reform of America's sex offender laws." 

I have just added my signature to this petition.

In case any of the rest of you might be willing to do the same.

Reform Sex Offender Laws.org (Homepage)

"Gestapo Journalism," ZNet, April 24, 2005
"In the Penal Colony," ZNet, May 5, 2005
"Aggressive/Antisocial, Drug Addiction, Mental Illness," ZNet, August 15, 2005

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Postscript.  As of June 30, 2006 (note that there is always a good 12 month time-lag in data such as this), there were a total 2,245,189 inmates locked-up in U.S. prisons and jails (Federal, state, and local).  This number is 2.8% higher than it was as of June 30, 2005; and in sheer terms, is higher than at any other time in U.S. history, having risen on an unrelenting basis for 30 years.  ("Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2006," Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin, June, 2007.)  Factoring-in the number of persons on probation or parole in the U.S. system of criminalization (sometimes referred to as the "adult U.S. correctional population"), which by the end of 2005 stood at 4,946,944 (or 4,162,536 adult men and women on probation, plus another 784,408 on parole ("Probation and Parole in the United States, 2005," Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin, November, 2006)), we find that as of the year 2006, there were approx. 7.2 million adult men and women who had been drafted into the "U.S. correctional population."  (And by today, July, 2007, there most certainly is.) -- Like virtually every other non-white-collar-crime under U.S. law, the malicious, punitive aspects and mandatory sentencing-terms associated with so-called "sex-offender" laws are profoundly unjust, and wouldn't be fit for enforcement against rats and cockroaches, let alone human beings. These laws deserve to be shredded.

Friends: The American perversion proceeds apace. This whole field of perpetrator and victim is so much the artefact of a corporate, for-profit media age. As if the Americans need another reason to lock up more people behind bars.

Crimes Against Children Research Center (Homepage), University of New Hampshire USA TODAY November 30, 2005, Wednesday, FINAL EDITION SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 3A HEADLINE: More women charged in sex cases BYLINE: Wendy Koch In courtrooms nationwide this month, at least seven women -- four of them teachers -- have been charged or sentenced for having sex with boys, mostly teenagers. One of the women is pregnant. Tuesday in Georgia, Lisa Lynette Clark, 37, was indicted in the molestation of her son's 15-year-old friend, who she says is the father of the baby she's expecting. She was arrested one day after marrying the boy, legal under Georgia law if the bride-to-be is pregnant. No definitive data exists on whether more women are sexually abusing children. Yet the number arrested for sex crimes has risen in five of the past six years as more people consider molestation of boys as heinous as that of girls. "There's been a decline in the double standard. That's why you're seeing more of these cases," says David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. As more women enter law enforcement, he says the old attitude that boys are willing, even lucky, participants has changed. Richard Gartner, a New York psychologist and author of Betrayed as Boys, says scandals involving Catholic priests and the case of Mary Kay Letourneau helped focus attention on boys as sexual victims. Letourneau, a former Washington state teacher, had two children in the late 1990s with a former student, whom she married this year. Advances are confusing "It's hard for boys to think of themselves as victims," Gartner says. He says adult sexual advances are confusing to boys, who are easily aroused physically but may be uncomfortable emotionally. He says boys are led to believe they should take sex whenever offered and if they don't, something may be wrong with them. "It is a trauma for many boys," he says, adding they may -- as adults -- realize they lost some of their childhood. Experts, including Finkelhor, don't know how often women molest kids, because most offenses are never reported. They say boys, the target of most female offenders, are less likely than girls to report them. Yet women account for a rising share of arrests for all sex crimes since 1995, according to FBI data. Females account for 4% of those sexually abusing children under 18, a July 2000 Justice Department report found. The report says they account for 12% of those molesting kids younger than 6. In the past 18 months, at least 25 cases nationwide involved female teachers molesting students, says Robert Shoop, a professor at Kansas State University and author of Sexual Exploitation in Schools: How to Spot It and Stop It. In a U.S. Department of Education report released in June 2004, at least 20% of students reported sexual misconduct -- whether verbal or physical -- by a female teacher or aide. "It is a big problem," says the report's author, Charol Shakeshaft, a professor at Hofstra University. Shakeshaft says few schools train teachers in how to identify and handle it. Four former teachers this month have been charged with or sentenced for molesting teen boys: Kimberly Ann Cordrey-McKinney, Margaret De Barraicua, Sandra Geisel and Debra Lafave. Teen boys are less likely to have sex with older women than teen girls with older men, but when they do so, the age gap tends to be larger, according to a report released in September by Child Trends, a non-profit research group. At least three women sentenced or charged this year were pregnant or delivered babies: Clark, Tani Leigh Firkins and Rebecca Ann Boicelli. "These women are psychologically not much older than their victims," says Gartner. "They're attracted to kids they can handle. They're 14, too." Shoop says men are more apt to be serial offenders while women typically focus on one child and go through a falling-in-love courtship. "They see this child as a significant other," he says, even if they have husbands or kids. He says they like the sense of power. "The female sex offender has more social and sexual inadequacies" than other women, says Susan Strickland, a forensic social worker in Atlanta. "They come from really weird, bizarre families where they don't get clarity about boundaries," she says. "They have issues relating to adult partners." She says female offenders, especially those molesting pre-pubescent kids, are more likely to have been sexually abused or otherwise traumatized as kids. 'I'm not the same boy' Silvia Johnson, a 41-year-old Colorado woman sentenced this month to 30 years in prison for plying teen boys with alcohol and drugs and having sex with them, says she wanted to fit in with her daughter's friends. "I think I fell in love with being part of the group," Johnson said in a police interview, "because that was never something I was part of, growing up. I was never in the popular group. Here I was considered the cool mom. Guys would flirt with me." Gartner says victimized boys have trouble developing age-appropriate relationships. He says they are more likely as adults to suffer depression, anxiety, drug addiction and resort to pornography and one-night stands. Boys themselves have described their pain in courtrooms. As underage sex victims, their names are withheld to protect their identities. "I'm not the same boy. At school I became the center of attention. Everyone knew my name," said a 16-year-old boy in a letter read in court in Sacramento, Calif., this month. De Barraicua was sentenced to a year in jail for having sex with him. The boy's mother also wrote a letter saying he has been so traumatized "his hair is falling out." The father of a boy molested in Colorado told the court that the offender, Silvia Johnson, "took away my best friend, my hunting buddy. I can't have him back now. He is gone." Some boys defend the adults who molest them. The 15-year-old boy who married Clark says she never seduced him. "She's done a lot for me, you know," he told Atlanta TV station WGCL. "She's been good to me." Yet his grandmother and legal guardian, Judy Hayles, is appalled. She told ABC her grandson is too young to get a driver's license, let alone become a father. Georgia law lets minors wed without parental consent if the bride is pregnant. Asked about Clark, she says, "My skin just crawls thinking about her." While more women are getting attention for molesting children, their jail terms often are less than what men receive. Last week in Tampa, Lafave, 25, avoided jail time for molesting a 14-year-old student. She got three years of house arrest and seven years' probation. With jail time, says Gartner, "we definitely still have a double standard."

Friends: Two gems---in the socio-pathological sense---from the Chicago area.

Letters to the Chicago Tribune: ctc-tribletter@tribune.com Letters to the Chicago Sun-Times: letters@suntimes.com Chicago Tribune November 8, 2005 Ex-sportscaster back in custody By Courtney Flynn A former sports broadcaster convicted of indecent solicitation of a child was expected to spend Tuesday night in Lake County Jail after a judge set bail at $500,000 on allegations that he violated his probation. Prosecutors filed a petition last week seeking to revoke Robert Goldman's probation after he allegedly handed out candy at his Aurora home on Halloween. He is not allowed to have unsupervised contact with children as a condition of his probation. On Tuesday, Goldman pleaded not guilty to the alleged probation violation and was taken into custody. A status hearing before Circuit Judge Fred Foreman is set for Thursday, and a Nov. 21 court date is scheduled on the prosecutors' petition. If his probation is revoked, Goldman could be sentenced to up to 5 years in prison. Goldman's attorney, Stephen Komie, said Goldman's wife would work with their family in New York to come up with the bail money and he expected his client to be released Wednesday. "I'm very disappointed," Goldman's wife, Amy, said outside the courtroom. Goldman, 44, was convicted in May of six counts of indecent solicitation of a child. He was placed on probation for 30 months in September and registered as a sex offender. A new state law prohibits registered sex offenders on probation or parole from handing out Halloween candy to minors. The DuPage County sheriff's office put 20 offenders under surveillance on Halloween, and Goldman was the only registered sex offender who did not comply with the law, authorities said. In court Tuesday, Komie characterized the allegations against Goldman as a publicity stunt brought about by the new law. Komie has petitioned the court to eliminate the requirement that Goldman register as a sex offender. But Assistant State's Atty. Patricia Fix denied Komie's accusation and said her office took offense at his suggestion about publicity. Goldman was warned by his probation officer about not having unsupervised contact with minors and was not forthcoming about what happened on Halloween, Fix said. "The defendant lies, flat out lies about what he was doing ... not knowing that he was" under covert surveillance, Fix said. "The probation officer tells him not to have contact with minors vis-a-vis Halloween, he has contact and then lies to his probation officer about it." Goldman was sports director at CLTV and worked at WGN-AM 720. The stations are owned by Tribune Co., which also owns the Chicago Tribune. He was arrested in Waukegan in 2002 after using the Internet to solicit a fictitious teenager for sex in a sting run by the Lake County state's attorney's office. Goldman lost the jobs shortly afterward. "It's just very difficult for our family," Amy Goldman said outside court. "We're looking forward to a positive resolution." Chicago Sun-Times November 9, 2005 Ex-CLTV anchor jailed for giving candy to kids BY DAN ROZEK Staff Reporter Former CLTV sports director Robert Goldman was ordered jailed on Tuesday after being charged with violating the terms of his probation by handing out candy to Halloween trick-or-treaters. Goldman, 44, remained in the Lake County Jail on Tuesday night on $500,000 bail. Caught in Internet sex sting Lake County prosecutors want a judge to revoke the 30 months' probation Goldman received earlier this year after being convicted of indecent solicitation for arranging a sexual rendezvous via the Internet with a police decoy posing as a hearing-impaired 15-year-old girl. As part of that sentence, Goldman was ordered to register as a sex offender and to avoid contact with children other than his own. A police sting on Halloween allegedly found Goldman handing out candy to young trick-or-treaters, prompting prosecutors to ask that Goldman be resentenced for the indecent solicitation. "We have an individual who is directly not complying with what he was told to do,'' said Assistant State's Attorney Patricia Fix. When questioned later by his probation officer, Goldman allegedly lied about answering the door and handing out candy to youngsters, Fix contended. If a judge agrees to revoke Goldman's probation, he could be sentenced to a maximum five-year prison term. Legal challenge filed Goldman never acted improperly and wasn't alone with any trick-or-treaters, who had their parents with them when they came to his door, his attorney said. "There were other adults present,'' said defense attorney Stephen Komie. Komie earlier had filed a legal challenge to the state law requiring Goldman to register as a sex offender. He still plans to argue that the registration strips offenders of basic constitutional rights, including the right of free assembly. "You certainly have the constitutional right to open your front door when someone rings the bell,'' Komie said. Chicago Sun-Times November 9, 2005 Ex-therapist in sex assault a 'flight risk' BY DAN ROZEK Staff Reporter A former therapist at the Lake County juvenile center who is accused of having sex with a 15-year-old boy she was counseling remained jailed Tuesday after a judge refused to lower her $500,000 bail. Tiffany Daddino, 26, faces criminal sexual assault charges in Lake County for allegedly having sex with the teenager she had been supervising while he was in a residential treatment center for juvenile offenders. Lake County prosecutors opposed lowering Daddino's bail, saying they are concerned she might try to flee to escape prosecution on the felony charges, which carry a maximum 15-year prison sentence. "She's a flight risk,'' said Assistant State's Attorney Patricia Fix, adding that when Daddino was arrested Friday at her Chicago apartment, she already had packed up many of her possessions. Daddino also allegedly scrubbed and cleaned her apartment, bedding and car in a possible attempt to destroy evidence, Fix said. While she already has been charged with sexual assault, Daddino is being investigated to determine if she might have helped the teen escape from the residential treatment center in August, Fix said. Daddino resigned shortly after being suspended in October, authorities said.

Friends: The following report troubles me for a lot of reasons---the least of which pertaining to the fact (alleged, anyway) that the gentleman in question was handing out candy to Trick-or-Treaters from his house in west-suburban Chicago on Halloween:

The Associated Press State & Local Wire November 4, 2005, Friday, BC cycle HEADLINE: Authorities accuse former sportscaster of violating Halloween law DATELINE: WHEATON, Ill. Authorities on Friday accused a former Chicago TV sportscaster of violating a new law that prohibits those convicted of sex-related crimes from handing out candy to kids on Halloween. Rob Goldman, convicted of soliciting a minor for sex over the Internet, gave candy to trick-or-treaters this week in violation of the Sex Offender Registration Act, the DuPage County Sheriff's Office said. Goldman's lawyer, Stephen M. Komie, said evidence will show his client did not violate the law. He added that the law as it stands is too vague, should not be applied to Goldman and is unconstitutional. "Just because one happens to be convicted of Internet sex, that doesn't make one a second-class American," he said. "You have all the constitutional rights of association and assembly." A Lake County judge sentenced the former Chicagoland Television News sports director in September to 30 months' probation for conversing with an undercover agent claiming to be a teenage girl. The judge also ordered the 44-year-old Aurora man to register as a sex offender, which is required by law Authorities did not arrest Goldman this week, but prosecutors filed a petition to revoke his probation. CLTV fired Goldman shortly after his arrest in 2002.

As with every oppressive act known to humankind, the institutions for the labelling and the controlling of quote-unquote sex offenders keep growing. As does the fear that is required to legitimate them. Question: Is the American system capable of addressing human beings without resorting to violence and oppression? For additional evidence of this brutal system, which ought to suffice to indict and convict everyone connected to it, see:

"Prisoners in 2004," Paige M. Harrison and Allen J. Beck, Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin, October, 2005. (And the accompanying Press Release.)

Friends:

"Two Registered Sex Offenders Are Slain," Tomas Alex Tizon, Los Angeles Times, September 4, 2005 Los Angeles Times September 4, 2005 Sunday Home Edition SECTION: MAIN NEWS; National Desk; Part A; Pg. 16 HEADLINE: THE NATION; Two Registered Sex Offenders Are Slain; Police in Bellingham, Wash., suspect a man who posed as an FBI agent. The case renews concerns about laws to register such criminals. BYLINE: Tomas Alex Tizon, Times Staff Writer DATELINE: BELLINGHAM, Wash. The three men who lived in the light-green house on Northwest Avenue hardly ever spoke to neighbors, but the neighborhood knew all about them: their names, backgrounds and crimes. The men were registered sex offenders. Police had notified residents when the first of them moved into the quiet Columbia neighborhood, north of downtown, about three years ago. Schools handed out fliers warning students of their presence. Late Aug. 26, two of the men were shot to death in their home while the third was away at work. Police say the killer, still at large, had knocked on their door claiming to be an FBI agent warning of an Internet hit list. On Wednesday, the local newspaper received a letter from someone claiming responsibility for the slayings and threatening to kill all Whatcom County sex offenders designated as Level III, considered the most likely to commit similar crimes again. Now, as Bellingham police investigate what appears on the surface to be a case of vigilantism, local leaders and activists have renewed the debate over the 1990 state law requiring sex offenders to register their addresses. The victims' address had long been posted on the city's website. "If this is a case of revenge or vigilantism, then it brings to light the question, 'Are there unintended consequences of this well-intentioned law?' " said Bellingham Mayor Mark Asmundson, an attorney. Washington was the first state to pass such a law, which is intended to help the public keep track of dangerous sexual predators. In 1994, Congress mandated that states create registers of sex offenders. Now all 50 states have their own version of Washington's Community Protection Act. Such monitoring and public notification have made it difficult for many sex offenders to find places to live once released from prison. In one highly publicized case in 1993, a sex offender notified authorities of his plan to move into a family home south of here, in Snohomish County. Before he could move in, someone burned the house to the ground. Many databases provide the general location of sex offenders, but Bellingham and Whatcom County websites provide exact addresses with photos of the offenders and descriptions of their crimes. Whatcom County, a mountainous, mostly rural region about 75 miles north of Seattle, has 31 registered Level III offenders. Bellingham, the county seat, had six Level III offenders in a population of 71,000. Among them were Hank Adolf Eisses, 49, convicted of child rape; Victor Manuel Vasquez, 68, convicted of child rape and molestation; and James Russell, 42, released a month ago after serving time for child molestation. Eisses owned the house on Northwest Avenue and rented rooms to the other two. The house is a small, boxy cottage with a white picket fence and a well-tended yard. Across the street is a home-turned-law office. Police said the three men had been law-abiding since moving into the neighborhood. Neighbors said the men kept to themselves. "Everybody knew they were there, but they didn't talk to us and we didn't talk to them," said Angel Gonzalez, 16, who lives with his mother two houses away. "I always saw them walking by. That's my bedroom. I see everything that passes my window. They'd walk by and then come back holding [grocery] bags." Gonzalez said there was talk in the neighborhood about "something happening to them," but the murders shocked him. It was a quiet Friday night about 9 p.m. when a white man in his late 40s and wearing a blue jumpsuit and black baseball cap with an FBI logo knocked on the door of the house, according to police. The man said he was there to warn the three about the hit list. Soon after, with the man still at the house, Russell left for work. When he returned about 3 a.m., he found Eisses and Vasquez dead of gunshot wounds. Police have discounted Russell as a suspect because it was confirmed that he was at work during the estimated time of the deaths. Neighbors also reported seeing the man with the FBI cap at the house. Eisses and Vasquez had committed their crimes in Whatcom County, and some city employees speculated that one motive could be revenge rather than random vigilantism. Police have refused to disclose more details of the case. "We haven't ruled out any motive," said Lt. Craige Ambrose. At the same time, he said the department was warning all local Level III sex offenders of the death threat relayed by the Bellingham Herald newspaper. Earlier in the week, Police Chief Randall Carroll told the Seattle Times that "if sex offenders were targeted and attacked because of their offense, the Legislature could decide they could repeal our sex-offender notification law." Retired law professor John Q. La Fond said that would be the correct course of action. La Fond, who was on the faculty at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, argued on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union against the state's notification law. He said public notification virtually "invites society to take the law into their own hands." La Fond said research showed that public notification laws did not prevent sexual violence or make sexual crimes easier to solve. He called the laws "symbolic but futile gestures" made by a society groping for a way to deal with a complex problem. State Sen. Dale Brandland, a Republican from Whatcom County and a former county sheriff, said there was virtually no possibility that Washington's notification law would be repealed as a result of the murders. Given the climate of anxiety regarding sexual predators, he said, the Legislature might even make notification laws more stringent. Brandland referred to the recent case of Joseph Edward Duncan III, a 42-year-old convicted sex predator from Tacoma, Wash., who is being investigated in the deaths of six children and two adults across four states, including California. Duncan is being held in Kootenai County, Idaho, in the murders of four people and the kidnapping of two children in May near Coeur D'Alene, Idaho. "People here were outraged that he was loose and that terrible crime was allowed to happen," Brandland said. "If there was any kind of leaning by the public, it would be to make the law stricter and to make it even tighter for sex predators. There's very little sympathy for people who prey upon defenseless children." Asmundson, the mayor, said friends in Bellingham had told him, "Too bad they didn't get the third one." There's been a trickle of sympathy for Eisses and Vasquez. Although the city has held no public memorials for the slain sex offenders, some people have dropped off bouquets of flowers and handwritten cards at the front gate of their house. On one blank sheet of paper next to a wilting orchid, someone had scrawled the words, "It is wrong to kill. The end."

Friends: This FOX News Channel personality clearly understands the logic that connects "terrorists" and "perverts" within the psycho-social hysterics of mainstream (i.e., deeply traumatized and perverted) America. The title the Bill O'Reilly website gives O'Reilly's current commentary is "God Help Us" (August 4---also see below). But the title the August 9 Chicago Sun-Times gave the same commentary was much closer to the spirit of O'Reilly's text---and to both O'Reilly's work and the product of the FOX News Channel in general. Get a load of this title: "Offending terrorists, perverts should be least of our worries." (Unfortunately, I cannot find a link to the Sun-Times's version of the commentary. Which is a damn shame. Because as far as titles go, it truly is one for the ages.) But why cede the battleground to the likes of Mr. O'Reilly and this kind of hate- and fear-based rhetoric? I also wonder what percentage of Evergreen Park's best and brightest tune-in to the FOX News Channel on a daily basis? Any hunches? And one last question, before I let you go: Is your Homeland secure?

Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War, Program on International Policy Attitudes, October 2, 2003. (And the accompanying Questionnaire and Media Release.) "'Horror story' finished. Problems at Evergreen Park nursing home spur change in state law," Stephanie Gehring, Daily Southtown, July 13, 2005 "Owners banned from new business. Emerald Park Health Care group can't open new homes for up to three years," Stephanie Gehring, Daily Southtown, July 16, 2005 "Troubled nursing home's owners settle, give up license," Lori Rackl, Chicago Sun-Times, July 17, 2005 "Nursing home ban expanded. Evergreen Park bars admission of mentally ill, addicts," Stephanie Gehring, Daily Southtown, July 20, 2005 "Nursing home ban illegal, experts say. Evergreen Park bars addicts, mentally ill from village facilities," Gregg Sherrard Blesch, Daily Southtown, July 24, 2005 “Mental illness, addiction law under fire in Evergreen Park,” Gregg Sherrard Blesch, Chicago Sun-Times, July 25, 2005 "Nursing home rules go too far in Evergreen Park," Editorial, Daily Southtown, July 28, 2005

God Help Us Bill O'Reilly for BillOReilly.com Thursday, Aug 04, 2005 The relentless attack on public displays of spirituality and religion by progressive secularists has been extremely effective worldwide. Church-going in Western Europe, for example, has collapsed in many countries. Harvard professor Niall Ferguson calls the decline of Christianity in Europe "one of the most remarkable phenomena of our times." Ferguson cites a Gallup Poll that shows barely 20% of West Europeans attend church services at least once a week. The number is 47% and falling in the USA. In Britain, only ten percent of those polled said they would be willing to die for their religious beliefs. And guess who loves that statistic? Can you say the Islama-fascists? The decline of religious influence in the west can be seen in two very important areas. First, how the world is responding to the terrorist Jihad. And second, how societies deal with citizens who commit the most dastardly of crimes. As this column has stated before, if all the world's nations would unite against terrorism, it could not exist. If the fundamental moral tenet of protecting the lives of innocent people superceded all other political concerns, Osama Bin-Laden and the boys would be on the gallows right now. But that is not the case, as we all know. Terrorist acts are routinely justified and accepted by people who feel little for their fellow man. A once-proud country like Spain essentially surrendered to Al Qaeda after those killers bombed a Spanish train. The citizens of Spain had to know that pulling out of Iraq after that bombing gave Al Qaeda a huge victory. But many Spanish citizens simply didn't care. To them, Al Qaeda should be someone else's problem. In America, the anti-religious forces are led by the ACLU and activist liberal judges who are aided by an increasingly secular media. It is no accident that we have thousands of child sex offenders running wild in this country. The crime of child sexual abuse used to be second only to murder. Now the ACLU defends the North American Man-Boy Love Association in court, claiming their free speech rights are being violated. The founding fathers knew that religion, if handled correctly, could be a powerful force for good. The moral guidance provided by The Ten Commandments constrains bad behavior; that's why the Commandments appeared in Scripture. But, now, the secularists insist there is no place in the public square for the Commandments. There is no place for constraints that may offend. Think it over. If every human being chose to set up his or her own moral program, there would never be a consensus of what is proper and what is not. There would never be universal outrage over terrorism or terrible crimes. Moral outrage is the only way to defeat terrible behavior. Today, many of us don't even know what terrible behavior is. Could gangsta rap music have existed 30 years ago? How about partial birth abortion? Hitler and Tojo were defeated by men and women who were willing to die so those villains could not enslave and kill other human beings. It was moral outrage over Pearl Harbor that led to the demise of the dictators. We had a semblance of the same moral outrage in America after 9/11, but that is ebbing away. The terrorists and perverts understand that only moral outrage will beat them back. A person or nation with no moral compass will never be able to summon up that outrage. A human being that lives in the gray area of right and wrong is likely not to make a stand against evil. And that's what the evil doers are counting on.

Friends: Now here's an innovation in the art of exclusion that the Village of Evergreen Park's best and brightest might consider adopting at their next Board meeting:

"Sex Offenders Kept From Storm Shelters," Associated Press, August 7, 2005 (as posted by the Aug. 8 New York Times)

The only problem with this approach is that south-suburban Evergreen Park does not lie in any of the regular hurricane paths. So, since the psycho-social process at work here is for the incohate emotions of hatred and fear to find objects onto which these emotions can be projected, maybe EP's best and brightest can invent a suitable substitution? Please direct your suggestions to the office of Mayor James Sexton, Evergreen Park Village Hall, 9418 S. Kedzie Ave., Evergreen Park, IL, 60805. Remember: The goal here is to give people objects to hate and to fear. Since they can't watch the FOX News Channel 24 hours a day, but also need to engage in other activities like grocery shopping and church, we've got to create other objects for them to hate and fear even when they're not sitting alone, isolated, watching TV. Remember, too, the Emerald Park Healthcare Center has been closed, its eight or ten registered "sex offenders" banished to god-only-knows what other facilities or underpasses. I'm sure everyone can think of something.

Friends: Aside from the "village" of Evergreen Park, just southwest of the city of Chicago, where else in history do we find similar fears expressed over the housing of "registered sex offenders," "drug addicts," and the "mentally ill" in of all places nursing homes?

"Nursing home ban illegal, experts say. Evergreen Park bars addicts, mentally ill from village facilities," Gregg Sherrard Blesch, Daily Southtown, July 24, 2005 "Nursing home ban expanded. Evergreen Park bars admission of mentally ill, addicts" Stephanie Gehring, Daily Southtown, July 20, 2005 "Troubled nursing home's owners settle, give up license," Lori Rackl, Chicago Sun-Times, July 17, 2005

Except that, in the States today, the process occurs in the light of day for all to see. Letters to the editor of the Daily Southtown.

The ODRC study finds its results as typical, citing to: 1) Gibbons, Soothill, and Way, found in Furby, Weinrott & Blackshaw, 1989. (Twelve year study finding sex offender recidivism rate of 4%). 2) Gibbons, Soothill, and Way 1980, found in Furby, Weinrott & Blackshaw, 1989. (Thirteen year study finding sex offenders recidivism rate of 12%). 3) Hanson & Bussiere, 1996. (Mega-analysis of sixty-one sex offender studies with a total of 28,972 sex offenders finding recidivism rate for new sex offenses five years after release was 13.4%). 4) New York Department of Corrections, nine year follow-up study. Finding a 6% rate of recidivism for new sex offenses. These studies are cited on page 11 of the ODRC report. Page 15 of the report, the overall findings are summarized. The ODRC finds, "Contrary to the popular idea that sex offenders are repeatedly returning to prison for further sex crimes, in this population a sex offender recidivating for a new sex offense within 10 years of release was a relatively rare occurrence." Id. at page 15, 4. These studies are available by writing to: National Criminal Justice Reference Center, P.O. Box 6000, Rockville, Maryland 20849-6000. The listing of these studies and their results was quoted from the article entitled, "Why "Megan's" Laws Are Unconstitutional" by Jim Love available here: http://www.prisonerlife.com/articles/articleID=42.cfm

While these studies are limited in follow-up duration, consider the following, longer-term studies and their sources: # NCJ-163392 (February 7, 1997), Sex Offenses and Offenders: An Analysis of Data on Rape and Sexual Assault, finds the recidivism rate of 2,214 convicted rapists released from prison was 7.7% after three years. The only category of crimes with a lower recidivism rate are those persons convicted of murder (6.8%). # NCJ-193427 (June, 2002), Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 1994, finds the recidivism rate of 3,138 convicted rapists released from prison was 2.5% after three years. The only category of crimes with a lower recidivism rate are those persons convicted of murder (1.2%). In April, 2001, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRC) released a report also on the recidivism rate of released sex offenders. In Ten-Year Recidivism Follow-Up of 1989 Sex Offender Releases, Office of Policy, Bureau of Planning and Evaluation, Paul Konicek, Principle Researcher, (available at www.drc.state.oh.us), the recidivism rate of 879 sex offenders released from Ohio's prisons in 1989, after ten (10) years, was found to be 8% for new sex offenses. more to follow...

I must say this is one of the most civilized and intelligent debates about sex offenders I have found online. Kudos to all of you and David for this excellent blog! I am the Executive Director of SOhopeful International, Inc. which is an organization dedicated to educating the public, media and legislators on the REAL recidivism rates of sex offenders, and offer viable solutions to the maniacal system we have in place now that is obviously NOT working. According to the US DOJ Bureau of Justice Statistics 2003 report, "Recidivism of Sex offenders Released in 1994" in their 4 year follow-up period only 3.5% reoffended.[see the report: http://sohopeful.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=184] What constitutes "reoffense" or "recidivism"? This is important - here's what it DOES NOT mean: - minor violations of parole or probation [such as being 5 minutes late to an appointment] - failure to register as a sex offender [in a home or other jurisdiction, the laws change so much that many have a very difficult time keeping abreast of their registration requirements] - commission of a totally unrelated crime [i.e., drunk driving, speeding ticket, et cetera] - being charged for a crime for which the registrant was previously acquitted, but merely under a different statute. I will post a follow-up [or 3]

Friends: If the "Global War on Terror" ever loses its propagandistic appeal, or if the Quran-idolatrists among the ACLU and Amnesty International succeed in their efforts at weakening our Homeland's defenses, perhaps the regime in Washington could launch a Global War on Sexual Predators instead? (Having already launched one domestically, don't forget. And having enlisted in the cause the Church of the Traumatized Americans---which, in terms of sheer numbers, is the single largest denomination in the States today. And still growing.) And if, perchance, the regime in Washington ever does take up a new crusade against Sexual Predators globally, what percentage of the American Left do you suppose will enlist in it? Using the performance of the American Left during the 1990s' Wars of Humanitarian Intervention as the basis for your estimate, do you suppose it will be closer to 10 percent? Closer to 50 percent? Or closer to 90 percent? And, before I let you go, one last question: How long do you suppose it will take before Harvard's Carr Center on Human Rights Policy offers new post-graduate studies in the Global War on Sexual Predators among in its Program Areas?

National Predator Report ("Be Aware. Be Alert. Be Safe.") Prepared remarks of the Atorney General Alberto R. Gonzales at the National Press Club, U.S. Department of Justice, May 20, 2005 "Justice Department Plans Registry of Sex Offenders," Dan Eggen, Washington Post, May 21, 2005 Government Documents on Torture (Homepage), American Civil Liberties Union "United States of America," Amnesty International Report 2005 (Homepage)

Friends: Am posting here the entirety of a superb article in today's New York Times: Laura Mansnerus' "Stoking ‘Moral Panic' Over Sex Offenders" (May 27, 2005)---though The Viagra Scare would have made a better title. (Sorry that I can't provide a link to it.) Where Mansnerus writes that, “As embodiments of evil go, sex offenders are better than terrorists,” cites Philip Jenkins' book, Moral Panic, and sarcastically asks, “who could oppose another restriction on a group considered undeserving of the constitutional protections that apply to everybody else?”---take it to heart. And whereas it is appalling that the American crime, punishment, and political image-making process benefits from "conspicuous vigilance in this area" (Jenkins), including the hysterical, march-in-lockstep news media, consider how much more represensible it is when leftist websites pander to the same sort of scares.

The New York Times May 29, 2005 Sunday Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section 14NJ; Column 5; New Jersey Weekly Desk; ON POLITICS; Pg. 2 HEADLINE: Stoking 'Moral Panic' Over Sex Offenders BYLINE: By Laura Mansnerus. Laura Mansnerus reports from Trenton for The New York Times. With the state trying to find a few billion dollars for a budget that must be wrapped up in a month, the state treasurer, John E. McCormac, has a crushing schedule these days. That goes for his staff, too. But last week, Acting Gov. Richard J. Codey handed Mr. McCormac another task: make sure that no registered sex offenders on state-subsidized prescription plans are charging taxpayers for Viagra. On the same day, Mr. Codey announced a plan to track high-risk sex offenders after their release from prison with global positioning system technology. At a news conference, he was accompanied by the attorney general and five legislators. For their part, legislators were not just fuming by way of press release at the news of sex offenders on Viagra, but clamoring for legislation imposing a mandatory 25-year prison sentence for sexual assaults on minors. So despite the avalanche of legislative business, lawmakers were suddenly dwelling on unidentified enemies of the state. Perhaps it was not despite the press of business in Trenton -- but because of it -- that they wanted to summon some outrage about something else. To begin, The Star-Ledger of Newark had just reported that the state has lost track of many of the sex offenders who are supposed to be on its Internet registry. And budget season always opens elected officials to criticism that New Jersey's government is overpopulated and underperforming, able to provide jobs and contracts to friends while falling short on things like child welfare. But promoting child welfare by punishing sex offenders will not raise any taxes, and will appeal to everyone but a few civil libertarians. Just as no one could vote against something called Megan's law, who could oppose another restriction on a group considered undeserving of the constitutional protections that apply to everybody else? As embodiments of evil go, sex offenders are better than terrorists -- and apparently much easier to deal with, to judge from the state's spotty efforts, in the four years since the Sept. 11 attacks, to secure its ports and nuclear and chemical plants. The Viagra scare was not brought on by any real event but by a report from the comptroller in New York State that an audit of Medicaid rolls there had found Viagra prescriptions for about 200 men who had been convicted of serious sex offenses. This story of unintended consequences provided absurdity that the news media could hardly resist, and it led to a few days of too-vivid analogies like giving guns to paroled muggers or cigarette lighters to arsonists. The federal government quickly told the states to stop the Medicaid reimbursements. Nonetheless, the article stoked what sociologists call a ''moral panic'' about sex offenders. In a book titled ''Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America,'' Philip Jenkins, who teaches history and religious studies at Pennsylvania State University, argues that the 1990's raised exaggerated horrors of pedophiles as the 1980's did of crack mothers. And when fear of sex crimes grew, Professor Jenkins said, ''politicians at local and national levels benefited from conspicuous vigilance in this area.'' New Jersey politicians have been nothing if not conspicuously vigilant. They started a national wave of registration laws in the mid-1990's, after the horrific murder of Megan Kanka, for whom Megan's law is named, in Hamilton Township. They also authorized the involuntary commitment of sex offenders who have completed their prison terms. And for the approximately 200 released high-risk offenders who are not locked up for life, New Jersey legislators are almost certain to approve electronic monitoring. The next step in the bidding war beckons. The experts who say that fear of child molesters is overblown do not say that child molestation is not a serious problem. And it may just be coincidence that the gathering wave of indignation over sex offenders comes when the state has so many other problems. But most of the other problems are boring, like the state's staggering pension obligations, or insoluble, like the never-ending rise in property taxes, or too expensive to remedy, like child poverty. These require a lot of work that will not be discussed at news conferences or publicly assigned to cabinet officers. Of course, as he prepared to face the Assembly budget committee last week, Mr. McCormac was not personally combing the Medicaid rolls for sex offenders signed up for drugs that the television ads say will lead to happy marriages. Employees at the Department of Human Services did that, finding that the state contributed $12,000 to $15,ooo for Viagra for 55 convicted sex offenders over the last 18 months. (For other people's Viagra, the state spent $3.9 million.) They did it very quickly, because they know what's important.

While most people assume jail overcrowding results from rising crime rates, increased violence, or general population growth, that is seldom the case. Here, in order of importance, are the major contributors to jail overcrowding:

1. The number of police officers 2. The number of judges 3. The number of courtrooms 4. The size of the district attorney's staff 5. Policies of the state's attorney's office concerning which crimes deserve the most attention 6. The size of the staff of the entire court system 7. The number of beds available in the local jail 8. The willingness of victims to report crimes 9. Police department policies concerning arrest 10. The arrest rate within the police department 11. The actual amount of crime committed

---- Jerome G. Miller, "American Gulag," 2000 How lovely, if you think about it. An ever-more deeply entrenched, self-sustaining law enforcement, prosecutorial, judicial, sentencing, and "correctional" bureaucracy acting so as to construct a vast array of crime and criminals, as a way of fulfilling its societal purpose and maintaining its power (etc.). And of all of the factors which go into this social complex as a whole, the one that deserves the smallest weight, in Miller's estimate, is the actual amount of crime committed!

Friends: Two letters to the editor published in today's Chicago Tribune (May 15). (I'm not reproducing the names of their authors.)

Show no mercy Roselle, Il. -- It is more than unthinkable that anyone could or would murder two little girls out for an afternoon bicycle ride. As a human community, we cannot let this go. Let the perpetrator be convicted and be quickly put to death for this act. No forgiveness and no mercy. Inhuman killer Upper St. Clair, Pa. -- The person who repeatedly stabbed to death two innocent young girls in a park in Zion is demonstrably not a human being in the sense in which that phrase has typically been understood. The blind rage exhibited by the murderer evidences an individual possessing no heart, no soul and no conscience. What does society do with an individual who has committed such an atrocity, someone who is not able to be rehabilitated and who is deserving of no such opportunity? The reasonable course to follow is that once the individual's guilt has been established beyond a reasonable doubt, that he be executed without delay; no activist liberal judges intervening to delay the execution for years, if not decades, and no further opportunity for the killer to live among civilized human beings or to be provided the opportunity to harm anyone else while imprisoned. There should be no tears shed for the beast who took the lives of these youngsters, and the sooner he departs this Earth, the better off we all shall be. May God rest the souls of these precious children, and provide solace and comfort to those who loved them. They are in the hearts and prayers of caring Americans.

Friends: To quote the St. Petersburg Times ("Legislature finishes with a flurry," May 7):

The [State of Florida's] 2005 Legislature began dramatically when the Senate refused to intervene in a judge's order to disconnect a dying Terri Schiavo's feeding tube, drawing national attention. When the Schiavo matter ended, the Legislature moved quickly to pass a bill backed by the gun lobby to allow law-abiding citizens to "meet force with force" and shoot attackers, even in public. The National Rifle Association hopes to use the momentum from Florida to pass similar legislation in other states

Not sure how the St. Pete Times overlooked the Governor's May 2 signing of the new Jessica Lunsford Act. But there you have it. The logic of the legislative movement in the Sunshine State is unmistakable: From the Schiavo case to meeting force with force. In a commentary for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Marion Hammer, a former president of the National Rifle Association, wrote ("At last, balance shifts away from criminals," May 2):

Law-abiding citizens only want to be able to protect themselves. Proof of that statement can be found by examining the public record of Florida's lawful firearms owners. Of more than 1 million Florida gun owners who were issued licenses to carry concealed firearms for self-defense over the past 18 years, roughly 0.0001 of 1 percent misused their guns and had their licenses revoked. What other group has a better record of responsible citizenship? Survey research shows that at least half of Florida's homes have firearms in them, and there are approximately 6 million individual law-abiding gun owners. The overwhelming majority say the primary reason they own guns is for personal protection. That's what this law is all about: restoring your right under the Castle Doctrine and the Constitution to protect yourself, your family and others. Your home is your castle, and you have a right --- as ancient as time itself --- to absolute safety in it. Florida law is now on the side of law-abiding victims rather than criminals. And that is the way it is supposed to be.

The legislation signed into law on April 26 by the Governor of Florida (some Floridians refer to him as "Jeb-Lock- and-Load-Bush," though in the United States today, one never can be certain whether this is meant as a term of endearment) states:

(3) A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.

To repeat: Has no duty to retreat. That is to say, need not think and act non-violently. A commentator for the Tampa Tribune wondered whether life in his state was "going to change in October when the new rules kick in?" He answered ("Have Gun Will Travel, Down To F-L-A," May 2):

Probably not. I already assume whoever that jerk is in the car that was tailgating me is armed to the teeth. Back in dumber days, if I was driving down the street and the guy in front of me tossed a cup or a burger doodle bag out the window, I might stop and pick it up. Then I would follow him, watch him turn into his driveway, and I would toss the bag on his front lawn. Look, I said those were dumber days. Now somebody else can pick that stuff up. And I suppose I'm only sadder that Florida has reached that point where its government feels obligated to suggest we prepare ourselves to meet force with force, whether we're at home or at the ballpark. Yee-haw.

Referring to Florida as "The Shoot-First State," an editorial in the Washington Post noted that the "Florida law is the 'first step of a multi-state strategy', NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said in an interview with the Post's Manuel Roig-Franzia, making it clear that the NRA believes it has a favorable political climate, especially in the South and the Midwest, in which to market its macho bill. Weapons sellers couldn't be happier." Another fellow, himself a former member of the NRA (and you can see how violent and crazed life in the States is, when the spectrum of opinion has narrowed down to arguments between the NRA-Left and the NRA-Right), warned that the new "Shoot First, Ask Questions Later Act" is "so broad it's mind-boggling that any legislature would pass a bill giving exclusive rights to the person with the gun at the expense of public safety and that a governor would sign it." He continued ("From Self-Defense To Dangerous Extreme," May 1):

The new act established your home as your castle. But [it] didn't stop there. Your car or anywhere else you might be, including the street, is also Castle Doctrine territory, from which you have no duty to retreat. You can stand your ground and meet force with whatever amount of force you think is needed if you feel in danger of great bodily harm or death. You can simply repeat the NRA's magic words — "I felt threatened" — pull the trigger and be indemnified from prosecution if you accidentally kill or injure an innocent. This is not a carefully written law. It's simply a gun lobby's shoot first, ask question later bill.

Meanwhile, the Fox News Network's Bill O'Reilly weighed-in on this country's namby-pamby laws, lack of enforcement, and the legal and prosecutorial "inaction" that, he says, are helping this nation of sexual-predators-gone-wild to get away with everything, the murder of children especially ("The Politics of Cowardice," May 5):

The media made a big deal out of photographing Governor Jeb Bush signing the law, but why didn't he and every other American governor sign a law like this years ago? Everybody knows that kids are being molested in great numbers. A new study out of Hofstra University says that 10% of American school kids are molested by their teachers! Unbelievable. ............ Florida is ground zero for attacks on children, but they are happening everywhere. Don't believe the propagandists who say the problem has always been there, that it is no worse now. It is worse. That's because our justice system is chaotic and many judges are consumed by politics, making liberal rulings that allow the most vicious people imaginable to roam the streets. Jessica Lunsford died for our sins.

The Shoot First, Ask Questions Later Act of 2005 Florida Coalition to Stop Gun Violence "Fla. Gun Law to Expand Leeway for Self-Defense," Manuel Roig-Franzia, Washington Post, April 26, 2005 "Florida Expands Right to Use Deadly Force in Self-Defense," Abby Goodnough, New York Times, April 27, 2005 "From Self-Defense To Dangerous Extreme," Arthur C. Hayhoe, Tampa Tribune, May 1, 2005 "The Shoot-First State," Editorial, Washington Post, May 1, 2005 "Have Gun Will Travel, Down To F-L-A," Steve Otto, Tampa Tribune, May 2, 2005 "At last, balance shifts away from criminals," Marion P. Hammer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 2, 2005 "The Politics of Cowardice," Bill O'Reilly, BillO'Reilly.com, May 5, 2005 "Legislature finishes with a flurry," Steve Bousquet et al., St. Petersburg Times, May 7, 2005 "Florida boosts gun rights, igniting a debate," Jacqui Goddard, Christian Science Monitor, May 10, 2005

I am sure someone are going to make a lot of money out of satelite tracking. Security and surveiliance are big business.This is true from home security system to national ID card and now satelite tracking. One should be more skeptical when a proposed solution is more high tech and more expensive. Exaggerating the threat of whatever shadow that stalks your mind is a very effective marketing technique. Graeme's make an excellent point about who is next. Once a technology is employed there will be a lot of economical incentives to broaden its use. Leaving aside appropiateness(e.g Satelite tracking obviously have no use whatesoever against a molestor in the family or someone with no prior criminal record), there is a very good chance that new, expensive, high tech solutions may not even work very well techically. I think in some way the political economy of satelite tracking is similar to the U.S missile defence system. Whether it "works" or not may be secondary. Perhaps we are barking up the wrong tree by arguing on how dangerous sex offenders are.

"As for so-called "sex predators:" yes, they do exist, and yes, some of them are very difficult to treat. But satellite tracking and the like is a) obviously an attempt to spread fear and mistrust through society and "crack down" on crime; b) unlikely to have much effect on crime rates anyway ... c) extremely expensive; and d) subject to misuse and violation of civil liberties, both amongst innocent people and people who have already served their time." - Graeme I agree with all your points. I was just saying 1) predators do exist 2) The psychology behind of these crimes is very different than the psychology behind more "normal" crimes, so treating them the same way is probably not appropriate. For instance, "One long-term study of hundreds of sex offenders found that the pedophile child molester committed an average of 281 acts with 150 partners. These types of offenders wreak havoc upon society far out of proportion to their numbers." http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/psychology/pedophiles/2.html?sect=19 3) While Satelite tracking seems like the idea of a short-sighted, technophile, politician, I don't reject the notion of some sort of follow-up monitoring completely - the devil is in the details. Given the fact that so many pedophiles are repeat offenders on a massive scale, each one prohbited from acting saves MANY children. OTOH, I agree that life would be hell for an innocent man wrongly convicted.

Friends: Both Frederic Christie and Graeme make some really solid points, I believe. (And I hope that the rest of you don't mind my saying so: But it sure is good to deal with contributors who are willing to post their real names.) As a friend of mine (known as the Bodhi Sattva G-U in certain parts---though it's always possible that I'm misspelling the name) likes to say: To label is to negate. And inasmuch as humanity is concerned---though I believe she'd extend this line of thought to all living things and even to Life itself---imagine the negation of the human person that comes into play when, in place of nurturing, a person is not only labeled and categorized, but labeled and categorized as deviant, as degenerate, and as "fit" for nothing but exclusion from the society of humans? Or in some cases: As unfit for life?

"Only days until possible shutdown," Stephanie Gehring, Daily Southtown, May 7, 2005 [Front page] "Tracking the Predators," Editorial, Chicago Tribune, May 7, 2005

My god. This is precisely how I would have expected the imperious Church of Rome to operate. Or the Reich Cooperative for State Hospitals and Nursing Homes. The Reich Committee for the Scientific Registration of Severe Hereditary Ailments. The Reich Ministry of Justice. And their contemporary heirs. How a really sick "system" operates. The guardians of which all ought to remove their uniforms, turn towards its peculiar apparatus, grasp its bed firmly by the edges---and let it do its job. (On another, not-unrelated note: There was a wonderful little post to a different blog the other day by someone named WildRider: A link to Julia Ward Howe's 1870 "Mother's Day Proclamation"---though here I am using a different link. "In the name of womanhood and humanity...." Not in the name of the State. Not in the name of punishment and incarceration. And god-only-knows: Not in the name of death and destruction.)

Bonus Post "While the role of private enterprises is crucial to the development of the media, the growing phenomenon of media concentration might prevent the public from receiving a plurality of views and affect the independence of press professionals." ---- Excerpt from a Statement issued on World Press Freedom Day by four Special Rapporteurs on this and related subjects (as posted to the website of the UN Office at Geneva, May 3, 2005)

David, about collective memory, couldn't resist suggesting a good implicit critique of innes in eric hobsbawm and terrance ranger's " the invention of tradition". it talks about the instrumental (mis)use of collective memory by elites.

Friends: An odd source---but a good commentary:

"Missing white female alert," Douglas MacKinnon, Chicago Tribune, May 8, 2005

Just as the disinformation system (and its vehicles and agents---all of whom would swear up and down the line that they are free to think and to perform their tasks however they chose) manages stories about atrocities in foreign countries based on whether they are (a) nefarious, (b) benign, or (c) constructive (see below---at present: The Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and whatever crimes the Americans commit), so, too, the same system manages stories about murder victims in this country, perhaps with an even greater totalitarian-equivalence. But though the author, Douglas MacKinnon, is on the right track, it doesn't appear that he's able to think critically enough about the matter he discusses. The individuals in question (and we should add the two girls recently murdered in Florida) may have been missing, young, white women. But in truth they were no more or less attractive than any other individual. ("Attractiveness" is an ascription, not an attribute.) Moreover, the continual, repetitive, and even obsessive focus on the fate of these missing, young, white women does not "demean" the journalistic profession. Huh? Nor can "journalism," as a profession, be "better than this." Because if it were, then it wouldn't be journalism. Instead, the system would be a means of providing people with the information they need to understand the world and to act constructivey upon it. Hardly the case in actual fact. Because by this late a stage in the growth and spread of the disinformation system, we ought to know better that when it shows pack behavior (e.g., reporting on the veracity of Secretary of State Colin Powell's Feb. 5, 2003 lies before the UN Security Council about the former Iraqi regime's "weapons of mass destruction" programs and capabilities), it is performing its task about as well as it can. Only this task isn't what MacKinnon believes. Rather, its real task is denying people the information they need to understand the world and to act constructively upon it---at least in any manner except that which is system-supportive, and that self-reflexively feeds back into it. The real problem is that these great American "centers of journalism" are performing their task exceptionally well: Mobilizing the public to leap from one system-supportive way of thinking and acting to another.

Counter-Revolutionary Violence: Bloodbaths in Fact and Propaganda, Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, 1973 When America Kills I, February 26, 2005 When America Kills II, March 13, 2005 Three Questions, March 17, 2005

Terence: My first temptation is to ask you to try to imagine how many other people there are living in the States today who think like the person who wrote the letter. My second is to add that life in the States is really sick and crazy---not because someone murdered the two girls in Florida, but because of everything else. But then I catch myself. And my next reaction is to add that I don't know whether the first two temptations are rooted in anything more substantial than the crazy and sick garbage with which we're inundated daily, called "news" and all of the rest of it. In Kafka's "Penal Colony" (and I guarantee you that when The Nation used Kafka's title for a review of several recent books, including Seymour Hersh's Chain of Command, all the editors showed was they don't know their literary allusions from a hole in the ground---though Lisa Hajjar's review did contain a lot of very good material), the kind of themes that recur are: What judge, jury, and executioner would be willing to suffer the same fate as the person they condemn? And: Look what happens to the exquisite machinery of "justice" when you see what is really happening. Until the crime-and-punishment sect is willing to give this much to the world---the hell with them. I should add that I am often impressed by what many Americans think, when they are given the chance to express it in ways faithful to what they themselves really think, rather than according to the ways some dishonest opinion pollster has led them to believe. Sticking with the case at hand, the question can't be: Which do you favor more: Locking up "sexual predators" for life? Or locking up "sexual predators" for 25 years, followed by electronic surveillance for the rest of their lives? Postscript (May 8): For a gateway into what in many respects will look like a foreign country, try taking a look some time at:

Global Views 2004 (Homepage), Chicago Council on Foreign Relations and Program on International Policy Attitudes, September, 2004

Literally, the surveys of American beliefs assembled in this one place by the CCFR-PIPA are beyond the pale of anything the disinformation system is willing or able to report.

Friends: FYI: A letter to the editor of the Daily Southtown (May 6), a local newspaper where I live. (I've removed the author's name, as reproducing it here would serve no purpose.) I haven't checked what kind of letters the media in the State of Florida have been publishing on the subject of the State's new Jessica Lunsford Act. But it would be interesting to see.

Punish the child molesters As a society, we need to stand up and fight the actions that allow child molesters and sexual deviants to continue to hurt our children and rape women. We need to voice our disgust with laws, sentencing and organizations that enhance a perpetrator's ability to continue attacks on the most innocent and vulnerable of our society. According to the ACLU, these offenders have rights, and it takes on many of their cases free of charge. This is not to say that I think these individual offenders don't deserve due process of the law. I just don't think their treatment need be extraordinary — to the point that our children, victims and entire communities are not represented fairly or justly, or even worse, placed in grave danger. Due process is one thing — assisting them in these extraordinary measures that allow them to live near schools, defy registration and restrictions, and ultimately continue on their sick path of destruction and hurt is insane. It's these measures that are not necessary and defy logic. The number of released sexual predators and child molesters living in our communities is staggering. While each is different in their degree of violation, they all have violated a strict societal norm and have seriously injured children, physically and psychologically, changing their lives forever. This cannot be tolerated. Ironically, Martha Stewart — who is no danger to anyone — is mandated to wear an ankle bracelet. Isn't it these repeat offenders with a violent background who need to be wearing ankle bracelets with a tracking device? Instead, repeat violent offenders who remain threats and are true dangers are free to work in schools and parks, and live in our neighborhoods, placing out precious children in arm's length of evil. We need to change some laws, strictly enforce the laws already in place, impose mandatory DNA testing and a national register, and take away some of these criminals' 'exceptional' rights, ones that aren't sound either logically or morally, or in fact, for the good of anyone in society. We need to question the motives of organizations in their exceptional defense of these criminals — and ask why their money and great work aren't focused on protecting the children and assisting them in their defense against these monsters. Justice is greatly leaning to the side of these deviant criminals; that's what we need to change. There are surely varying degrees of offenders, but when adults physically violate children, they deserve to be punished harshly and constantly monitored as a measure of public safety. What happened to doing what's right, good-old fashioned common sense and moral/civic responsibility?

Friends: Good stuff posted by Joeblog56. Thanks. I've just added Martin Innes' "Crime as a Signal, Crime as a Memory" to the blog proper as well: http://www.jc2m.co.uk/Issue2/Innes.pdf. Innes' terminology (e.g., 'signifier', 'signified', 'late modernity', 'late modern crime control', and so on) is one that I myself would never consider adopting. But this is his business, after all. Terminology aside, I know exactly where Innes is coming from: For a nice summary, see his last three paragraphs (p. 20-21). Though I believe the whole of it was expressed much more powerfully and incisively in Herman and Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent (1988 and 2002): Namely, that the "'societal purpose' of the media is to inculcate and defend the economic, social, and political agenda of the privileged groups that dominate the domestic society and the state" (p. 298); and that, among the media's many ways of fulfilling this purpose, we have to recognize what Innes calls "signal crimes," and the ways that the media focus attention on them, and why. (Of course, the complete picture is always a lot more cmplicated.) Still. A question for Innes. Citing Clifford Geertz's work (The Interpretation of Cultures, Basic Books, 1973), Innes writes (p. 19):

If, following Geertz...we believe that media narratives of crimes function as examples of ‘stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves', then we need to think about how these signal crimes, that garner significant amounts of attention are absorbed into a wider cultural universe of symbolic meanings. My argument is that as signal crimes pass from being ‘current events' to ‘historical events', some incidents with particular cultural resonances take on the characteristics of collective memories. These collective memories function to ‘frame' subsequent public discourses on crime and in the process, subtly order the shared normative boundaries of contemporary collective life

. I believe that a passage such as this---with its reliance on this overly benign notion of collective memory, rather than, say, a highly selective memory imposed upon the collective---is misleading, because it fails to link the process we are trying to understand, the construction of these signal crimes, to the economic, social, and political interests that they serve. Overall, therefore, I believe that Innes' otherwise fine analysis is naive. We need to understand not only "how are collective memories manufactured," but why, and on whose behalf? Many of you will recall, I suspect, the U.S. Republican Party's 1988 presidential campaign ad, which smeared the Democratic Party's candidate and former Governor of Massachusetts for the State's prison furlough program, using one inmate, Willie Horton's rape of a woman while on furlough, as race-baiting proof that a Democratic president would be "soft on crime." In the United States, this case, like the two recent cases in the State of Florida, shows us how the so-called "collective memory" of crime and the risks associated with crime are constructed---malevolently, and according to a structure of interests that are pathological at heart. A structure that has encouraged the monumental expansion of the U.S. "adult correctional population" for the past 25 to 30 years without interruption.

Communities protect themselves from dangerous individuals, just as our bodies protect themelves from dangerous microbes. If you have no respect for the wisdom of nature or human nature, you would not see the logic of a society isolating and evicting violent criminals. The intellect is able to separate itself from common sense and natural wisdom to such an extent that its "logic" becomes insane. Extreme leftists tend to be "rationalists" whose intellects have been liberated from common sense and wisdom.

" additionally, extreme cases such as the two recent ones in the State of Florida are regularly seized upon by lobbyists for expanding the powers of the state to smash people over their heads." You could have made this point without dismissing the very notion of sexual predators, but you did not. Instead, you did the exact opposite - you never raised this issue and did, explicilty, question the very notion and existance of serial predators.

"I have a brother who is a detective in the UK police-force, and his prime suspects, in the case of child sex-abuse, based on the real history of the issue would be the father, a brother, an uncle, close male friend, in fact anyone close with a means of access and influence" You state the already well-known. I never, no had anyone else, claimed that sexual predators were the main dnager to children, or even the main source of molestations. What I DID say was that sexual Predators DO exist (by the tone of his artilce, David seems to be implying that there is no such thing as a sexual predator) and that this small sample is simply incurable. While pointiing out the fact that they are a minority of offenders may make you feel smart, it is completely irrelevent in the same way that it is irrelevent to point out that most dogs are not rabid in a disucssion of how to treat rabid dogs. Once we know a Dog is rabid we don't waste our time treating it in the same way we would a dog that is violent because it was mistreated, or because it was starving. Sexual Predators are a minority, but they are a dnagerous minority, and when we have finally identified one we should make sure he/she cannot offend again.

Friends: A superb post by Joeblog56. Wish that I had summed up my own views as succinctly as his final paragraph. Personally, I'd be willing to seriously entertain the views of anyone who has studied these problems without contaminating them with a crime-and-punishment mentality. This, I take it, is the point of view expressed by the figures in the Baltimore Sun (May 1) article from the Sexual Disorder Clinic at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, the University of Maryland School of Law, the University of Baltimore's Center for Families, Children and the Courts, and even the U.S. Department of Justice's Center for Offender Management website, with its "Myths and Facts" page---something I had never encountered before the Sun article called it to my attention.

(About which, one might consult the website "Sexual Disorders Information Sites on the Web," sponsored by some of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine personnel. And I hope if any of you know of some other websites, you feel free to post them here.)

But I for one will not countenance expansions of state power to devour even more human souls, no matter what the reason. And one of the cottage industries in the United States for who-knows-how-many-years already has been among lobbyist organizations to do precisely this. Seven million U.S. residents have not been eaten alive by the "correctional" system---quite some concept there: Not just one person "correcting" another, but a violent, pain-inflicting, and freedom-denying state "correcting" millions!---for any reason other than the fact that the historical dynamic prevailing in the States today is a runaway version of this behaviorist monster---from sea to shining sea. I hope all of you pay careful attention to Joeblog56's point that the "eternal call for more surveillance/penal infrastructure" marches in lockstep, right alongside declining rates of actual crime; and that, additionally, extreme cases such as the two recent ones in the State of Florida are regularly seized upon by lobbyists for expanding the powers of the state to smash people over their heads. The United States leads the world in this dynamic. The question is, how do we reverse it? And how do we stop the Americans from spreading it elsewhere?

A violent child molester is considered the worst kind of criminal, because his victims are innocent and helpless. Imagine the terror experienced by a young child kidnapped by a stranger and tortured. Why does David Peterson waste so much time and energy worrying about people who are known to be evil? He has far more contempt for successful businessmen, however honest and hard-working they might be, than he has for maniacal sex criminals.

"Is a sexually violent predator something that somebody somewhere really can be? As opposed to something that somebody somewhere might do?" 1) Yes it can. The simple fact is this: Preferential Pedophiles CAN NOT EVER BE "CURED" - at least no more than Homosexuals can be "cured". This is not a political (right/left) view - it is a CLINICAL one. The best they can do, now, is fight against their desires every damn day of their lives. I'm skeptical of the lifelong monitoring, but only because of it's effect on the innocent and wrongly convicted. On the other hand, the idea that the REAL predators walk out of prison "new men", and capable of simply turning their back on their old ways, is naive and dangerous. Look at the result "forgive and forget" had when it was applied to Catholic priests. Many Molesters have ap psychological NEED to molest in a way very few carthiefs, for example, have a need to steal cars. Different criminals are motivated differently and your notion that molesters can be treated, and "fixed", in the same way as shoplifters is simply ill-informed and ignorant. While sexual predators may not be a majority of molesters they DO exist, and I am both baffled and sickened by your flippant, and obviously un-researched, denial of this fact and your casual "so a few kids gets raped" attitude.

What do you think the motivation is for trying to control sex offenders? Laws can never be perfect so it's easy to find imperfections. But before getting all steamed up, why not consider the motivation behind all this sex offender legislation and publicity? Is it just another form of cruel and unjust oppression? Or is the goal simply to protect American children from evil predators?

First, your ire is misdirected. Like in the Terry Schiavo case, the PEOPLE of FL, "the collective," are to blame. They have the power to tell their legislators how to vote. Representatives and the state level are much more responsive than those at the federal level. If you don't like how your legislator votes, vote him out of office. Second, is your problem merely that the term "child sex offender" is being cast too wide? Doctors estimate that 1 in 5 children are sexually molested. That indicates a problem. Perhaps we need to redefine what sexual molestation is? But lets say there is a guy with a penchant for five year old boys - what's wrong with putting him on a tracking system?