US Attorney General suggests house arrest alternative to prison… except for sex offenders.
The United States Attorney General, William Barr, on March 26th sent a memo to the Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), encouraging the BOP to explore the option of sending inmates home on home confinement rather than keeping them incarcerated in facilities where they have greater exposure to Coronavirus.
The memo contains a list of 6 bulleted items for the BOP to consider when weighing whether to keep an inmate housed in prison, vs sending them home. The last bullet says, “Some offenses, such as sex offenses, will render an inmate ineligible for home detention.”
We need to take action to correct the government’s perception on the risk and recidivism rates of people deemed “sex offenders”. It is entirely irrational for this class of person to be precluded from MOST programs because of an inaccurate perceived risk to public safety.
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Their website https://www.justice.gov/contact-us does not give an email address. But it does give a snail mail address:
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Also, here is the phone number:
Department Comment Line: 202-353-1555
Department of Justice Main Switchboard: 202-514-2000
TTY/ASCII/TDD: 800-877-8339 (or Federal IP Relay Service)
Please everyone, take a few minutes and call (have brief, written comments prepared. Speak calmly, clearly and at a normal pace).
Also, please print out some of these documents (or relevant pages – make sure to include the web addresses of the documents and their titles and their sources).
U.S. Department of Justice – Office of Justice Programs – Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending,Registering, and Tracking
https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21ALLsUNeOH00pbEY&cid=3C4773E7B2C5CFA2&id=3C4773E7B2C5CFA2%2124083&parId=3C4773E7B2C5CFA2%2124069&o=OneUp
Prison Policy.org
https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21AA%2DN0IBaxKIXUf0&cid=3C4773E7B2C5CFA2&id=3C4773E7B2C5CFA2%2124073&parId=3C4773E7B2C5CFA2%2124069&o=OneUp
Yale Law Journal
https://1drv.ms/b/s!AqLPxbLnc0c8gbwG3X2UJn6EeHhoYg?e=qGDOQG
The Washington Post
https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21AI%2DmNkZ9J87%2DUNY&cid=3C4773E7B2C5CFA2&id=3C4773E7B2C5CFA2%2124071&parId=3C4773E7B2C5CFA2%2124069&o=OneUp
Women Against the Registry (This is a collection of links to bona-fide research studies by US States Governments and Universities)
https://1drv.ms/b/s!AqLPxbLnc0c8gbwKNT4xnhTuImE-9A?e=COikCI
PLEASE EVERYONE TAKE ACTION!
“We need to take action to correct the government’s perception on the risk and recidivism rates of people deemed “sex offenders”. I”
What? Do you mean we are not already doing that?
We need to take MORE action or MORE OF US need to take action. There are people, such as myself and our fellow board members that invest 5 hours a day into our advocacy. There are others who don’t give it 5 hours a year. The post is not intended to insult anyone who has been investing time into advocacy, but to appeal to those who have not done as much as they can. While most of us are sitting at home, there’s little excuse to not react to one of our calls to action. It takes less than 5 minutes to make a call or send an email.
Stuff like this needs to continue to be added to the mounting pile of evidence for registration is “not a punishment”.
You know…I have supported AG Barr on most decisions. This one however is not going to be one of them. It is a poor decision for a man of quality and integrity but it shows just how ill informed he is in this matter. His reasoning is based on bias at best . Rethink this Mr.Barr. You can do better.
AG Barr I’m sure knows everything he needs to know. He also knows that the public are idiots and will throw a tantrum if he were to include sex offenders. The public doesn’t care WHAT your offense is/was, they only care about the label “sex offender”.
When you notify us about something like this….IT WOULD BE NICE if you would also include a fact driven rebuttal that we could forward to Mr Barr letting him know of his errors in his advisors…
Another member posted a very comprehensive comment including sources.
David Glorius, if we all give the same type of rebuttal, they are often ignored. That happened recently with Mark Inch, the head of the Florida Department of Corrections. As a result of prompting by a criminal justice reform group in Florida, many of us sent emails to Mr. Inch that were nothing more than clones of one another. Mr. Inch picked up on that fact quickly and said our request would therefore not be considered.
This FAC website gives out a lot of data that can be used. If nothing else, you can at least state that the re-offense rate is in the single digits for registrants, taken collectively. Just saying anything would help, and you can always pick up ideas from reading other people’s posts at this site.
Of course sex offenders are excluded, pffft why would we ever get such a break you know! It’s ridiculous to think we could ever benefit from any such ideas.
Whatever happened to the term “All men are created equal”? Oh right it’s from the Declaration of Independence a totally worthless document just like the Constitution. They are only meaningful to “normal” people. We are meant to die. No one cares. Hurricanes come but get you stay outside,but stay at least 1000ft. Oh your old and incapacitated but your a sex offender go die on the street not in our “normal” people nursing home or hospice.
You are SO right… Truly sad… Sad indeed… NO DIGNITY WHATSOEVER
If sex offenders have to register, then anyone with any type of crime should register. If sex offenders have to take polygraphs, then anyone with any type of crime should take polygraphs. Why should sex offenders be the only ones punished!!!
Plus, I blame the news media for false recidivism rates of sex offenders. The media is to blame for the mass hysteria of sex offenders being labeled the worst people. Any headline in our favor doesn’t exist. But headlines against us blare across the media night and day!!!!
Dustin,
Not sure why I am the only one who keeps getting corrected, but they are right when they correct me. We are NOT sex offenders unless we are still offending.
That would be like calling someone with a murder 40 years ago a Murdering offender.
If they want to call us ex-offenders that is ok I guess but they won’t do that because that doesn’t scare the public and makes us sound less scary.
So sex offenders minus the “S” becomes ex-offenders.
The government says we are – Sex offenders
We along with a whole lot of other people and ministries and even some lawyers see us as just People. Albeit, about 1/2 the rights that are afforded to non offenders.