Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
March 21st, 2019
“Money is never going to give me back these 35 years of my life, there’s no money in this whole entire earth that can repay me for the time I lost, the people that I lost, I lost even my daughter, my children no grow up with me,” Rosario said. “And all that, they’re never going to pay for that but at least it can alleviate how I’m going to start at the age of 61 how am I going to start my life.”
The National Center for Reason and Justice was a longtime supporter of Victor Rosario’s appeal, and we raised the money to hire his expert witnesses.
See the report from Boston’s TV station WCVB, Channel 5.
Posted in Innocents | No Comments »
Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
March 16th, 2019
Photograph by Steven Hirsch / Reuters
“There is now such a stigma attached to people accused of sexual misconduct that anyone who defends legal principles on their behalf risks being mistaken, in the public mind, for a defender of sexual violence. Lawyers have always been vilified for taking on unpopular clients, but, in the #MeToo era, defense lawyers endanger their good standing even in the most liberal communities, Harvard being only one example.”
Read the article by Jeannie Suk Gerson in the New Yorker.
Posted in Sex Panic | 1 Comment »
Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
March 10th, 2019
Credit: Omaha World-Herald
“Of interest to this blog’s audience is the role of the police psychologist. As I blogged about back in 2008, Wayne R. Price, PhD saw no ethics conflict in helping to interrogate the suspects even though he had previously provided therapy to two of the young women. Dr. Price reportedly reassured the suspects that their lack of any recollection of the crime was because they had repressed the traumatic memory. He later assisted them in reconstructing the details of their imagined crime.”
Read the post at the Forensic Psychologist Blog.
Posted in Innocents, Memory | No Comments »
Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
February 23rd, 2019
(Spencer Platt / Getty Images)
“We know today almost all child sexual abuse involves people the victim knows, and almost all new sex offenses involve those not on registries. Sex offenses in New York have not decreased due to the registry, and recidivism rates for those with sex offense convictions are among the lowest of any offense.
“Research has exhaustively documented the negative consequences of registries beyond their ineffectiveness. In addition to the extraordinary stigma of “sex offender,” the registry destroys personal and social networks, increases unemployment and homelessness, and subjects those on it to verbal and physical assaults.”
Read the article by NCRJ Director Emily Horowitz in the New York Daily News.
Posted in Sex Panic | No Comments »
Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
February 19th, 2019
[embeddoc url=”https://ncrj.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/SOPRI-Judith-Levine-02-28-19-v3.pdf” download=”all”]
Posted in Sex Panic | No Comments »
Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
February 10th, 2019
“When originally put into place, Michigan’s Sex Offender Registration Act was narrow in scope and specifically designed to be an important law enforcement tool to protect the public from dangerous offenders,” said Nessel. “But since its enactment, the Act has swelled without any focus on individualized assessment of risk to the community, which makes it increasingly difficult for law enforcement officers to know which offenders to focus on. It also makes it difficult for offenders to rehabilitate and reintegrate into the community because they are limited in where they can live, work or even attend their children’s school functions.”
Read the article at www.michigan.gov.
Posted in Sex Panic | No Comments »
Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
February 7th, 2019
Bob Halsey turns 90–or possibly 91–on February 18th. I am surprised he is still alive. He has been in bad health for years.
Bob is an innocent man who has been in prison since September of 1993. His lawyer may obtain a compassionate release. But if that succeeds, he has no place to go. It would have to be a nursing home, if one would take him.
Bob was railroaded by many of the same characters who sent Bernard Baran to prison. Baran’s prosecutor, Dan Ford, was the trial judge. Jane Satullo was the chief interrogator of the children.
You can learn more about his case.
Here is the address for cards:
Robert C. Halsey
W-55045
POB 1218
Shirley MA 01464
Posted in Innocents, Prisons, Sex Panic | No Comments »
Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
January 17th, 2019
“I went through a lot, man,” Harrell recalled in an interview. “I had no place to live for a great amount of years. Had to do odd jobs to survive, sleeping in abandoned cars and homes … I couldn’t be around my own kids without another adult being there with me. ”
Read the article by S.P. Sullivan at nj.com.
Posted in Innocents, Sex Panic | No Comments »
Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
January 14th, 2019
“More than 19 million people have a felony records, and more than 100 million criminal records exist in state criminal history repositories (individuals may have a criminal record in several states). These records routinely bar individuals from obtaining employment. Even when a person is as equally qualified as another candidate for a position, research shows that employers are less likely to offer those with felony records a callback or a job than those without such a record. People of color with criminal records face an even greater employment penalty than their white counterparts.
“In other instances, entire industries seek to exclude the convicted through overbroad “ good moral character” clauses that are weaponized to deny the convicted occupational licenses in the guise of improving public health or safety. In reality, these restrictions can result in quite the opposite effect: As employment is a key factor in decreasing an individual’s chance of recidivism, restricting employment reduces public safety. Even when individuals do not return to crime, children and families of those with criminal records who are unemployed suffer from a lack of financial resources. ”
Read the editorial by Emily Mooney and Arthur Rizer in the Washington Examiner.
From Bill Dobbs and the Dobbs Wire.
Posted in Prisons | No Comments »
Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
December 30th, 2018
“In short, hyper-punishment continues, even accelerates, following new arteries and pathways in the body politic. The punitive state is a behemoth, a monstrous machinery that struggles to maintain its equilibrium. Piecemeal reforms of this or that part of the system will fail to dramatically shift the logic of the system.
“We have not addressed the moral panics that sedimented over the past forty-five years into draconian laws. We have not curbed the zeal to punish. We have not restored what ought to be at the center of law: the idea that punishment has limits, and that the institutions have a responsibility to restore offenders to society in a better condition than when they were judged guilty of crimes.”
Read the article by NCRJ Director Roger Lancaster in Jacobin.
Posted in Prisons, Sex Panic | No Comments »
