Down With “Sex Offender” Registries!

(Letter)

17 January 2020

Workers Vanguard,

A longstanding witchhunt in Michigan continues despite repeated court rulings ordering its cessation.

In 2016, the federal Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled enforcement of the Michigan Sex Offenders Registration Act (SORA) as unconstitutional. The State of Michigan then appealed the ruling, thereby diverting resources that could otherwise have been used to prosecute such abhorrent criminals as those involved in the mass poisoning of Flint residents.* Then in October 2017, the US Supreme Court upheld the Sixth Circuit Court’s decision by refusing to review the case. Additionally, the federal District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan issued an order on May 23, 2019 that set a 90-day deadline for state legislators to bring the law into compliance.

Despite all of this, more than two full years have passed since the Supreme Court ruling and the State of Michigan has utterly failed to correct this obscene and draconian law! In two full years, absolutely no legislation has even been introduced that might correct these scurrilous injustices.

It is obvious that our capitalist rulers are the real perversion. By grossly abusing the oppressed, they attempt to maintain bourgeois systems of control and to distract from the utter cruelty of capitalism. Without question, they are truly depraved.

In community,
A Reader

*The Office of the Michigan Attorney General, Democrat Dana Nessel, dismissed all pending criminal charges stemming from the Flint drinking water crisis in June 2019.

WV replies:

“Sex offender” registries are draconian and should be abolished. They stigmatize for life anyone who engages in sexual activity outside the “mainstream,” including countless participants in consensual activities like intergenerational sex and prostitution. Even those convicted of violent crimes should not be permanently punished or face endless state restrictions on where they can work, live and travel. As we noted in our article “Abolish ‘Sex Offender’ Registries!” (WV No. 1099, 4 November 2016), the campaign against alleged predators, as part of the broader anti-sex witchhunt, is “aimed at reinforcing conservative ‘family values’ in order to regiment youth and the population more broadly into submitting to the exploitative rule of the capitalists.” Such a campaign also distracts working people from the real evils of this racist, class-divided system.

Our reader points to the 2016 court ruling that found portions of Michigan’s Sex Offender Registry Act unconstitutional. On February 14, a U.S. district judge gave the state legislature 60 days to revise SORA; if it fails to act in time, any registrant whose conviction predates April 2011 will be removed from the list. With 44,000 on the Michigan registry alone, we would welcome anything that reduces the impact of the law or provides relief to those caught in the reactionary dragnet. Responding to the complaint that the bloated registries are a waste of money, the court in fact aims to streamline the law to make enforcement more “effective.” The capitalist state and its moralist busybodies will continue to persecute those deemed sexual “deviants.”

Our reader is rightfully outraged at atrocities like the contaminated water crisis in the majority-black city of Flint, and suggests that resources could be better spent on prosecuting the bourgeois politicians behind the lead poisoning and subsequent cover-up. However, under this system of exploitation and repression, the courts and legislature do not exist to balance the scales of “justice.” The purpose of the courts, the prisons and the cops—the machinery of the capitalist state—is to protect the property and profits of the ruling class. The anti-sex witchhunt is one mechanism to boost the authority of the repressive state to surveil and control people’s private lives. Whether run by the Democrats or the Republicans, the capitalist state cannot be made to serve the interests of the working and oppressed masses.