News & Resources: Fighting Civil Commitment

Imprisoning people indefinitely for crimes they might commit in the future turns any notion of the rule of law on its head. In a remarkable series of newsletters, The Legal Pad, a civilly-committed former attorney looks at the extra-legality and social tragedy of America’s growing gulag system.

The Legal Pad, index to vols 1 to 4

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The Legal Pad, vol 01, num 01, Dec 2016

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Hugh Ryan is the recipient of the Foundation’s biennial Warren Johansson Book Award for his 2022 The Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison

Downstate is a play is about a day in the life of four men living in a halfway house, each with a conviction for a sex offense involving minors. Yet Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Bruce Norris has won rave reviews questioning ‘What is too much?’ when it comes to punishing these crimes. Is Downstate an inflection point in public discourse about criminal justice? Click here for a review.

Two claims which can be decisively made about today’s teens and young adults – singling out this birth cohort from the ones that came before: young people today are experiencing significantly higher rates of unhappiness and mental illness, and they are also exhibiting a unique lack of sexual activity. Read a provocative deep dive into the reasons. Why Are Young People So Unhappy? – Mental Health, Sexual Development, Loss of Autonomy.

James Kirchick’s Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington gives the most complete history to date of gay and bisexual people, mostly male and deeply closeted, in the nation’s capital. These include elected politicians, high-ranking political appointees, prominent journalists, socialites, as well as scores of minor civil servants and even a few fringe non-political figures like the local pornographer Lynn Womack, who won a major victory for artistic freedom in the Supreme Court in 1962. Read a review here.

Allyn Walker’s 2021 A Long Dark Shadow led to a firestorm of controversy, stoked by the right and tabloid media. Within months of publication, the book led to the author’s ouster from a teaching post at Virginia’s Old Dominion University and recoil from scholars worried about academic freedom. But has the fairly conservative content of Walker’s book been overlooked amidst all the hubbub? Read a review here.

Hellfire Does Not Deter Crime: Prisoner Survey on Religion – In 2021, the Percy Foundation distributed questionnaires on religious beliefs and practice to the prisoners enrolled in its prison book program. A total of 526 questionnaires were returned to us. Our inquiry aimed to ascertain whether strong religiosity either in childhood upbringing or as adults prior to incarceration acts as a deterrent or risk factor in criminal propensity. Read more here.

Maia Kobabe’s Stonewall Book Award-winning graphic novel Gender Queer has been savaged by conservatives as targeting vulnerable youngsters with pornography and grooming them for a life of sexual deviance. Yet Kobabe’s message curiously accords with what the social conservatives themselves want for adolescents: no acknowledgment of pubertal changes, no sex, no gender reassignment, nothing but a state of suspended animation in pre-lapserian innocence. Whither the paradox? Read a review here.

The Significance of Ketanji Brown Jackson on the Supreme Court argues her historical importance is not only as the first African-American woman on the high court, but as the only current member of the court with a background in criminal justice.

Eric Berkowitz's Dangerous Ideas: A History of Censorship in the West offers readers important background for understanding the millennia-old lust felt by powers-that-be to suppress ideas and images.

Just when sexual-identity politics has become hegemonic in the West’s media discourse and its institutional firmament, young people in their teens and twenties are pushing back against its ingrained ideological rigidity. Cornell developmental psychologist Ritch Savin-Williams explores the phenonemon in Bi: Bisexual, Pansexual, Fluid, and Nonbinary Youth. Click here for a review.

D.H. Gutzman's novel Debauched Genius: The Loves of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky is a vodka-drenched romp through the life and mind of one of the world’s most renowned composers.

News and Resources

Ryan Conrad tapped as 2021 Charley Shively Prize winner – Canadian-based scholar, polemicist, and artist Ryan Conrad is recipient of the Foundation’s 2021 Charley Shively Prize for Gay Liberation. A co-founder of the publishing collective Against Equality, Conrad is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Toronto’s York University, writing on the history of grassroots Canadian AIDS videomaking. Conrad’s wide-ranging, cross-disciplinary work – on topics such as the relation of sexual minorities to mass incarceration and the straitjacket of “equality” as a holy grail for sexual politics – shows both a searching and uncompromising concern with justice and an unquenchable joie de vivre at the utopian potentials of erotic community. READ MORE HERE ...

Guest editorials – The Foundation is happy to post guest opinion pieces or reviews of notable books on topics of sexual diversity, rights, law, and history written by qualified scholars, activists, or those who have had contact with the criminal justice system. READ MORE HERE ...

Voluntary sexual relations among prisoners – Skewing male and young, and cut off from relationships and sexual outlets outside, prisoners frequently engage each other in sexual activity. In the U.S. and elsewhere around the world, voluntary sexual relationships are officially forbidden, with those caught often facing severe discipline. But prison administrators also sometimes respond with varying degrees of realism about sex among prisoners. What are the alternatives to prohibition? The articles and anecdotes here discuss the issues involved and offer data on this hard-to-assess and variable phenomenon. READ MORE HERE ...

Prison sex & prison rape – A literature review, covering consensual sex, sexual victimization, conjugal visitation, and more! READ MORE HERE ...

Do illegal images encourage child molestation? – Mere possession of child pornography (which includes images to fully sexually mature adolescents) is one of the most rapidly growing offenses prosecuted in the U.S. federal system, earning those convicted an average sentence of 12.5 years (according to Department of Justice statistics). Often, the images in question are old and feature mere nudity, little different from what is found in naturist literature and legitimate art photography. In this brief, a well-known criminologist and expert witness reviews the most recent scholarship on the question, and concludes that there is no credible link between viewing such images and committing hands-on offenses against minors. READ MORE HERE ...

Criminalization of sex workers – or their clients – both violates individual rights and prevents prostitutes and other sex workers from the regulation that has been shown to keep the "oldest profession" safe and offering a living wage. The equation of sex work with "human trafficking" – a concept heavily promoted by Western governments and NGOs but little analyzed – serves to strip sex workers of any volition and presents them as pure victims. The result in recent years has been an intensified regime of surveillance of migrants, travelers generally, sex workers, and customers – as well as large upticks in punishments in the U.S. for completely consensual activities. Sex workers and their allies around the world are organizing to fight for reasonable regulation and legal protection. READ MORE HERE ...

Transgender people face police abuse – While trans issues in the West are prominent in popular consciousness like never before, and legal barriers to fair treatment are tending to fall, police harassment and disregard, together with high levels of criminal victimization, continue. These articles offer an overview. READ MORE HERE ...

Over-the-counter contraception & youth rights – Access to contraception is a fundamental aspect of young persons' ability to make their own sexual choices. The recent articles discussed here present the scope of the problem of inaccessibility of female contraception in the U.S., E.U., and beyond, and as well, the shifting political debates and medical developments touching on the issue. READ MORE HERE ...

Battles over sex-ed – Research shows that giving young people the knowledge and tools to make informed decisions about sexuality leads to better choices, reducing unwanted pregnancies and risk of disease, while opening up space for vital discussions about feelings, relationships, and the range of human sexual responses. With a bias toward abstinence-ed in the U.S., the benefits of sex-ed often are not realized, and GLBT youth are often left out of the picture. The articles here offer an overview. READ MORE HERE ...

Mass incarceration – The U.S. represents 4.4% of the world population, but 22% of its prisoners. Unjust sentences for victimless or merely statutory offenses are a key part of the problem, together with racism and moralism about drugs and sex. Inmates face high levels of physical and sexual assault, and targets are often transgender people and others with disparaged sexual identities. READ MORE HERE ...

Fighting civil commitment – Some 7,000 individuals languish in locked facilities in the U.S. because of Kafka-esque statutes allowing indefinite detention (sex offense civil commitment) when the government has nothing more than a hunch you might in the future do something wrong of a sexual nature. Only a very small number have ever been released, even though the earliest of these facilities have existed as long as 28 years. In at least some states, more have died than have been released. In order to detain an individual for as much as the rest of their lives, the state need not prove any mental illness, only a potentially undefined mental "disorder" or a completely limitless, undefined "mental abnormality." Those who are civilly committed are, according to the Supreme Court, not being "punished," though these detention centers are usually no more than prisons, both in architecture and secured perimeters, and also in operating methods and restrictions and requirements of those confined. In a remarkable series of newsletters, The Legal Pad, a civilly-committed former attorney looks at the legal and social consequences of America's growing extra-legal gulag system. READ MORE HERE ...

Sexual minorities face more violence in prison – Incarceration tends to intensify forms of inequality and injustice prevalent in society. So it's no surprise that sexual and gender minorities often face higher rates of violence and maltreatment in jails and prisons. What's known and how are prisoners and allies taking action? READ MORE HERE ...

Fears about young people's sexuality hinder HPV vaccination efforts – HPV vaccine protects against cancers caused by human papillomavirus (HPV) infection – a common virus. About one in four people in the U.S. is infected, and some 14 million new infections every year. Encouraging vaccinations among young people is a public health priority, and over time could prevent more than 30,000 U.S. cancer cases a year. But vaccination campaigns face serious resistance and vaccination rates are lower than they should be. What's the problem? READ MORE HERE ...

Book reviews and commentary – What University of Michigan gay scholar David Halperin calls the “War on Sex” is generating more and more critical analysis. READ MORE HERE ...

Learning from History: Lessons for activism today – The GLBT movement has been one of the most successful social movements in the West in recent generations. Yet the struggle to fight sexual injustices and hysterias – now in new guises – seems greater than ever. READ MORE HERE ...