First sex offenders, now domestic violence offenders, next -- ?

Despite mounting evidence that sex offender registries do more harm than good, legislators are now proposing to expand the concept to domestic violence offenders.

A bill introduced into the Pennsylvania legislature would create a Megan’s law-style database of people convicted of domestic violence. If the law passes, such offenders would have their photos and addresses posted online for all to see.

Like convicted sex offenders, domestic violence offenders would also have to notified police within 10 days of moving. In a new wrinkle, they would have to mail a form to the police every 90 days to confirm their address of residency.

If the law passes, it could open the floodgates for politicians who have found that meaningless tough-on-crime laws get votes. Who knows what costly and ineffective registries will follow. Registries for drug offenders? Drunk drivers? Antiwar protesters?

Book-banning raises specter of religious discrimination in prison

Federal prisoners in New York have filed suit over the sudden disappearance of hundreds of religious texts from the chapel library.

Religious books are being removed from prisons nationwide as part of a 2004 federal directive aimed at quelling the spread of Islamic fundamentalism in prison. The directive also suggests audio and video monitoring of worship services and heightened screening of religious service providers.

A U.S. Attorney said the directive stems from concern that prisons are being radicalized by Islamic prisoners. He said officials will create a new list of permitted religious books.

Although prisoners at the Otisville federal prison camp reported that some Christian texts were also removed, the book banning appears to be part of a wave of anti-Islamic discrimination in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001. A Justice Department investigation two years ago found mistreatment of Muslim prisoners at multiple lockups in the United States.

The anti-Islamic discrimination coincides with growing federal support for Christian ministries in prison. With links to the White House, a politically powerful evangelical Christian group, Prison Fellowship Ministries, has assumed outright control of prison wings and corrections budgets in Kansas, Iowa, Texas, Minnesota, and other states, according to a 2003 expose in Mother Jones magazine.

Despite this massive federal sponsorship of Christian ministries, the proportion of Muslim prisoners continues to grow. While the vast majority of prisoners are still Christian, Muslims make up about 20% of the incarcerated population in some states, according to a 1999 article in the Wall Street Journal. Some Christian ministers perceive this as a threat.

Ironically, research suggests that anti-Muslim crackdowns will backfire, contributing to increased militancy among Muslim prisoners.

Based on a four-year research project in British prisons, anthropologist Gabriele Marranci reported that experiences of religious discrimination made Muslim prisoners more vulnerable to recruitment by militant organizations.

"I found no evidence to suggest that the Muslim chaplains are behaving or preaching in a way that facilitates radicalisation," Dr. Marranci reported. "On the contrary, my findings suggest that they are extremely important in preventing dangerous forms of extremism. However, the distrust that they face, both internally and externally, is jeopardising their important function."

Predator show slammed

Might mounting criticisms of NBC's "To Catch a Predator" signal a turning point in the cultural hysteria surrounding “sexual predators”?

Criticism is mounting on multiple fronts against the show, which features vigilantes trolling the Web to lure men into sexual liaisons with children.

On the civil front, the show’s former producer claims she was fired after complaining about flagrant violations of journalistic ethics. Marsha Bartel lost her 21-year career with NBC. She alleged in a U.S. District Court lawsuit that NBC provides financial incentives to the shadowy vigilante group Perverted Justice to use trickery and to humiliate targets to “enhance the comedic effect of the[ir] public exposure." She said that in some cases the vigilantes resorted to begging individuals to come to sting locations. Additionally, she charged that police behaved improperly off-camera, for instance “waving rubber chickens in the faces of sting targets while forcing them to the ground and handcuffing them." NBC responded by calling the lawsuit “without merit.” The lawsuit is on-line at: http://shurl.org/predator

On the criminal front, prosecutors have lambasted the series as an unethical blending of law enforcement and show business that does nothing to curtail sexual violence. In Collin County, Texas, for example, the District Attorney said none of 24 recent sting arrests were adequate for prosecution.

"This whole scenario is garbage-in-garbage-out, and here we sit with a pile of garbage,” commented one legal observer. "It's a prosecutor's worst nightmare. The last thing you want is the news media or reality TV shows to be involved in the prosecution or the investigation of the case."

Last fall, the show came under scrutiny when a target shot and killed himself as police stormed his house outside Dallas, Texas. The man, an assistant district attorney, was to be To Catch a Predator's most notorious target. "These people were acting not only as police, but judge, jury and executioner," said the deceased’s sister. "It was about headlines. Making a splash. Making a story. Jumping to conclusions.”

TV news coverage of the Texas cases is on-line at: http://www.wfaa.com/video/?nvid=148433&shu=1

Comedic criticism of the show can be found on YouTube. My favorite of these is the “auditions” for the job of teenage lure. See: http://shurl.org/auditions.

On a more serious note, a Baptist minister has analyzed the high financial costs of the current hysteria. These include not just the obvious costs of incarceration, but such lesser-knowns as declining property values when a registered sex offender moves into a neighborhood. David Hess of New York argues that lawmakers are throwing billions of dollars at a mythological problem, while doing nothing to deter real sexual abusers, mostly family members and friends of their child victims. His analysis is on-line at: http://shurl.org/economic+costs.

Should jails be designated "treatment facilities"?

When criminal defendants are found incompetent to stand trial, they go to state hospitals for competency restoration treatment. But hospitals around the country have run out of beds, forcing psychotic defendants to linger in county jails for many months.

In response to this crisis, California is proposing to designate county jails as "treatment facilities" that can provide pretrial defendants with competency restoration treatment for up to six months.

Under Senate Bill 568, jails will gain the authority to forcibly medicate incompetent defendants. (This is a complicated area of law governed by the 2002 U.S. Supreme Court case of U.S. v. Sell. For background, see: www.jaapl.org/cgi/reprint/32/1/83.pdf.)

Forensic psychologists are voicing concern about this move.

First of all, jails are unlikely to do much more than administer antipsychotic medications, in some cases without proper legal review and oversight. Jail psychiatric services tend to be minimal and underfunded. They are not set up to provide effective competency restoration training.

A second concern is that the jail environment is not conducive to mental health. Prisoners with severe (and often complex) mental disorders need around-the-clock services from highly trained professionals in a therapeutic setting in order to become competent to stand trial.

The bill, backed by the sheriff’s departments that run county jails, appears to be in response to a recent Sacramento court ruling that incompetent defendants must be transferred quickly to state hospitals for treatment. A competing bill, Assembly Bill 1121, would require that defendants be transferred to state hospitals within 14 days of being found incompetent.

If SB 568 passes, other states with similar crises will likely try this solution as well, foisting their fiscal burdens onto cash-strapped county governments. It’s all part of the trickle-down effect of the criminalization of the mentally ill that began in the 1970s with the defunding of community mental health programs and escalated with the prison boom of the 1980s and 1990s.

Thanks to Robert D. Canning, Ph.D., Paul G. Mattiuzzi, Ph.D., and Philip J. Davis, Ph.D. for their contributions to this analysis.

Senate Bill 568 is available at: http://tinyurl.com/37rl53

Assembly Bill 1121 is available at: http://tinyurl.com/39cn6

Harmful effects of unintentional racism

Research on racism has come a long way since the old days of searching for the “racist personality.” In recent years, researchers have focused on the subtle, modern racism that pervades our culture and that perpetrators can plausibly deny.

Individuals who practice this subtle racism may not even know it. They may believe in fair and equal treatment for all, yet unconsciously harbor negative feelings toward other races. Becoming anxious and uncomfortable in interracial interactions, they adhere to formal rules of behavior while expressing their negative feelings in subtle ways that can be denied or rationalized.

The implications extend into the forensic realm. Studies of police and probation officers show that they often use racial cues to assign blame. An African American who commits a crime is likely to be seen as inherently bad or criminal, while a white person who commits a similar crime is more likely to be excused based on external factors, such as peer influence, poor parenting, or mental illness. Recommended punishments differ accordingly, resulting in greater likelihood of arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment for African Americans.

The unconscious nature of these biases helps to explain divergent rates of arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment despite a lack of conscious racist intent on the part of criminal justice professionals. (Other forces, of course, include persisting economic equalities.) Interestingly, the race of the professional is irrelevant. African American police and probation officers engage in just as much negative racial stereotyping of African Americans as do whites.

Research continues to flesh out the specifics of modern racism. Now come two new studies, one about its pervasiveness and the other about its harmful effects.

The current issue of the American Psychologist reports on “racial microaggressions,” which are defined as everyday indignities, often unintentional, that communicate hostile or derogatory feelings toward racial minorities. Such microaggressions are divided into microassaults (purposeful discrimination or name-calling), microinsults (rudeness and insensitivity), and microinvalidation (exclusion or negation).

The invisibility and deniability of these subtle forms of racism make them especially problematic. The recipient must try to decide whether the offensive behavior was deliberate or unintentional. If the recipient confronts the aggressor, he or she is typically labeled as oversensitive or even paranoid.

The current issue of the American Journal of Public Health reports that subtle racism is more psychologically damaging than overt discrimination. Whereas recipients can “shrug off” overt discrimination, subtle racism is more likely to be committed by colleagues, neighbors, or friends. As such, it causes recipients to feel that people do not like or accept them, thereby lowering self esteem and leading to depression.

Similar research with African Americans has found that subtle racism is most damaging to their physical health.

Sue, D. W., Capodilupo, C., Torino, G., Bucceri, J., Holder, A., Nadal, K., & Esquilin, M. “Racial microaggressions in everyday life: Implications for clinical practice.” American Psychologist, May-June 2007, Volume 62 #4, pp. 271-286.

Noh, S., Kaspar, V., Wickrama, K, “Overt and subtle racial discrimination and mental health: preliminary findings for Korean immigrants.” American Journal of Public Health, July 2007, Volume 97 #7.

Jurors deliberate competently, study finds

As a former legal affairs reporter and criminal investigator who had many an opportunity to observe jury trials and interview jurors, I have always felt that the jury system is one of America's best features. It is one of the few places where people from all social classes and walks of life come together in a meaningful way and to further a common goal. Having just returned from a week of jury service myself (which I found fascinating and gratifying), I was pleased to learn that my experience is the norm.

The June 2007 issue of Small Group Research reports on a study indicating that juries do, indeed, “deliberate at a remarkably high level of competence” and that a direct link exists between the quality of deliberation and juror satisfaction. Not only that, but the jury deliberation process is a “civic education experience” that prompts many jurors to further their civic involvement.

To help understand “how often everyday juries actually engage in meaningful deliberation,” the researchers surveyed 267 municipal court jurists in Seattle regarding their experiences.

The resulting article, “Do Juries Deliberate? A Study of Deliberation, Individual Difference, and Group Member Satisfaction at a Municipal Courthouse,” is available on-line at:

http://depts.washington.edu/jurydem/writings.html