The Free Press, Mankato, Minn. Patty Wetterling lost a son to the actions of a sex offender. But she now has misgivings about a sex offender registry she helped create. Wetterling’s son Jacob was abducted and killed in 1989 in central Minnesota by an area man. After Jacob’s disappearance, Wetterling worked to establish a sex offender registry that would help…
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By Nadia Lopez . . . A spike in coronavirus-related deaths at a state-run psychiatric hospital in Fresno County has angered and alarmed patients, who blame hospital staff for a massive outbreak that infected hundreds and killed more than a dozen patients over the past six months. One patient who spoke with The Bee said he struggled to bring attention to the…
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By Kristan N. Russell and Shawn C. Marsh . . . Few crimes stimulate such visceral reactions and deep-seated fears as sexual offenses. Accordingly, societal responses to sexual offending such as registration and notification laws tend to be quite punitive and highly stigmatizing for the offender. Yet these social control practices are widely considered by the public to be essential for community safety. However,…
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This is to alert you to the possibility that you might receive a phone call from scammers purporting to be law enforcement. Do not believe them. There are so many scams going that it is virtually impossible for us to track them all. The most recent report was from one of our supporters who received a fake call from the…
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By Beth LaBlanc . . . Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Tuesday signed a bill that would eliminate school safety zones and certain appearance requirements in Michigan’s Sex Offender Registration Act. The changes, made to comply with federal court orders that called the current law unenforceable, were among 80 bills passed by the Legislature during its lame duck session and signed by Whitmer…
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By William Buhl, J.J. Prescott, and Miriam Aukerman . . . In early 2012, more than eight years ago, five people challenged Michigan’s Sex Offenders Registration Act (SORA) in court, arguing that the registry branded them as dangerous “sex offenders” without any individual review. One was a man — we’ll call him John — who met a woman at a club open only to those…
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By Lisa Anne Zilney . . . It is often said that the media doesn’t tell us what to think; the media tells us what to think about. The media frames our understanding of public issues and informs us which public issues should be at the forefront of our minds. For 8 years I have taught a college course entitled Sex Crimes. The…
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By Jeff Proctor, New Mexico In Depth As the coronavirus established a foothold in southern New Mexico’s Otero County Prison Facility in mid-May, state officials quietly moved 39 inmates out of the massive complex near the Texas border to another prison near Santa Fe. The inmates shared something in common: None was a sex offender. In the days before the…
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As soon as I saw the headline, I started to worry for New Mexico. The New York Times last week ran a story with the headline, “Jeffrey Epstein Registered as a Sex Offender in 2 States. In New Mexico He Didn’t Have to.” and I immediately thought to myself, ‘OH NO!’ How long will it be until the State of…
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