By Philip Fornaci and Roger Lancaster August 23 at 11:32 AM Philip Fornaci is a civil rights lawyer based in Washington. Roger Lancaster is the author of “Sex Panic and the Punitive State.“ On Monday, the Circuit Court in liberal…
Category: In The News
The First Step Act Reviewed
The text of the Act: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/756/text I have never looked deeply into the laws and regulations that are at the Federal level. This could be because it has never affected me, but mostly because I am not entirely sure they…
The Shaming of America
Public stocks, public dunkings. These were the fates of those shamefully accused of witchcraft in the 1600’s. Scarlet Letter A’s for adulterers in the 17th century. A way of publicly humiliating and shaming those who went outside of their church…
TN Sex Offense Could Get Judicial Diversion
September 5, 2018, a Knox County Court has given a former youth minister who pled guilty to soliciting an underage girl for sex, the chance for judicial diversion. Jaon Evan Kennedy, a 48 year old father of three was caught…
Doctor Who Raped Sedated Patient Receives No Prison Time
Several news articles this week have reported on Dr. Shafeeq Sheikh, a former Houston doctor who surprisingly received no prison time after sexually assaulting a hospitalized patient. Instead, the former doc had his medical license and a $10,000 fine suspended.…
Sex Offenders Take Over Island of Oahu !
Now that I’ve got your attention- The current population of Hawaii’s 3rd largest island, Oahu, is approximately 992,605 as of a 2016 census. The population of registered sex offenders in the United States (and I use the term “United” loosely)…
HUD Bans Housing for Lifetime Registrants
In June 2001 the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, now headed up by Secretary Ben Carson, banned lifetime registered sex offenders from subsidized public housing. (Only those tenants who were in subsidized housing before the law went into…
Scammers Targeting Registrants
Scammers- They come in all shapes and sizes and use any means possible first to scare and intimidate you and then to separate you from your hard earned money. There are email scams that inform you that you’ve won big…
Witch Hunt Mentality Equals A Win For Registrants
Because of a hysteria driven, over-zealous mother, the New York State Senate recently passed legislation that prohibits placing school bus stops in front of the homes of registrants. Some may call it a “win” for this witch-hunting mother and others…
Foxes Guarding the Henhouse in Colorado and Tennessee
Colorado’s House Bill 18-1427 to eliminate conflicts of interests within the state’s Sex Offender Management Board seemed like a sure thing. The measure had not only bipartisan support but also support of D.A.’s that prosecute sex offenders and the ACLU.…
West Virginia’s Fake News Regarding Sex Offenders
I thought it started out as a good news article from The Exponent Telegram in West Virginia. A judge was reading sex offender rules to a defendant at a sentencing hearing. The author of the article correctly noted that defendants…
A Heartless Man Without A Soul
CBS/ South Florida recently had Ron Book/Chairman of Miami-Dade Homeless Trust debating with host and investigative reporter Jim DeFede about the Miami-Dade homeless encampment that has recently been shut down. You would think someone who’s chairman of something called the…
Check Your State’s Sex Offender Treatment Board For Conflicts of Interest
A few weeks ago I wrote about registrants being used as what amounts to “uncompensated lab rats” for VASI/Visual Assessment of Sexual Interest screening in Tennessee. My concern was not only that registrants are being forced to take visual assessment…
Neighborhood Hysteria: This Time It’s Not Over A Sex Offender!
77 year old Carl Reimann gets out of prison. He has served his sentence for the 1972 Yorkville murders of 5 people at a restaurant, including one who was 16. Mr. Reimann moves into a quaint little neighborhood in La…
Registry Restrictions VS Parental Rights
Recently I wrote a piece on Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin’s denying and then limiting a father who also happens to be a registrant, access to visit his ill child in the hospital. A father who was doing right by his…
How To Eat An Elephant
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. That’s how solving an enormous problem has often been described. You just keep at it, taking one small bite at a time until the entire problem is devoured. That’s…
Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin RX Is “Cruel & Unusual Punishment”
Having a seriously ill child is heartbreak enough, but a father prevented from visiting his sick child makes this story even more tragic and it should never have happened in the first place. This is “bad medicine” at it’s worst! Stuart…
Registrants: Uncompensated Research Subjects
Are registrants uncompensated lab rats? TN sex offender treatment includes the use of VASI/Visual Assessment of Sexual Interest screening. From the little amount of information available online regarding VASI, it’s similar to the AASI/Abel Assessment for Sexual Interest developed by…
Do Conditions of Parole Violate the First Amendment?
For those registrants under parole, commonly referred to as “supervision”, it comes as quite a shock when you are first informed that you can’t have a smartphone or access to the internet, all violations of parole for most registrants. Access…
You’ve Got A Friend, But It’s Not U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions !
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions spoke at a conference for the International Association of Chiefs of Police in Nashville, TN on Thursday, his focus, increasing the prison population! You would think that government would be more interested in decreasing prison…