Category Archives: politics

There’s an inter­est­ing arti­cle in the NYT about for­mer pris­on­ers and the oper­a­tion of what used to be termed “halfway houses.” Under­ly­ing the entire arti­cle is the assump­tion that we want our for­mer pris­on­ers to do well– to suc­ceed upon release, to inte­grate back into the com­mu­nity– and that this is why these places exist. But clear, too, is that many either don’t think about it at all, or would actively “lock them up and throw away the key”– as attested by the fact that the house at issue is bare-bones in the extreme. These folks are oper­at­ing their whole-hearted attempt at help­ing their fel­lows rein­te­grate on a shoe­string, frayed along its length. It brought to mind an argu­ment they were hav­ing on my favorite morn­ing radio show– one excep­tional for the lack of infor­ma­tion with which they were argu­ing, and the nar­row sights on which they were trained.

When I was a law clerk, our state enacted a law designed to “civilly com­mit” peo­ple who had been con­victed of sex crimes, and who were about to be released from prison. Yep, let me say that again. They had done their time, under the sen­tence imposed by the judge within the range set by the Leg­is­la­ture. You know, the Leg­is­la­ture we the peo­ple elected? And some of these folks were being released early, again under a good behav­ior early parole scheme approved by the Leg­is­la­ture. How­ever, the Peo­ple were Shocked, Shocked! to dis­cover the fol­low­ing: if you ware­house a sex offender in prison and make no attempt to edu­cate him, coun­sel him, pro­vide him with the ther­apy to allow him to learn to keep his ille­gal urges to him­self, then, GASP!, he might do it again once you release him. Of course, rather than just insti­tute a system-wide sex offender coun­sel­ing pro­gram in the pris­ons, they enacted a whole new, more expen­sive sys­tem to make the pub­lic think they were con­cerned about pub­lic safety, and con­sume immea­sur­able time and money wend­ing through even more court pro­ce­dures. They would get the guy all ready for release, and then, oops, you’re maybe a sex­u­ally dan­ger­ous per­son, stay locked up for another 6–8 months while we pay off some state psy­chi­a­trist who’s looked at your records for 10 min­utes to say you still have a “propen­sity” to com­mit sex crimes. Bull.Shit. This Mis­be­got­ten Abom­i­na­tion of a “Law” was upheld by some republican-appointed judges, and it stands today. And no one wants a sex offender in their neigh­bor­hood. But it’s easy to back track from sex offend­ers, folks. First it’s mur­der­ers, then it’s drunk dri­vers– all locked up indef­i­nitely because they “might” do it again (even though the state doesn’t bother to quan­tify the like­li­hood, or be at all sci­en­tific about it.)

So tell me this– if no one wants a sex offender in their neigh­bor­hood, then where are they sup­posed to live? If every­one believes that every sex offender/murderer/batterer/drunk dri­ver is inca­pable of remorse, of guilt, of change, then what is their incen­tive to work toward those goals, nec­es­sary to suc­cess­ful social rein­te­gra­tion? And, by pay­ing atten­tion to only the reg­is­tered sex offend­ers, what lessons are we fail­ing to teach our kids about being wise around all strangers, and about being wise about their own bod­ies, their own brav­ery? Or have you for­got­ten the sto­ries you’ve heard about “it went on for years before they caught him?”

Jesus hung out with pros­ti­tutes and tax col­lec­tors. He for­gave a mur­derer, whilst suf­fer­ing on the cross, beside him. For­give­ness, stern­ness, vig­i­lance– do you think they can run together dur­ing the reha­bil­i­ta­tive course?

Update:  You’ve left some great com­ments and asked some impor­tant ques­tions, includ­ing the hard truth that there are some peo­ple who may not be inter­ested in being reha­bil­i­tated.  I am more than will­ing to con­cede that there are some who won’t even try– but I remain con­cerned that we don’t even give peo­ple the chance to try and refuse, or fail.  And for the truly unre­formable?  Well, let’s have some hon­esty in the sen­tenc­ing process up front, rather than try to fix it at the back door, when peo­ple are being released early due to prison over­crowd­ing, due in no small part to the (blah blah insert lib­eral bias here) war on non-violent offend­ers and mar­i­juana pos­ses­sors of less than a kilo.