The state Legislature in New York is now ready to pass a bill that will continue to strip civil rights from former prisoners. Already, former prisoners have hardly any voting rights, and New York may soon mimic some other states by passing a law to continue to confine sex offenders who have completed their time, according to the Thursday edition The New York Times.This bill is another example of a battle over civil rights that has been waging for years. Some believe that once a person has served his or her time, he has earned his full freedom. Others have a primitive, generalizing notion that criminals are and always will be rotten, trouble-causing individuals. I, of course, subscribe to the former.
Under the proposed legislation, released sex offenders, after being examined by “mental health experts,” may have to be tried again before a jury, and if the jury sees them as a threat, the sex offenders would be further detained or supervised.
The New York Times reported that the legislation “would create a new class of crime, a sexually-motivated felony, in which prosecutors could try to prove that someone intended to commit a sex crime, even if such a crime was not actually committed.”
Sounds like something straight out of “Minority Report” to me.
As always, this problem can be attributed to a misunderstanding or misconception by those who support these types of bills. In a very precautious attempt to protect people, the government infinitely punishes others, which is not the goal of imprisoning criminals who don’t have life sentences. Under this new law, a 10-year sentence is not really a 10-year sentence; a five-year sentence is not really a five-year sentence; and before we all know it, our system will be even more shady and unclear.
This ambiguity is further illustrated by a Supreme Court ruling in 1997 that, as reported by the Times on Sunday, declared “mental abnormality,” not simply “mental illness,” as grounds for re-detainment of a released sexual offender in Kansas. This means that the government can examine a citizen’s personality, determine if it is abnormal and take necessary precautions.
As I said, criminals don’t always stay criminals forever, and no group of people, not even “mental health experts” or the Supreme Court, has the right to decide if a prisoner is likely to commit another crime. And when one takes into account discrimination against African Americans in the legal system, the consequences of this law (and a multitude of others like it) become particularly alarming.