Nina Signorelli, Author at Just Future Project

Articles posted by Nina Signorelli

1977 Report by Psychiatrists call “Sex Offender” Label Invalid and Fallacious

Deiridre M Smith, “Dangerous Diagnoses, Risky Assumptions, and the Failed Experiment of ‘Sexually Violent Predator’ Commitment,” 67 OKLA. L. Rev. 619 (2015) Forty-six years ago, the concept of the “sex offender” was considered conceptually invalid. The only thing that has changed in the near half-century since the below recorded report is that a cottage industry has grown up around the principle of “sex offender treatment” to feed off the criminal legal system and the burgeoning Treatment Industrial Complex. We offer the below citation from an excellent article by Deiridre M. Smith that cites to the original 1977 Report by…

Third Appearance on Crossroads Radio WPFW 89.3FM

Pre-crime preventative detention was the focus of a second hour-long conversation on the Crossroads Radio show hosted by Roach Brown and Nkechi Taifa on WPFW 89.3FM, known as “Washington’s station for jazz and justice” Click Play to listen to Kirsten Darby and Bernida Thompson talk about how their families have been directly impacted by these Kafkaesque systems and their work with Just Future Project. Throughout the radio appearance, Kirsten and Bernida work together to describe the abusive and unconstitutional application of these sex offender laws — especially highlighting the case of Galen Baughman in Virginia, which was the focus of a…

A Backdoor Around Double Jeopardy

The original sin of so-called “sex offender civil commitment” laws is that they were never meant to be “nonpunitive”. Legal scholars, civil libertarians, and human rights defenders, have challenged the prison-length nature of these carceral institutions. Many of these opponents to systems of pre-crime preventative detention focused on how these laws have been applied in practice to impose de facto life sentences on those who have already repaid their debt to society. The following quote comes from a state report published two years before the first so-called sex offender “civil commitment” law was passed in the United States and…

Bed Space – Virginia Center for Behavioral Rehabilitation (VCBR) Expansion Project

Virginia is rapidly running out of space at it’s pre-crime preventative detention facility to warehouse prisoners after the completion of their criminal sentence. In June 2018, the commonwealth broke ground on a massively expensive construction project to expand the current “not-a-prison” prison to add beds. Strangely, the commonwealth doesn’t seem to actually know how many beds they are building. The original Burkeville facility included 300 beds. The Virginia General Assembly approved the double-bunking of 150 cells at VCBR in 2011, which increased their total capacity to 450 beds. “Construction has begun on the expansion of VCBR in June…

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Memo

What is HIPAA? HIPAA, (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act)¹, was originally created in 1996, with an original purpose to protect and secure an individual’s medical information electronically. HIPAA works to combat against abuse and fraud from the healthcare industry. Who Does HIPAA Apply To? The point of HIPAA is to protect privacy rights of patients from disclosures by health care professionals and corporations. The provisions of HIPAA only apply to health care providers, health care companies, and some employers². HIPAA does not restrict the activities of anyone who does not belong to one of those categories. Can…

MORE from OCEAN

Included below is a letter from Mr. Saengchanh, a fellow detainee at MSOP in Minnesota. “Mr. Saengchanh’s letter illustrates the injustice of detaining someone who has serious language barriers. He cannot study law as easily as an English speaking person can. He cannot communicate with his therapist as effectively either. There are some random words in English and Laotian. This is normal for Mr. Saengchanh, who is always trying to learn English, yet always feels that it’s never enough. The letter also illustrates Mr. Saengchanh’s respect for his roommate, “John” and advocates for him lovingly.” – Daniel A. Wilson Letter…

Organizational Positions Against Pre-Crime Preventative Detention

Formal Positions Against Pre-Crime Preventative Detention

Virginia Deaths in Custody

Source: Virginia Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation, and Substance Abuse Services Discharge Report From 01/01/2003-03/02/2020. These numbers seem suspiciously low compared to other death-in-custody data we have reviewed. Specifically in Kansas, 260 individuals are indefinitely detained and the facility has 45 deaths to date, whereas in Virginia we have 460 people currently committed and 15 deaths. Because Virginia has much broader use of conditional release, we suspect they are artificially decreasing their death statistics. While the discharge report generated by DBHDS said that it was “death in hospital,” Virginia Center for Behavioral Health (VCBR) is in fact not a…

In Memoriam: Lives Lost While Imprisoned After Their Release Date in Minnesota

The people who run these programs pretend that they are for “treatment.” For at least 60 people who were sent to the Minnesota Sex Offender Program it was a death sentence. The following names, placed here in memoriam, are a stark illustration of the false promise of therapeutic intent. The names listed remind us of why we work, today and every day, to abolish pre-crime preventative detention systems.

March 31, 2020 Crossroads Radio WPFW 89.3FM

Pre-crime preventative detention and the stress forced upon all persons in carceral settings by the current global pandemic were the focus’ of an hour-long conversation on the Crossroads Radio show hosted by Roach Brown and Nkechi Taifa on WPFW 89.3FM, known as “Washington’s station for jazz and justice”. Olinda Moyd, who is the former Chief of parole division in the Public Defender Service in D.C., joined in on the conversation, and emphasized the fact that many of these individuals are being held involuntarily for technical or administrative violations of their parole and could easily be returned to their families. Click Play…