#SOR abolition

[eroticcannibal]

Makes no sense to be pro prison abolition and against sex offenders registers (done properly, I think we can all agree that public pissers being on the list and publically accessible lists are bad)

Risks to the community have to be managed. SORs are a way of doing that while still allowing the offender to be within the community. You take away prisons and SORs, you are left with vigilante justice.

[stele3]

This means figuring out community-based rehabilitation for people who do bad things.

One of my friends is a sex offender, was on the SOR and spent two years in prison. I believe in prison abolition and so that means I welcome him into my life and my community, and make sure he has support, environmental enrichment, and I also maintain a slight, baseline awareness of any signs that he’s slipping back into bad habits.

If you believe in prison abolition then put your money where your fuckin’ mouth is. There will be people who commit “scary” crimes like rape and assault, and those people deserve the chance to be rehabilitated, too. The only way that happens is with community support.

start pushing for prison abolition or at the very least widespread reform right now i mean it. you can’t say “fuck the police” and “all cops are bastards” and talk about alternatives to police, but say nothing about alternatives to prison and the crime against humanity that is the racist drug war and the U.S.’ mass incarceration, the financial machine behind the police industrial complex

[aronarchy]

https://jjie.org/2020/11/16/sex-offender-registration-doesnt-help-victims-hurts-young-offenders

Opinion: Sex Offender Registration Doesn’t Help Victims, Hurts Young Offenders

Jason was 14 years old when he met his first girlfriend, a 13-year-old neighbor of the foster family with whom he lived. After a few months of dating, his girlfriend’s mother walked in on the teenagers engaging in consensual oral sex and called the police. Jason was arrested and charged with child molestation. He was adjudicated delinquent in juvenile court and placed on the California Sex Offender Registry. Before he was old enough to drive, Jason was branded a sex offender on a public, searchable website.

Now in his 30s, Jason suffers from depression and has experienced homelessness. Despite earning a college degree, he cannot find steady employment. An internet search shows he is a registered sex offender.

Jason is like many others who struggle to lead a healthy adult life because of a juvenile adjudication based on unsurprising adolescent behavior. States across the country place children as young as 8 years old on sex offender registries for conduct that is otherwise developmentally normal.

Required by federal law, this label imposes barriers on young people’s access to education, employment and safe housing. It can devastate them psychologically with little benefit to the community.

Youth sex offender registration costs the public over $3 billion a year. Rather than investing in preventive programming and victims’ services, resources are routinely allocated to a carceral and punitive response. Meanwhile, research-backed social programming and community needs remain largely underfunded.

For example, in 2017 California spent $140 million to register and monitor 3,500 youth registrants. Yet that same year, the budget for prevention programs and victims’ services was only $46,000.

In addition to the high cost of registration, sex offender registries do not advance the public safety goals for which they were created. Only 3% to 5% of youth who commit sexual offenses are likely to reoffend, showing that registration wastes resources on individuals who pose little to no risk of future harm.

State rules hard to understand

Youth are required to register as sex offenders for a wide range of offenses, including consensual sexual relationships, sexting and public urination. These laws have a disproportionate impact on marginalized communities. Laws that criminalize consensual same-sex relationships disproportionately target LGBTQ youth. Racial bias in charging and sentencing can also lead to greater numbers of Black and brown youth on the registry.

A recent report by Juvenile Law Center shows that 39 states place children on sex offender registries. The registration procedure and consequences vary widely from state to state. Youth can be required to register for their entire lifetime in some states, which dooms them to a life on the margins.

Indeed, once labeled a sex offender, the stigma remains regardless of how long the registration period lasts; web-based information and databases often remain online and accessible even if the period of registration has long since ended. These registration laws completely disregard the rehabilitative purpose of the juvenile justice system.

Today, approximately 200,000 individuals are on sex offender registries for offenses committed prior to age 18. Registered youth face harsh restrictions that regulate where they can live, work or attend school. Some states prohibit such youth from residing with other children in the home, which can preclude youth from living with siblings or their own children or partner’s children. Registration can also prohibit youth from living within a church or school zone, effectively prohibiting them from practicing their religion or receiving an education.

State registration laws are complex and difficult even for most adults to understand. Yet youth are expected to understand and comply with the numerous restrictions and reporting requirements, despite the many practical challenges of doing so. States require youth to update and verify their information regularly, including when any information has changed.

If a youth is traveling between states or even within counties in their own state, they may have to report or register. When they are unable to comply with the complex and untenable registration and reporting requirements, they can face fines, incarceration and extended registration.

Additionally, many states require information about registered sex offenders to be posted on a public website, made available at local police stations or disseminated to the youth’s communities. This community notification often results in humiliation and social ostracism—even vigilante violence in some cases—and imposes a negative self-image upon the youth.

Children on sex offender registries are four times more likely to report a recent suicide attempt compared to nonregistered children who have engaged in harmful or illegal sexual behavior. Stigmatization from sex offender labeling frequently deprives youth of vital sources of psychological support at the precise time they most need community acceptance. And, in many cases, that support is not publicly funded or accessible to those who need it.

The draconian practice of youth sex offender registration imposes an unending loop of barriers and obstacles on youth without improving public safety. It also needlessly shifts resources away from important services such as sexual violence prevention and victim assistance. That is why the time is now to abolish the harmful practice of placing youth on sex offender registries.

Malik Pickett, Esq. is a staff attorney at Juvenile Law Center, where he advocates for the rights of youth in the juvenile justice system through litigation, amicus  and policy advocacy efforts.

Emily Satifka, Esq. is a Zubrow Fellow at Juvenile Law Center where her work currently addresses the harms young people experience from sex offender registration, and inhumane conditions of confinement. Her legal career is focused on dismantling oppressive and violent systems through litigation, education and policy advocacy.

[geekandnerdboomxer]

A few protofeminists everyone should know about

This is just a few protofemininists (women who did actions to support the welfare of other women or wrote works that were pro women’s equality in some aspect)

Empress Komyo (701-60) - Japan- established a Buddhist temple that was a shelter for women escaping abusive marriages. This was in a Japan that was changing from a matrifocal egalitarian culture to a patriarchal culture. It’s the first known example of a women’s shelter in the world. (She also established hospitals for the poor in Buddhist temples). Her daughter Empress Koken Shotoku (718-770) last powerful Empress of Japan who ruled in her own right-fought against the court pressures to marry one of her Fujiwara family cousins. (the Fujiwara family was gradually gaining complete control of the court, and would succeed in doing so after her death. They also changed the law after her death, making it almost impossible for a woman to rule in her own right.) 

There is a 5 volume manga biography by feminist manga creator Machiko Satonaka about Empress Koken Shotoku called Jotei no Shuki (Notes of an Empress) - sorry, in Japanese only (first published in 1998, republished in 2015, so yes in print)

Helen of Anjou- (1236-1314) France/Serbia- Queen who established women’s schools

Dame Julian of Norwich (1342-1416) -England- Wrote about God as Mother, and that women and men are equal spiritually.

Christine de Pizan (1364-c.1431)-Italy/France- Not only her famous work  City of Ladies, and a companion book Treasure of the City of Ladies, but her letters arguing against the misogyny of “Romance of the Rose” and other literary works, letters about the misogyny of priests, and an elegy to Joan of Arc

Anne Askew (1521-1546)-England- protestant martyr who spoke out against the silencing of women and misogynist laws.

Isabella Whitney (c.1545-c.1578)- England- poet and essayist who wrote about the misogyny in relationships and also pioneered using gender neutral pronouns.

Modesta Pozzo/Moderata Fonte (1555-1592)- Italy-  poet and essayist. Her works tore down the misogynist images of women in the culture and defended women

Marie de Gournay (1565-1645)- France- Novelist and essayist, wrote in support of women’s equality and  against  the misogyny in the culture.

Aemilia Lanyer (1569-1645)- England- poet who wrote poems defending women, speaking out against the misogyny in the culture.

Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643)- England/America- female preacher who spoke and believed that women were equal to men spiritually, she was also a believer in free will and that rather than the harsh judgemental authoritarian God of the Puritans she believed in a compassionate God. For this the Puritans put her on trial and exiled her and her followers from the colony.

Aphra Behn (1640-1689)- England- playwrite, poet and spy- wrote in support of women’s equality and also early antislavery writer.

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (1651-1695)-Mexico-  poet, philosopher  nun, who wrote about the misogyny in the culture

Mary Astell (1666-1731)- England- wrote in support of equal education of women.

Abigail Adams (1744-1818)-  America- letter writer-  her most famous defense of women’s rights the “Remember the Ladies” exchange with her husband John Adams in 1776  and letter to her friend (and future first American historian) Mercy Otis Warren speaking about her disgust at her husband’s dismissal of her strong concerns about how they must include laws giving equal rights to women and laws to protect women from men’s abuses. Stating a wish to create a group devoted to women’s rights. The first known call for women’s rights activism. (Abigail and John preserved their letters to be published after their deaths as historical documents. They have the largest collection of preserved letters of any Revolutionary period people, so large that only recently was a near complete version published of their letters to each other. John,  despite his dismissal of her call for women’s equality to be stated in law, otherwise considered her his most trusted advisor and frequently told her she was far more intelligent than him, she also was in charge of all the family finances- and managed them quite well. Upon her death she willed some money to two unmarried nieces to start their own businesses if they wished to. One is known to have definitely done so.)

Olympe de Gouges (1748-1793)- France- playwright and essayist, wrote on both women’s equality and abolition of slavery

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)- England- Her 1792 book Vindication of the Rights of Women would profoundly influence the first wave feminists in America. (It also known to have encouraged Abigail Adams in her later years. John Adams even addresses her in an 1790′s letter as “his Wollstonecraft”)

Frances Wright (1795- 1852)- Scotland/America- writer and public speaker, spoke on women’s equality, abolition of slavery, birth control, against the social control organized religion had on the culture. The first know female public speaker on these issues in America (1820′s)

[employeecamp]

https://ift.tt/2IZ6ewpNotification No. SOR-IV (S&GAD) 14-1/2017. Consequent upon abolition of the post of District Coordination Officer in the wake of the Punjab Civil Administration Ordinance, 2016, the PER Chart for District Monitoring Officer has been considered in the Inter-Departmental Committee (1.D.C) and a revised chart. duly approved by the said Committee , is hereby notified as Appendix. GOVERNMENT OF THE PUNJAB SERVICES & GENERAL ADMINISTRATION DEPARTMENT (REGULATIONS WING) Dated Lahore the 23 January, 2017

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[loving-n0t-heyting]

"Maybe this is controversial but prison abolition includes SORs!"

This is like saying "sorry if this is controversial, but the running-an-iron-man-annually lifestyle includes getting a walk in most days and not subsisting exclusively on Mcdonalds" ig its true but its sorta weird to watch ppl put doing the bare minimum as an extra tier above and beyond the basic version of the revolutionary utopian reach goal

“Sex offender registries are a problem bc they target queer ppl and/or include peeing too close to a school at night! They are not getting the right ppl!” No they are a problem bc they are a judicially unaccountable device to enact permanent ostracism abd unpersoning stop making it about how registries get “misused” there is no proper use for them and no correct target the rot springs from the root

[aronarchy]

I am once again thinking back to this

About how I’ve hung around the SORA community for a while and their bigger orgs (i.e. NARSOL, Prostasia) and how frustrating it is (as a POC of certain other marginalizations that they claim to champion) that all of that crowd seems to have approached anti-registry activism from the POV of some sort of Rational Centrist own-the-wokesters thing rather than any sort of actual principled total opposition to authoritarian violence

→ most of the SORA discourse atm is dominated by white cishet liberals with garbage reformist takes who completely refuse any genuine engagement with race/class/queerness/deviance whatsoever, which is unfortunate, because those are the people who need abolition the most

+ none of them will get anywhere significant bc the entirety of their methods consists of “persuade skeptics thru Rational Argument for Destigmatization and vote for different laws”

Meanwhile “radicals” (i.e. the revolutionary socialist/anarchist crowd) who do observe the more common intersectionalities will nevertheless completely ignore the more hated non-normative identities, and do 180s on their principles when it comes to sexual offenders or sexual abuse

→ it’s extremely difficult for me to find my niche of principled radicals who will actually get meaningful shit done & in the meantime almost everyone is going to have at least one reactionary bad take

A lot of people here recently starting to radicalize about the SOR or other more controversial CSA-related political questions are well-meaning, but that must translate asap into support of taking action towards actual solutions that will actually work to get you where you want, & not just theoretical talk about ethics

I can try to pull up my recent Twitter thread(s?) rambling about it a bit more upon request, but will take more spoons bc it got sus’d a few days ago

Re: this is also what I ranted about on fedi yesterday, how the “rational evidence-based CSA prevention” community is unfortunately overwhelmingly liberal (but I’m too tired to crosspost that either rn)