How Do We End Sexual Violence?
For this edition, Lyra Walsh Fuchs spoke to Judith Levine and Erica R. Meiners, the authors of The Feminist and the Sex Offender: Confronting Sexual Harm, Ending State Violence (Verso).
There are nearly a million people on the sex offender registry, a number that has increased alongside rising rates of incarceration in the United States—even as reported rates of sexual violence have been falling since 1993. Children as young as nine years old are on the registry. Depending on the state, registrants are held on the list for as long as ten years to life; while they are on the registry, they are restricted in where they can live, work, and walk. Legally, they are in a category all of their own. Florida’s 2018 Amendment 4, for example, which enfranchised those with felony convictions (before it was neutralized by a Republican-led law declaring that their hefty court debts must be paid off first) excluded those with sex offense and murder convictions from the start. And at least 5,000 people convicted of sex offenses are imprisoned indefinitely in mental health facilities through “civil commitment,” even after they have completed their criminal sentences.
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Brandon:
Don’t be discouraged. Everyone’s opinion is important in this conversation, especially if that person has had an experience being on the registry and shares that experience. Sometimes it simply allows someone to blow off steam. Other times it makes it into court and makes a difference. You may have something productive to add to the conversation, but we will never know if you discontinue posting comments.