CCRC — PA high court will again review sex offender registration
April 9, 2019 | By Aaron Marcus Two years ago, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court shook up long-settled orthodoxy by ruling that the state’s sex offender registration law, otherwise known as SORNA (Sexual Offender Registration and Notification Act) was pun …
Posted: April 10, 2019Spring 2019 Symposium — Residency Restrictions: Wise or Unwise
On February 28th, the Journal of Public Law & Policy held a symposium at Mitchell Hamline discussing the wisdom of laws banishing people convicted of sex offenses from living in a wide swath of residential areas. Those heard at the event included a …
Posted: March 20, 2019Our cruel, counterproductive sex offender laws: Anthony Weiner is a window into what’s wrong with our system of punishment
NY Daily News | By Emily Horowitz Last week, Anthony Weiner was released from federal prison to a Bronx halfway house after serving 21 months for sending sexually-explicit messages to a 15-year-old girl. Next, like approximately 4.5 million others on p …
Posted: February 20, 2019Miami-Dade Sex Offenders ‘Forced to be Homeless’
The Crime Report | By Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg Since he was released from prison almost five years ago, John has never had a place he can call home. Suffering from Parkinson’s disease, he spends nights outside in remote areas of Miami-Dade County—slee …
Posted: February 20, 2019Michigan AG Dana Nessel Does the Unthinkable: Argues the Truth about SORA
By Guy Hamilton-Smith Michigan’s Attorney General has entered the cultural and legal conflagration of how we reckon with sexual violence in our society with a remarkable (and compelling) argument: Michigan’s sex offender registries are not effective at …
Posted: February 20, 2019Editorial: Sex Offender Registry afoul of constitution
The Detroit News, January 24, 2019 Michigan lawmakers seem keen on making important reforms to the state’s criminal justice system, which should expand protections for civil liberties. Another item they should add to the list: Revamping the state’s Sex …
Posted: February 4, 2019Why Should Feminists Be Against the Sex Offender Registry?
By Reina Gattuso In October, the Supreme Court heard a case that was painfully ironic, considering the Kavanaugh hearings the nation had just been subjected to: a challenge to the United States’ extremely restrictive sex offender registry laws. While o …
Posted: January 2, 2019Sentencing Commission Symposium on Sex Offender Registration and Management
On December 7th, 2018 SOLPRC Director Eric Janus was at the Connecticut Sentencing Commission Symposium on Sex Offender Registration and Management — a daylong series of presentations on the topic of sex offense registration with a particular focus on …
Posted: December 10, 2018When Stealing Legos Adds To a Lifetime of Consequences — The Appeal
By Elizabeth Weill-Greenburg Seth (not his real name) describes himself as an outcast as a child. “I was the fat kid with glasses that got picked on ever since first grade,” said Seth, now 40, who grew up in New Jersey, where he still lives. “I was alw …
Posted: December 9, 2018[The Appeal] The Endless Punishment of Civil Commitment
In January, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge James Bianco ruled that after spending nearly two decades detained by the state of California without trial, George Vasquez was a free man. Unlike the 536,000 people held pretrial in the criminal justice system in America, Vasquez, 44, was not being held because he was accused of a crime. Instead, Vasquez was locked up for 17 years out of fear that he might commit a crime.
Posted: September 5, 2018Failure-To-Comply Arrests Reveal Flaws In Sex Offender Registries [The Appeal]
Joshua Vaughn, August 1, 2018 — In January 2015, Franklin Barrick packed his bags and moved out of his home near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, leaving his wife behind. For most, the end of a marriage would bring divorce proceedings in civil court, but f …
Posted: August 3, 2018Expert: Crime Registries Turn People into Pariahs With ‘Very Little to Lose’ [The Appeal]
Jessica Pishko / The Appeal – On November 19, 2009, Brittany Passalacqua and her mother, Helen Buchel, were found brutally murdered, slashed multiple times with a boxcutter, in their Geneva, New York, home. Prosecutors charged John Brown, Buchel’s boyf …
Posted: July 25, 2018Assessing the Real Risk of Sexually Violent Predators: Doctor Padilla’s Dangerous Data [Law Review]
This Article uses internal memoranda and emails to describe the efforts of the California Department of Mental Health to suppress a serious and well-designed study that showed just 6.5% of untreated sexually violent predators were arrested for a new sex crime within 4.8 years of release from a locked mental facility. The Article begins by historically situating sexually violent predator laws and then explains the constitutionally critical role that prospective sexual dangerousness plays in justifying these laws. The Article next explains how the U.S. Supreme Court and the highest state courts have allowed these laws to exist without requir- ing any proof of actual danger. It then describes the California study and recon- ciles its findings with those of a well-known Washington study by explaining the preventive effects of increasing age. Finally, the Article explains how these results undermine the justification for indeterminate lifetime commitment of sex offenders.
Posted: June 29, 2018[Detroit Free Press] Treatment of sex offenders depends on whether they’ve challenged rules
WASHINGTON – Eight months after the U.S. Supreme Court effectively upheld a decision saying parts of Michigan’s sex offender registry law — one of the toughest in the nation — were unconstitutional, thousands of former sex offenders who thought they’d …
Posted: June 8, 2018[The Appeal] Sex Registries as Modern-Day Witch Pyres: Why Criminal Justice Reform Advocates Need to Address the Treatment of People on the Sex Offender Registry
Perhaps the most irrefutable statement that can be made about modern day America is this: we have a penchant for putting people in cages. More than any other nation on the planet, we rely on incarceration as the fix for our social ills. America’s unpre …
Posted: June 1, 2018Social Media Restrictions
Technology & Marketing Law Blog- State Laws Restricting Social Media Use by Sex Offenders Are Failing in Court (2013)
Posted: November 30, 2017Judge Strikes Down Kentucky’s Social Media Ban for Sex Offenders
Lexington Hearld- Judge OK’s Social Media (2017)
Posted: November 30, 2017Shawna: A Life on the Sex Offender Registry
The Marshall Project Video- Shawna: A Life on the Sex Offender Registry A young mother struggles with life on the sex offender registry David Feige, Sept 17, 2017
Posted: September 26, 2017A ‘Frightening’ Myth About Sex Offenders
New York Times Op-Doc by David Feige Our harsh treatment of sex offenders is based on flawed social science Video- A ‘Frightening’ Myth About Sex Offenders
Posted: September 26, 2017Welcome from Professor Janus
Welcome to the Sex Offense Litigation and Policy Resource Center at Mitchell Hamline School of Law. This website, launched in 2017, is designed to be a resource for collecting information about these lawsuits and for developing a set of best practices, …
Posted: July 1, 2017