Jacob Wetterling’s mother urges reforming the registry

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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Laws based on inaccuracies lead to lifetime of shame for those who offended as juveniles

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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Michigan SORA changes signed into law

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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Will Michigan legislature ever do right thing?

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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How the media influences how we view sex offenders

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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MASSIVE COVID-19 OUTBREAK AT A SOUTHERN NM PRISON HITS JUST ONE TYPE OF INMATES — SEX OFFENDERS. THAT’S BY DESIGN.

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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