• Calibrating Society’s Moral Compass

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    Adversity is defined as an unfavorable fortune or fate; a condition marked by misfortune, calamity, or distress. For registrants adversity is an every-day hardship composed of of aggravation and unnecessary absurdities. A hardship which, most citizens in their pursuit of happiness as a valued American, WOULD NEVER TOLERATE. Yet most American citizens who are not convicted of a crime that is weighted down by adverse attachments filled with extended and unsubstantiated punitive damages, can not grasp how diverse the registry really is and how many individuals; and family members alike, are affected by the misfortune and the unending trials of required registration.

    Overall, the citizens on the offender registries are living with[in] the law, because they must; and most will find that there are not enough realistic options for relief outside of a Certificate of Rehabilitation or possibly by moving to another state or country. Now the question is how do we live with it and how can we seek to cope with being oppressed and disenfranchised, as a result. We as registrants want the registry to flee from existence as fast going out, as it came in. So it is the station of all citizens for offender registries reform, to push ahead and be sure the public is listening and explicitly becomes aware of all its disproportionate factors. In the end it is up to you to become the controller of your fate. To create a distinctive public statement in a clear and detailed manner, leaving no room for confusion or doubt.

    In a world full of adversity influenced by prejudice and mis-information which, seems to be more acceptable and rampant in the 21st century, it is hard to find truth seekers like Women Against Registry and their associated friends and groups. By far these groups are the most salient and resounding, active billboards we have available to us to push for legislative reform. And yes: it is legislation that will overhaul the registry more over than any thing else is remotely capable of. Politics built this monster and politics must be obligated bring it down. We can wish and dream about how we want to do this without legislation or political action; or we can get to the Hill and act like American citizens who have the same rights as all others: to not be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

    There are just so many ways to accomplish the reform and the eventual abolishment of the divisive police state we call the registry. Our Arizona Chapter had talked about an advertising campaign, similar to Public Service Announcements, one which we could launch, nationally, to better inform Americans on what goes on behind the doors of our Justice and Legislative branches. The educational values of PSAs would be justifiable at any cost. Yet nothing is as effective as good ole grass roots movements that come from the heartland and directly from the heart of individuals who are forced to live with this impulsive and fortuitous digression on democracy.

    We are fortunate to have voices, and the power and the right to acts that allow us to plant a seed of hope. We should be using what freedoms we have and use them in ten-fold where every group is working together to build this realization: using the power of numbers. There a nearly one-million of “us” at this time and as we grow into an even larger community of change-seekers, you will see that every group has and is developing their own way of calling out our law-makers on the broken topography of the registry. This connection creates a campaign to build character and provides distinct divisions of areas having specific relations or positions relative to each other. We need more than just our voices. We need boots on the ground in D.C. as well. Finding the appropriate Lobbyist for our active transformation is very critical. Hopefully we all can all band together to finance this.

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    What W.A.R. looks to accomplish, within our communities—and nationally— is to create, research, find and make available some well established and fine-tuned statistically based working tools for society; wherein every person on the registry has the access to the tools they need—to become a better announced neighbor and friend in the communities they live. With these resources we can start opening doors and giving wisdom and knowledge to many who are not so inclined to go with the ideologies that we anti-registrants are well aware of. Keeping the information available and openly brought forward into society may be our best tool for reform of unnecessary and aggravating laws.

    One strong characteristic of W.A.R and friends is that we can put civility into a undeniable perspective of associations. Associated facts and personally learned principles, designed to help individuals who are singled out, find a realistic perspective to work with.

    Sexual addictions and established criminal behaviors are mostly products of the social order around us, somewhat in the way we grow up and the way this subject gets treated or controlled by media, political, ecclesiastical and even lingering urban legend temperaments. Not all crimes relating to prurient acts are considered unhealthy in one country as they may be in another. In that fact, it would be safe to say that America is young, very young in comparison and has not yet learned how to deal with the wide perspective of morals which most countries—who are thousands of years ahead of us—have already learned to compensate for. Unfortunately the virus that US government has deployed, locally, is spreading their way. This problem is not isolated to the here and now. It could be everywhere.

    In law and the legal dealings of justice, there are limitations and decisive regulations designed to punish or fine individuals who are convicted. Can we honestly agree that any modern day sentencing outcome on a person required to register, defines the culpability of that individual? Not just the individual but, the family, neighbors and our close friends as well, all are part of the extraordinary inflation to punishment reserved prejudicially to registrants. Are we really being judged and convicted for said criminal act or are we being punished for life for a lack of having control over who and how our laws are enacted?

    Registrants are singled out and no other crime carries such a life long disproportionate judgment.

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    Everyone can relate to how many hours we may have spent contemplating the numerous scenarios of conflicts with neighbors or co-workers, or family member who you just have not worked up the courage to mention your crimes to. Most of us have been lucky but many not so undisturbed by societies scorn on deviants of a sexual kind.

    How Americans react, in general, is based on a surface level schema. Most educated people in the country seem to know that there is not any reason to use violence or discord, in the public forum, unless absolute harm directly effects them. But the registry seems to have its own rule-breaking attribute. One which tends to divert away from any laws on civility or historical discernment to avoid prejudice actions. Modern sensitivities play a big role in the approach to display “political correctness” in relation to how a neighbor is supposed to react to any given situation, particularly when localized within their family safety zones like their home or their schools. When neighbors know about your crime, no matter what plastic-level of “danger” the state or county puts you on, there is the chance of conflict or even at the least some type of anger.

    When a neighbor finds out you are on the registry many possible outcomes can be at play. Don’t ever use anger or belittlement as a resource. Calmly shoot for the bright side of the public scrutiny play book and explain your plight so they can have the opportunity to listen to what you tell them about your self and what you did to get on this registry “thing.” Being distinctly honest can play in your favor. Especially if you know that what you did was abhorrent yet characteristically unusual; and you can explain it to someone in a simple and down to earth manner. Even discussing political aspects of the registry which may reveal the flaws-in-the-system or how one gets involved in political change, might be a great tool of conversation to help lighten the blow when discourse is in play. Using your knowledge to build a better relationship.

    Your family and your friends can become a great asset during your time of reformation and lobbying; they can also help build some confidence for your own peace of mind by reading lots of emotional intelligence books and philosophy and psychology like Jung and Adler. There are tons of digests you can get from Goodwill and thrifts stores for pennies. The more you know about yourself the more you can share with others. You would be surprised how easy it is to change when you have more refined ways to apply changes and know what it takes to deal with change.

    What we hold inside of us is a moral compass which keeps us emotionally stable and helps us look forward as well as around us, every so vigilant in awareness. A person with a lingering unforeseen obtrusive behavioral trait, or an addiction that has left a besmirching mark on their past, has the option of progressively utilizing this open and dynamic community for registry reform, to better ones-self while at the same time aggressively helping make the past the past; and continue to work on their chosen individual directives that will keep them more happy and forward-looking whilst calibrating this moral compass. It is a large enough problem to have social based burdens cracking down on your every opportunity to find a new home and new direction for your family. Do not go at it alone. Whenever possible please use our community energy and powerful magnetic energy for calibration during your journey.

    ___Our identity is located not in the impulse of “selfhood” but in deliberately maintained connections [to others] — “Wisdom In Words” – Burt Hornbach

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    This registry for prurient offenders incorporates an oddly misdirected philosophy… It makes sense, on one hand, to keep track of recently released offenders, but what amount of prevention does it really provide and how often has a registered citizen ever committed another crime that would justify such a law to exist? Answer: almost never. It is typically the unregistered or untraceable criminals that re-commit a sexually related offense. This disparity in “sentencing”—the lump-summing or the grouping of all offenders into one category—signifies due process as a non-constitutional form of classifying convictions. Not so much the criminal. Even by using the offender tier system within adjudication, one finds no considerable weight is added to the matter if the aftermath of a lifetime of punishment is to follow. Many States provide levels or tier that hold promise for release from the registry but very few deliver and some States abuse the statutes by demanding lifetime probations on top of registration and notification.

    Where is the sensibility in classifying offenders by subscribing to the actual act of injustice they are are charged with? Have we lost some value system that allows scare tactics and emotional cries of ‘stranger danger’ to over write the fairness in sentencing. As it stands even a person with a murder charge or a serious assault charge can be sentenced by a judge and not ever be classified as a “danger to society” or a danger to anything for that matter. The very term “sex offender” echoes the traditional approach, according to which the sexual deviate has been regarded as a criminal offender, subject to the sanctions upon which the criminal law so utterly relies: punishment. The anatomy of shock and causation of these sexually (sometimes immoral and abusive) oriented convictions are a condition of a non-science and an attribution of myths which evolved by pure chance as it had its roots in stranger-danger and the somewhat fantastic overload of television and social morphologies.

    The criminal law traditionally recognized no middle ground between “sanity,” which meant full responsibility for one’s acts, and “insanity,” constituting a complete defense. And since most salacious criminals are not insane within the legal test, but are, at most, suffering from serious neurotic character disorders, the law took no cognizance of their mental condition. (This can be applied, for the most part, to the U.S, Sentencing Guidelines Commission that historically has a record of “ratcheting up” enhancements for sex offenses.)

    So now punishment was the panacea, even for cases where it was medically clear that punishment would and could have no beneficial effect. Now we are forced to ask: where is the equity in disparity? To state that all libidinous oriented offenders should receive the same penalties is overly broad in circumspect.

    In general most people have no idea of what it is like to lose those freedoms we are born with as an American. Those liberties that we wake up in the morning with, choosing what we eat, where we venture each day and then at night where we go to be entertained; finally at the end of the day we sleep in our nice big comfy beds, refueling our spirits to face another adventurous day. Yet the average, normally law-abiding, citizen could never begin to imagine the restrictions and restraints that are imposed upon him or her when they have been convicted of a crime that sends them to prison. If you have never been there, you can never really reach deep enough into your creative mind to picture or feel, or pretend what it would be like to have these freedoms taken away from you. You do not make the choice of what you eat. You cannot decide what kind of wardrobe you wear. You have non-stop chaos and indignation thrown at you every minute of the day—and night. The smells. The complaints. The bad food the unruly guards who enjoy taunting as a game. You feel like you are walking on glass and the air is filled with caustic attitudes everywhere you (are allowed to) go.

    The paradigm for loss of freedoms is a tough model to describe to the average American. At present there are over two-and a half-million Americans (and immigrants) in our federal and state correctional institutions. Some of these places are reasonably facilitated, and with enough basic amenities to, more or less, keep an inmate from becoming the mental equivalent of a manic-depressive. Other prisons, such as state ran and private correction facilities are a total train wreck and you will experience pain and suffrage from the time you wake up, each day, until the time the lights go out at night.

    Some of that post-incarceration misery you have collected and carried with you converts itself into depression or anxieties, which may take a lifetime for you to sort out. Now to make things worse, the registry puts labels on people which, makes the “labeled” less likely to change. Therapy and treatment are now required for all people whom have been convicted of a sex related offense. But not all States and communities have the support system for good quality therapy and treatment due to the amount of money allocated to other departments of the criminal justice system like the SORNA Registries and all of the faculties needed to maintain its current state of uselessness. There are so many Veterans in the US who have been treated poorly and some are not able to be expired from lifetime supervision due to having PTSD or other stress related disorders which judges and case workers will classify as dissident or not able to mix with society.

    Our Country seems to have lost its heart in some ways and there are so many Americans that just do not understand the complexity of the human condition. Take the current otherwise unspeakable crime Immigration agencies were involved with, literally kidnapping children from their parents when the parent entered the country to seek asylum or to seek freedom. I am sure 1 out of 5 people that you know, can tell you that this was just fine for our the Justice Department to take this type of action, in order to show the American border is not something to take lightly. In view of this type of Executive behavior, law makers and the laws they make have ventured far from what the United States Constitution is focused on. If people only knew how many families are destroyed by the registry, similar to how these immigrants had been, they might develop a more realistic viewpoint to how slowly laws can change but how fast non-laws of circumstance happen to evade justice.

    Organizations like W.A.R. must remain diligent while evolving itself through the stages of maturity that such progressive movements allow. The support we can bring to individuals in this forum, is imperative and can only be rallied through groups that are educated in how and what to do. For the majority of registered citizens, most still on probation, cannot find the resources to lobby advocates in the House and Senate to proposed Bills that make sense out of very emotional issues such as the registry. There is so much an individual has to do in this kind of irrational situation just so they can maintain a day to day life style, without being persecuted for going to their own church, or to a meeting at their child’s school. Having to advocate for any type of crime is to some, useless and waste of time. Most will think there is not anything that can be done to stop this institutional bandit from robbing life blood for the rest of their life. As individuals inside of groups like W.A.R. we are considered minorities and must gain on and use the advantage of being the awareness minority; who speaks to the majority hoping and seeking change, yet has no direction or latitude on what needs to be done and can be done to remove the Notification and Registration Act.

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    Determination is a key factor and will help everyone around you find some even ground to work with. Discuss what the statistics are to your neighbors and Congresspersons. Tell them how unfavorable the laws for this type of crime are to everyone… including the neighbor and your neighborhood’s real estate values and the fear and loathing that resounds the moniker. Most political lobbyist or steam rolling representatives had narily conditionally framed in the hardships and poorly valued returns that became the registry. They were thinking nil of their constituents.

    Our job is to become a voice having capable powers in forming conclusive judgment about the obscurity and continuing lies that emanate from the “Farming out of justice” to the United States government. It is a huge moneymaker for the District Courts system. Why our tax payers put up with this is but a sure sign that someone is keeping a lot of doors closed to keep most Americans from knowing how corrupt the corrections system really is.

    Let’s open some doors and get the word out. Don’t be shy just because you have a child or a relative on the registry. Be proud and calculative knowing that you are intellectually aware of how this country is taking advantage of your life without due process or assessing the crime as a whole. Your knowledge is everyone’s sense of hope. Understanding the obscure philosophies behind the origin of offending registries and illegal community restrictions is a great starting point for any ears that will listen.