WEBCommentary Guest

Author: B. Cayenne Bird
Date:  February 26, 2006

Topic category:  Other/General

Mothers Warn, Your Teen Could Go to Prison
The hysteria whipped up by the politicians is good for getting votes but not much else. This hysteria is not based on facts.


Mothers want to warn parents, "Your Teen Could Go to Prison" due to Jessica's law and/or other harsh new legislation designed to keep the prisons stocked with young laborers.

Mothers Warn Deceived Voters 'Your Teen Could Go to Prison' Fear for your teens if Jessica's Law gets voted in at the polls this November by the Repug voting machine made of law enforcement labor unions. All it takes to get a conviction for a sex offense in California is an accusation. If you saw the special series done by the San Jose Mercury News "Tainted Trials" www.mercurynews.com, you can see that the criminal justice system is corrupt arrest through parole.

The Repugs have floated an initiative campaign (Jessica's Law) paid for mostly by law enforcement including CCPOA prison guard's union (whose members mostly vote in the Repug party) that is so harsh that it forced the Dems to come up with a bill almost as ridiculous. Neither solve the problem of preventing mental illness that causes child molestation to occur.

The argument is not that some people are not guilty but this crime is often the result of child custody disputes and nasty divorces. Proper investigations would be a good investment because these certainly do not take place now.

There are some people who do need to be removed from society but it would be better to protect the public safety to do it in a much more healing manner than is in place right now. Treatment works in most of the cases and the offenses that put mostly young people in these databases for life are not all the heinous types of crimes that the politicians would lead you to believe. A much as 40% of "sex offenders" are under the age of 20 years old, meaning that they are not hardened criminals at all. And the recidivism rate is 3.5%, one of the lowest for any category of criminal.

At this time, approximately 50 children per year are killed across the entire country, whereas 2000 are killed by drunk drivers. Child killings are likely to go up if harsh laws are passed so that the rare "snatch-and-run" type of child molester won't get caught. The penalties of sex offenses are already extremely harsh and this hype isn't addressing the real problem which is that 90% of child molestation cases occur within families. In less than 10% of the cases are offenders strangers and they are almost never hanging around schoolyards. It is very clear that Republicans are the source of the oppression on this nationwide sex hysteria and it's all profit and vote motivated. They have forced the Democrats to propose horrible bills that threaten us all, especially people with teens of both sexes. What I would like to share for my column today is some of the hundreds of letters from citizens with common sense who are now fearing for their teen-aged boys and young men. People were in denial for many years that the Repugs are in fact the source of Fascist laws that disregard the Constitution.

There is chaos in the states where these laws have been put into effect and not one can report effective results.

I am also including some links of important stories and studies at the end of the letters I received from citizens so that you can do your own research and see how fear mongering to get votes is what this horrible initiative is all about. I should specify that these letters are from everyday people and not politicians hell bent on filling the prisons to keep the human bondage industry going.

If anyone really wanted to help children, they'd be insisting on prevention of mental illness and cleaning up the foster care system which is rife with sexual child abuse. Recidivism according to many sources is 3% to 5% and very few of these are the "snatch and run" types.

The internet is full of studies about treatment and prevention and as a real solution to the problem which isn't nearly as large as the political fear mongers would have you think. There are two reports as sohopeful.org that contain the facts about sex offenders.

The son you save by not voting in favor of Jessica's law might be your own as teens are being ensnared in similar laws across the country

Bring 20 people to the polls to vote against any candidate of either party backed by law enforcement labor unions. While these are mainly Repugs, there are those who pose as Democrats too. The punishers are from the dark ages and all this is about building budgets for more punishing. What we need is healing and we need to elect healers who are going to be smart on crime and come up with real solutions.

Please click here to see the feedback from other mothers, physicians, and news articles so that you can see that this initiative is not for you, it is designed to work against you. Click here

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=5761

B. Cayenne Bird
Columnist


Biography - B. Cayenne Bird

B. Cayenne Bird is a 45-year veteran op-ed journalist and publisher. A descendant of Mary Todd Lincoln, and General Andrew Porter, she is passionate about human rights and criminal justice issues. A mother and grandmother with advanced degrees in Journalism, Liberal Studies, and Humanities (Cultural Anthropology) she has focused on prison reform making great strides in Calif. supporting the landmark Plata-Coleman case for a decade which resulted in major prison reform. She writes scholarly articles too but prefers op-eds.


Copyright © 2006 by B. Cayenne Bird
All Rights Reserved.


© 2004-2006 by WEBCommentary(tm), All Rights Reserved