PANICKED LEGISLATION
By Catherine L. Carpenter
Professor Carpenter says we are in a sex panic which “has bred widespread and ever-escalating legislation, impacted the lives of more than a million people and their families, and caused public hysteria and violence.” (Notre Dame Journal of Legislation, “Panicked Legislation,” Catherine L. Carpenter, 49 Notre Dame J. Leg. 1 (2023))
Carpenter says that this fear has fueled the sex panic. “…the sex panic is based on its own two-fold mythical narrative: our communities are filled with strangers who are poised to kidnap and assault our children—what has been called ‘stranger danger’—and those who commit sex offenses recidivate at alarmingly high rates.”
Catherine Carpenter was elected to the American Law Institute in 2012 and is a nationally renowned criminal law scholar in the area of sex crimes and sex offender registration laws. She is the executive director of Access to Restorative Justice Fund and is the Vice President of Alliance for Constitutional Sex Offense Laws (ACSOL).
Florida Action Committee appreciates Professor Carpenter’s willingness to share her article with our members.
the sex panic is based on its own two-fold mythical narrative: our communities are filled with strangers who are poised to kidnap and assault our children—what has been called ‘stranger danger’—and those who commit sex offenses recidivate at alarmingly high rates.”
Not only this but it serves a 2 fold purpose of masking the lack of meaningful legislation in other areas
AND give the appearance of passing meaningful legislation against a universally feared and hated sub-set of society
Stranger Danger was a farce in the 50’s. We always need a boogyman, don’t we?
THE Catherine Carpenter??
Attorney and Law School Professor??
President of the ACSOL Board??!!
👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
She’s awesome!!! 😃🤗
Great work but as she stated ,very few are listening and most of those that do are not willing to change their pre conceived ideas. Not much hope for change.
The comparison of the registry with the voter fraud conspiracy is an excellent one. Only took one person whom people looked up to to repeat the idea and now no matter how much evidence is presented to the contrary those following the idea will never change. They are not willing to accept the fact that they were misled and bafooned ..
Catherine Carpenter brings up a good point here but stops short of acknowledging that the war against ‘sex-offenders’ is only one of the latest talking points and battle cries from the court of public opinion… An ill-learned, uninformed, and often mob-like court with its roots deep in the history of humanity. We love conflict, we love to hate. To stop a war, we declare war on it. “We have to fight to wipe out world hunger.” Humans campaign and challenge and defeat and destroy. We have loved war since Biblical time. We love to hear about pandemics, we love disease. Cancer. We love earthquakes. We can’t get enough of terrorists, hijackers, dictators, and oil spills. The pictures of people lining up beside a long, open grave, waiting to be shot by todays firing squad. The online forums about bloody shreds left by suicide bombers and radicalized hometown heroes. The news whips the general population up into a frenzy du jour and then someone says, “PEDOPHILES ARE LOOKING FOR YOUR KIDS ONLINE AND AT SCHOOL AND ON XBOX.” It’s such a gut punch we love it, no matter the brave and correct statement of fact that being a contemporary version of ‘pedophile’ is likely built into males DNA from the beginning of human existence on earth based on studies by scholars and compiled by Primatologist Robert Sapolsky (pick up a book Karen- start with ‘Behave’ by Sapolsky and keep going until you get all the way back to 1st Kings 1-3 in the Bible when King David, the preeminent author of the book Psalms, being ‘stricken in years’ wed the 12 year old Abishag) but we have learned much since the beginning of human existence and understand now the damage that can be caused by early introduction to sexuality- perhaps it’s best to explain that maybe, MAYBE, some, SOME men don’t have a choice about having pedophilic undercurrents but we ALL have a choice about how we act on those feelings.
I have immovable hope for reason and logic to prevail in the war against sex offenders- it is tempered by an old soul though, a deep understanding of the ‘Political Justice’ machine that runs around the clock to silence the voice of reason and to suppress the overwhelming data that speaks in opposition to the Adam Walsh act and fear mongers everywhere. Time and education as I said, softens the edges, in the 1950’s actual people of color were STILL being hung in the American south by ‘good Christians’ and to be gay was to be a pervert subject to a host of unimaginably gruesome treatments by medical professionals who truly believed that they were doing society a favor by “fixing the perverted morals of a small sub-group of humans”. There are a quiet few questioning the supposed morals of the frequently unsigned ‘social contract’ and their voices our getting louder- as DavidM reflects upon and echoes the poignant report on Panicked Legislation it is important for us all, despite our shame and fear of reprisal, to stand up to the mob- fight the good fight and believe that if we do we can leave this world a slightly better place than it was when we got here.