I am all for critiques of the prison industrial complex. I am all for critiques of the post-incarceration revenue machine that props up entire industries through parolee dollars. And, while this may surprise some readers, I am even all for re-structuring sex offender release rules that make it nearly impossible for sex offenders to re-enter society in any meaningful way.* I am all for progressives and social justice advocates writing about these issues.
But, damn, why do they have to pit one social justice cause against another? The article starts out telling the anecdote of “Stokes,” an old Willie Nelson look-alike who is in his 60s and can’t go to the grocery store, visit parks, drink beer, look at Playboy or visit his own grandchild. Why? Because:
Got caught by police in a, shall we say, “a vehicular sexual incident” with a married woman. They were both drunk, big deal. That happens in beer joints. To make a long story short, by the time they got to court, the lady’s testimony was that it was all against her will, which being a married woman, solved a lot of problems for her. That resulted in Stokes being convicted as a sex offender, while his public defender all but slept through the trial.
Ah, of course: Because bitches lie about being raped.
Compounding Stokes’ problems is that he had an unregistered handgun in the car, so he was prosecuted for armed sexual abduction. And you know, if this is actually what happened, then yes, that sucks. But I’m bothered by the author’s complete willingness to disregard the woman’s story and the jury’s verdict and simply decide, based on what his old friend Stokes told him, that Stokes clearly did nothing wrong until some broad screwed him over with her lying ways. I’m bothered by it on the obvious feminist grounds — the easy assumption that the woman was lying, the automatic taking of the man’s word over hers despite the fact that a jury (who actually had a chance to hear both sides and evaluate the evidence) found him to be guilty, the rape apologism, etc etc — but I’m also bothered by it as someone who does believe in reforming these laws. The example the author gives has no good policy solution. The guy got a trial, and while it’s clear that the author thinks his counsel was inadequate, I don’t see anything supporting that (other than he “all but slept through the trial,” which doesn’t tell us much). And reform of the laws governing attorney incompetence aren’t what the author is focusing on anyway — he wants to reform post-incarceration sex offender regulations. And in that case, Stokes’ back story shouldn’t matter all that much: Either these rules are unjust for the people they apply to, or they aren’t. Now, I see that his point is that the entire prison industrial complex is problematic, but the complex itself has very little to do with the basic mistakes of justice that the author claims happened to his neighbor. If Stokes had actually committed the crime he was found guilty of (and he may have, we don’t know), would all the requirements imposed on him after he served his time be valid? If not, then there’s really no need to include the whole “He didn’t really do it” back story (except to make Stokes seem more sympathetic, which is a fine strategy, but is bound to backfire among progressives when it comes on the backs of other ill-treated groups). But if the restrictions would have been valid if he had actually done what he was convicted of, and they’re only problematic because he says he didn’t, then there is really no solution other than totally scrapping jury and indigent defense and going with something else. I’m pretty sure that’s not what the author is arguing.
Sex offenders are the least sympathetic criminal defendants — and make no mistake about it, I also have very little sympathy for rapists or child molesters or most other sex offenders. But they are still people deserving of basic human rights and liberties after they’ve paid their debt to society. And even if you don’t give two craps about what they deserve, it is infinitely better for society to have them mainstreamed and rehabilitated as much as possible rather than marginalized with nothing to lose. The best situation, I think, is some form of punitive punishment coupled with rehabilitation, counseling and check-ins. But balancing the harms is tough; the article mentions one example where the Arizona homeless shelter system contemplated kicking out all sex offenders, and the author posited that doing so would leave authorities unable to track the legitimately dangerous sex offenders, which in turn would be much more dangerous for society as a whole. What the author doesn’t mention is that their are other people in those shelters — women, children and men who are potential victims. Sexual assault survival rates among homeless people — especially women and LGBT people — are significantly higher than the general population. Their safety is a legitimate concern, too. So I’m troubled by some of the simplistic structuring of arguments in favor of loosening post-incarceration restrictions for convicted sex offenders — those arguments too often ignore the very real concerns of other marginalized groups.
Or, worse, they subvert the concerns and experiences of other marginalized groups to serve a very narrow interest. The “rape victims lie” meme is an easy one to exploit because so many people believe it — and so many people will feel bad for poor Stokes over the nameless, faceless, voiceless woman who testified that the sex was non-consensual. But it undermines the actual issue at hand, and splinters support for what is otherwise an important cause.
So I find myself disappointed yet again by progressive activists who forget that women are people, too, and who are all too willing to vilify or simply ignore us to make their point. It’s particularly frustrating when the point is a valuable one — and when, here, the author addresses the numerous and seldom-discussed ways that prisoners and parolees are financially sucked dry by an increasingly privatized and thoroughly capitalist prison system. You don’t need misogyny to do make that point. But if you dare wade into the comments, you’ll see that that’s exactly what people are latching onto (in variations of “A sex offender can be someone who had consensual sex, as in the article, with someone who later regrets their consent for whatever reason and decides to press charges for date rape,” which, yes, is a direct quote from the comment section).
It’s not ok to bolster one progressive cause by throwing another group of people under the bus. That isn’t social justice, it’s self-interest.
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*This is a whole ‘nother post, but in general, I’m opposed to the current construction of the law that groups all kinds of sex offenders together into a single group and require them all to register and disclose their status. There are some common-sense measures that I can better understand — like having groups with high recidivism rates, like child molesters or rapists, register in a public database; or (obviously) disallowing people with child molestation convictions to work with kids. But I am troubled when people who commit non-violent offenses — getting caught with a prostitute, for example — are branded as sex offenders. Now, to be quite honest, I dislike the fact that men visit prostitutes, and I think it’s wrong. But I don’t believe that everything I personally think is wrong needs to brand people for life (or even be illegal in the first place).