Politicians can't reform the Criminal Justice System when they don't even know what it does

There are plenty of things to laugh about regarding this weekend's "Conservative Political Action Conference", like the nightmare-inducing Trump "Golden Calf" statue (that was made in Mexico) or that the CPAC stage is shaped like the "Odal Rune" worn on the collars of Waffen SS units during World War II. It is hard to believe, but I actually read a positive CPAC-related story. 

I have to admit, it just feels odd spotlighting a Florida politician with good intentions trying to get conservatives interested in Criminal Justice reform. It feels like talking about the Cleveland Browns being Super Bowl contenders. 

From Florida Politics:

"Donalds, in his first term representing Florida’s 19th Congressional District, addressed the topic of criminal justice, both in messaging and policy.

With experience running for, and winning, contested primary elections in the Sunshine State, the Southwest Florida Republican made what he called “two very important acknowledgments” about the kind of policy people wanted.

'First, a system that punishes and completes the punishment of those who do wrong,' Donalds said.

But that punitive approach is only half of it, the Congressman added.

Conservatives should “'appreciate that people who have broken laws are still American citizens and there must be a conduit for them to come back into society.'”

I'm not knocking Rep. Donalds's good intentions here, but the concept that this current system of punishment can ever somehow be "completed" is a foreign concept. to those running the system. Sure, some justice reforms have been made, but they've been largely symbolic and mostly for a select few criminal convictions. 

The highly touted First Step Act has a long list of crimes blocked from obtaining good time benefits, including nearly all sexually-based offenses. The Second Chance Act of 2008 also excluded sex offenses from any beneficial program it created. Registered Persons are banned from many jobs and public places, with some state being worse than others. Florida, the home state for Rep. Donalds, has an abysmally poor record for the treatment of Registered persons. 

People convicted of sex offenses are routinely excluded from criminal justice reform measures. Meanwhile, legislators still find the time amidst the pandemic to expand sex offense registries or to add new prohibitions on the rights of Registered Persons. 

Anti-Registry activists have stated for years that the punishment should end at the completion of a court-imposed sentence. But we like to pretend the sex offense registry is not punishment. We love to pretend that those indefinitely detained (Abu Ghraib-style) in "civil commitment programs" are "patients" receiving treatment. We continue to punish long after the completion of a court appointed sentence while simultaneously denying it is indeed punishment. If it looks, waddles, quacks, and floats like a duck, legislators and courts declare it is a cow. 

Well-meaning criminal justice reformists are seemingly unaware of the fact that the punishment doesn't end the day someone is released from prison or supervision period. I don't know if they are honestly ignorant or willfully overlooking the harm their laws have caused. 

Rep. Donalds told conservatives they should “want to be tough with crime but understanding of the condition of the human being,” to show that “opportunity even exists if you’re rebounding from the worst spot in your life. Everybody has the redemptive ability within them if they actually think the people around them want them to be redeemed." 

Right now, that's wishful thinking. Society has to change their viewpoint and it has to be addressed everywhere from the courts and legislators to the mass media. Despite our efforts in recent years, one look at the average comment section of a news story is enough evidence to prove we have a long ways to go. I haven't forgotten that sex offense registry laws are heavily supported by both of our main political parties, either. Both parties have harmed Registered Citizens and their families by espousing nonsensical, revenge-driven laws.

Criminal justice reform is a noble idea, but unless we are included in that idea, then these words ring hollow. Still, it is refreshing to hear someone from the state with one of the worst track records for justice reforms say these words. 

What does a Biden/Harris presidency mean for the Anti-Registry Movement?

 WHAT A BIDEN/ HARRIS PRESIDENCY MEANS FOR RCs

These past four years have truly brought out the worst in American politics, and in many ways, that nightmare is over. However, a transition of power in the White House has meant little to us in the past and will likely not matter this time, either. 

First, consider the fact passing tough-on-crime laws have been a bipartisan effort. Democrat President Clinton signed Megan’s Law in 1996. Republican President Bush signed the Adam Walsh Act (AWA) in 2006. Democrat President Obama signed International Megan’s Law (IML) in 2016. While Republican President Trump never got the chance to sign such sweeping legislation tied to registration laws, he signed FOSTA-SESTA — the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act. Both these laws have led to massive internet censorship and helped exacerbate the existing wave of human trafficking panic. (Of course, the 2010s were a decade of various sexual panics from campus assault scares to the #MeToo movement to the PizzaGate/ QAnon conspiracy theories.) And while people were touting Trump’s passage of the First Step Act, very few provisions benefited anyone convicted of anything but petty drug-offenses, as violent/ sex offenses were excluded from most beneficial provisions of the Act. 

This brings us to Democrat President Joe Biden. In Joe Biden’s first Presidential campaign in the 1980s, he ran on a tough-on-crime campaign and had been on the Senate Judiciary Committee since 1981, helping to pass tougher sanctions on drug offenses during Republican President Reagan’s “War on Drugs.” 

Biden has been instrumental in the creation of Sex Offense Legislation on the federal level. Joe Biden helped create the controversial Omnibus Crime Bill of 1994, which he largely wrote and shepherded through the legislative process as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The 1994 “Biden Crime Bill” as (Biden himself has called it as recently as spring 2020) created the Jacob Wetterling Act, mandatory minimums, and mass incarceration. Biden defended his passage of the bill during his campaign, claiming it decreased crime (a claim disputed by many criminologists.) 

Biden has referred to the controversial AWA as the “Biden-Hatch Bill.” (Orrin Hatch, R-UT, also was a supporter of the defunct Dateline TV series “To Catch a Predator” and the vigilante group Perverted-Justice.) During the passage of the AWA, Biden stated, “Plain and simple: This legislation will help save children's lives. Sexual predators must be tracked and parents have a right to know when these criminals are in their neighborhoods. We've done a lot to protect our kids against SOs - creating the NCMEC in 1984, enacting the Biden Crime Bill in 1994, and enacting the Amber Alert system in 2003 - but it is not enough. We must do more. The AWA will help prevent these low-life sexual predators from slipping through the cracks.”

Vice-President Kamala Harris is a former sex crimes prosecutor in CA. As DA, Harris co-sponsored a state law that would have banned SOs from social media sites. And as AG, she presided over “Operation Boo,” a mandatory curfew for all homeless SOs on Halloween. Conservative media attacked her for deciding against enforcing a 2000 foot residency restriction law for SOs on parole, which passed by popular vote as part of the state’s “Jessica’s Law. However, the AG office only decided against further enforcement of the restrictions due to In re Taylor, Docket # S206143 (CA Sup Ct, 3/2/2015), which ruled that San Diego Co’s restrictions were unconstitutional as applied. Harris knew that any further enforcement would lead to more lawsuits and decided to no longer enforce the law. 

On the one hand, the powers of the President and Vice-President to pass any laws by Executive Order. (An executive order is a type of written instruction that presidents use to work their will through the executive branch of government.) But Sex Offense Laws have been passed by legislation, not by Executive Orders. But if a federal Sex Offense bill is placed on a President’s desk, be it Trump’s, Biden’s, or whoever is elected in 2024 and beyond, I doubt it will get vetoed.

Part of the problem is Sex Offense Laws have the support of both sides of the political aisle. Conservatives fulfil their moralistic, tough-on-crime agendas, while liberal receive their “justice” for alleged and real crime victims and the belief they are protecting the vulnerable. On a related note, Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell has a long record of rejecting criminal justice reforms, and had to be pressured by both parties just to get the First Step Act on the floor. This is why registry reform is a hard sell. It is not impossible, since some harsh laws have been scaled back, although most reforms were merely responses to lawsuits. Still, the leader of this country has great influence over public policy, so two tough-on-crime candidates leading this nation could be bad news for registry reformists.