Category: The Dobbs Wire

The Dobbs Wire:  Remembering Thomas Pauli.  Winter weather brought Thomas Pauli’s death but the real cause was draconian laws that drive people into poverty, homelessness and hopelessness.  Thomas had a serious scrape with the law many years back and paid a price, serving 11 years in prison.  All that might have moved to the rear view mirror but this was a sex offense.  Special laws apply so he was put on the sex offense registry and faced severe restrictions on where he could live or even get temporary refuge from winter’s wrath.  Thomas’s death did bring some slight changes to…

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The Dobbs Wire:  Compare and contrast!  Personal history can be inspiring and then there are situations where the past casts a shadow on or even wrecks the future.  Criminal records that might have sat in a courthouse for years gathering dust can now do a lot of damage, it just takes a few keystrokes in the digital age.  There’s increasing public concern about how the past can harm future prospects.  A number of states have enacted laws making sealing and expungement of criminal records easier.  Compare and contrast how media outlets are reckoning with this issue.   Some are changing their…

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The Dobbs Wire:  Flashback to 1996.  A Massachusetts father writes about his young son — an important matter requiring a trip to the police station.  It’s a powerful, poignant story that the Chicago Tribune published on Dec. 1, 1996.  The father inquires, “What will be done with this information?”  He asked that question shortly after the Massachusetts sex offense registry got rolling, on Oct. 1, 1996.  Massachusetts was the last of the states to create an official blacklist.  This year marks 25 years that every state has had such a registry, a full generation.  After 25 years the ugly name we give…

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The Dobbs Wire:  Death Sentence.  Reuters investigated COVID-19 in jails and prisons and has a devastating report, finding coronavirus spread rapidly, authorities had little testing available to track what was happening, and the official number of cases is way off – undercounted.  Kudos to Reuters for a detailed report and shining a spotlight on life inside during a raging pandemic, have a look at their story!  Learn about Charles Peterson, jailed in Colorado and charged with a parole violation involving keeping his sex offense registry listing up to date. Parole, probation and registries come with long lists of rules and, as…

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The Dobbs Wire:  A case unfolding in Virginia has much to tell us about justice in the U.S.  For crime the legal system provides punishment, usually incarceration.  In cases of sex wrongdoing, after prison time is done and the price is paid, 20 states and the federal government have something extra – laws that allow keeping an individual locked up, often indefinitely, on a hunch, a mere guess that they might break the law in the future.  On the eve of trial for a Virginia gay man, Philip Fornaci and Roger Lancaster spotlight how these ‘civil commitment’ laws can be…

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The Dobbs Wire:  Banishment!  In the 21st century many localities in the United States use an ancient means to get rid of people who have been stigmatized and are despised, banishment.  More formally and politely known as “residency restrictions,” the desired result of such laws is to drive individuals who are blacklisted — required to sign the sex offense registry — out of their houses and even out of town altogether.  The most infamous example of these awful laws is the encampment of homeless registered persons that sprung up under the Julia Tuttle Causeway in Florida.   In the last several…

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Crime and Punishment:  There’s growing awareness that far too many people are getting punished in the U.S., and that they are being given far too much punishment.  Some of the punishment is extreme, even unconscionable — the death penalty, solitary confinement, life in prison (“death by incarceration”), lifetime supervision, sex offense registries, and more.  Organizers are usually unsung but they get the credit for rising public concern about criminal injustices and now they’re hard at work to spotlight harsh measures used in the “worse of the worst” cases.  What about accountability for really terrible crimes?  Have a look at this…

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