Crime “Prevention”

Existing crime "prevention" policies, whatever their "good intentions," are spreading crime; it's no secret that giving "offenders" - what a dehumanizing term - criminal records often makes people homeless, jobless, resentful, unstable, and lacking in social support - all factors pushing them back toward lives of crime. Placement on one of the multiplying array of registries, (not just for "sex offenders" any longer) aggravates the problems while simultaneously chewing up and spitting out law enforcement resources that could have been used on prevention that - perish the thought - actually works, like education.

What's so appealing to me about fighting for the rights of the "worst of the worst" from a practical perspective is that any positive changes for "them" which bring our laws more in line with the Constitution while reducing crime have a trickle-down effect on "lesser" crimes and "offenders."

For example, counterproductive "sex offender" registries have been declared perfectly constitutional on the basis of what Supreme Court Justice Kennedy called our "frightening and high" probability of committing new crimes. This was based solely on a long-since discredited re-offense rate from an "expert" author of a Psychology Today article. Re-offense rates for all crimes are controversial, and sex crimes especially so, but whatever the real numbers, research consistently shows lower observed re-offense rates for "sex offenders" than for "non sex offenders." This means that by the Supreme Court's reasoning, "non sex offenders" belong on registries even more than I do.

You might take a moment to mentally contrast my desire to protect everyone, from innocent victims to repeat "offenders," with the conventional approach of singling me out for cruel and unusual punishments, - which the Supreme Court has erroneously ruled aren't actually punishments, so new ones can be added after I've served my time. Did you catch that last part, those of you who have ever rolled through a stop sign? The day may come when your punishment never ends too.