Staging a Response to Injustice
Sometimes a work of fiction lights a fuse and sets off a social movement. • Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1850 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin catalyzed opinion in the north against slavery. Among 19th century best-sellers, her book is ranked second only to the Bible. • Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, published in 1915, exposed atrocious conditions for…
COVID & the Most Vulnerable Prisoners
Opponents of the death penalty note how it multiplies all the failures and inequities of a criminal justice system. For thousands of prisoners stuck in the US’s system of mass incarceration, the COVID-19 epidemic has turned prison terms into death sentences. By early February 2021, there were been at least 372,583 cases and 2,359 reported…
précis: What counts as a sex crime? It depends.
Some relationships involve sex. Some acts are motivated by desire. When are they good? When are they morally questionable? When should they be illegal? When are they plain wrong? Answers to these questions can be among the most strongly felt positions held by people – and societies. But when it comes to sex, legal systems…
précis: Making sense of attraction to minors
Attraction can take many forms. How people act – or otherwise deal with – their sexual feelings and desires varies a lot. Erotic bonds can be the glue that starts and sustains the most important relationships in a person’s life. Sexual impulses can also be unruly, motivating hurtful acts and crimes, from stalking to rape…
in brief: What counts as a sex crime? It depends.
What counts as a sex crime varies dramatically by time and place. So does what happens to those who cross the line. In colonial America, Puritan authorities executed a teenage boy for sex with farm animals. But despite those Puritan beginnings, America has sometimes also been remarkably lax about regulating sex. In 1880, 35 U.S.…
in brief: Making sense of attraction to minors
There’s a huge disconnect between current popular attitudes and professional knowledge of psychiatrists, social scientists, and historians. Erotic attraction to people under 18 years of age is common and, along the life course, typical. That’s true even today in the West when such feelings are labeled “pedophilia” in mass media and regarded with outrage both…
What Can I Do?
If you’ve reached this website, you may already agree that our current justice system is out of control. Not that lawbreakers should be given a pass, but how do we treat those who have committed crimes so as to effectively protect society and rehabilitate offenders? How do we do this in a way that not…
longread: Making sense of attraction to minors
Is it shocking for an adult male to be sexually attracted to a person under 18 years of age? Many in the U.S. today answer “Yes, absolutely.” Probably some who would answer that way have a different view privately, or at least are conflicted. Or, especially if they are male, would recognize the possibility of…
longread: What counts as a sex crime? It depends.
What counts as a sex crime varies dramatically by time and place. So does what happens to those who cross the line. 1) In 1642 in colonial Massachusetts, Puritan authorities executed Thomas Granger, then 16 or 17 years old, for the crime of “buggery with a mare, a cow, two goats, divers sheepe, two calves,…
How do societies define crimes?
What should be legal? What should be illegal? Every society has to address wrongdoing. What’s defined as wrongdoing and what kinds excite the most attention – sometimes rising to irrational blood lust – varies widely over time and place. On a historical scale, it was not that long ago that slavery was not only legal…
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Peculiari Crimen 