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Coronavirus kills one, infects another, in Florida sex offender treatment center

Residents of the Arcadia facility are held in confinement under the Jimmy Ryce Act, which forces sex offenders into treatment if experts believe they’re likely to commit another sex crime. The Florida Civil Commitment Center is a treatment center in Arcadia for sex offenders held involuntarily by the Jimmy Ryce Act. [Google Earth] By Kathryn Varn Published Yesterday A resident in a sex offender treatment facility has died from COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus. Another resident is sick with the disease. The outbreak is taking place in Florida’s Civil Commitment Center, a privately run treatment facility in DeSoto…

Can Effective Mental Health Treatment Exist In A Criminal Justice System Driven By Profit?

Josh Gravens, now 27, was sentenced to the Bill Clayton Detention Center in Littlefield, Texas when he was 13. He was told to expect a jail stay of nine months, but he spent 42 months under the supervision of the Texas Juvenile Justice Department. He was not fully released until he was 21, having been detained for years without cause, he says. “I never even had a write-up,” he says. “Behavior was never the issue. Grades were never an issue. We engaged willingly and aggressively.” In Texas, the state contracts corporate prisons to jail juvenile offenders. Compensation per prisoner escalates…

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…

Civil Commitment: ‘Excuse me, your honor, some judicial maturity, please?’ (Part III)

Part I Part II Part III BY EARL YARINGTON Whether we are addressing the war on drugs, violence, gun violence, child sex abuse, or civil commitment, our lawmakers don’t want to fix these problems. It is understandable and necessary to protect children and the vulnerable, but the data show that our lawmakers, our justice system is failing badly but still moving at lightning speed to permanently punish and lock up anyone whose sexual interest is determined to be abnormal. For many in law enforcement, the intention was to protect children, but our ignorance of sexuality and the serious study of it…

Civil commitment and the courts’ historic march toward genocide (Part II)

Part I Part II Part III BY EARL YARINGTON Part II will take a different turn, as I wait for sources to respond to me on court decisions. I ask the reader to take this long and troubling trip with me. I need to break with the fine form and clarity of journalism. There will be a Part III. My apologies, but sometimes journalism must be comprehensive at the cost of being concise. Here we will address the troubling myth-building those in power do for personal gain, and the danger mischaracterization and misunderstanding bring to jeopardizing our democratic republic. Such could…

Civil Commitment and the destruction of human rights (Part 1)

Part I Part II Part III BY EARL YARINGTON · DECEMBER 30, 2019 A few years ago, I wrote an article on a blog. It was more an experiment, a testing ground. The website was “Criticl.” It was mainly a political site that supported the legalization of marijuana and of Bernie Sanders becoming president. I wrote that there are two ways our government (local, state, federal) is attempting to limit the Constitution: the fear of terrorism and child pornography law. It may be understandable to hate terrorists and sex offenders, but, you know, the devil is in the details. Who exactly is a…

Inside NACDL: Sex Offender Laws Run Amok

Author: Norman Reimer When America’s politicians latch on to a “law and order” issue, watch out! Their capacity to demagogue an issue, exploit public fears, and enact draconian legislation is limitless. We saw this with the war on drugs1 and the war on terrorism. And now we see it with the proliferation of sex offender laws that impose far-reaching collateral consequences. They are often based on myth and emotion, unsupported by empirical research and broadly applied, and are indifferent to the facts of the particular case. Last month, The Champion reported that NACDL’s recent affiliate survey disclosed that 58 percent…

Going For Wins in Sexually Violent Predator Cases

By Allen Frances, MD July 8, 2011 During the past year, I have been involved as an expert witness for the defense in 14 SVP cases (tried in California, Washington, and Iowa). My role has been to clarify what is meant by the wording of the Paraphilia section in DSM-IV. And it certainly does badly need explaining. The DSM-IV Paraphilia section is written far too imprecisely to meet the high standard of precision needed in a legal context. This is because DSM-IV was written primarily for clinicians– not for lawyers, judges, forensic evaluators, and juries. I wish we had done…

How The Use of Improper Statistics and Unverified Data Corrupts The Judicial Process In Sex Offence Cases (2018)

This is an excellent overview from the 30,000 foot view, of the problems that continue to fuel draconian and unscientific sex-related laws. As Cucolo & Perlin note, “judicial decisions involving sexual offender[s]…rely improperly on inaccurate and underdeveloped statistics as well as unverified and outdated information.” This article specifically addresses pre-crime preventative detention laws, calling them explicitly punitive. And concludes by exploring the principle of “therapeutic jurisprudence” which may offer an alternative to unending and unthinking punishment. More about the authors Heather Ellis Cucolo Heather is an adjunct professor and current facilitator of the dual degree program…

Authorities retaliate against advocates

The system routinely punishes dissent voiced by those under their control. Advocates who speak out against injustice in the criminal legal system are especially vulnerable to retaliation by unscrupulous prosecutors, judges, and others in positions of official power over their lives or the lives of their loved ones. Nowhere is this more true than in systems of pre-crime preventative detention where a persons indefinite detention may be prolonged at the whim of the authorities based on nothing more than subjective impression, rather than any concrete overt act. This brazenly unethical behavior is another obstacle to advocating for, and securing the…

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