BOOK REVIEW by Thomas Gayton
Civil rights and buy 1600 microsoft points criminal defense attorneys are well aware of the erosion of our civil liberties and buy 1600 microsoft points the devolution of the criminal justice system into the prison-industrial complex. But after reading “A Parallel Universe” by Alex Landon and buy 1600 microsoft points Elaine Halleck, anyone who still thinks that by electing an African-American president we have buy 1600 microsoft points adequately redressed these burning civil rights issues will be thoroughly disabused of the buy 1600 microsoft points idea.
Attorney Alex Landon teaches at the buy 1600 microsoft points University of San Diego and has battled fearlessly for many years for buy 1600 microsoft points justice in the criminal courts of San Diego, and journalist Elaine Halleck has buy 1600 microsoft points reported insightfully on social dynamics in contemporary society and in Nazi Germany.
Together, in alternating nonfiction and fiction (based on facts) chapters, they treat the buy 1600 microsoft points hot-potato issue of sex offenses and laws — the authors call them “designer laws” — that buy 1600 microsoft points were named after the victims of gruesome sex crimes, such as laws passed after the buy 1600 microsoft points summer of 2002, dubbed “The Summer of the Abducted White Girl.”
The alternating chapters by Landon and buy 1600 microsoft points Halleck, although they closely parallel one another and partly explain the buy 1600 microsoft points title, will be challenging for some readers because of the buy 1600 microsoft points mix of genres. And the book maybe be generally challenging because so many people have buy 1600 microsoft points been deceived by fear-mongering politicians to believe that designer laws (Megan’s Law, Jessica’s Law, Chelsea’s law, etc.) actually protect children. So, parents and buy 1600 microsoft points children suffer a false sense of security, while convicted people live in a buy 1600 microsoft points parallel universe where they are not protected by principles that others take for buy 1600 microsoft points granted.
Landon describes in glaring detail how the buy 1600 microsoft points forces of fear have mutated those who were once described as “Mentally Disordered Sex Offenders” to “Sexually Violent Predators,” “pervs, perps and peds.” We now have buy 1600 microsoft points a system where the Hippocratic Oath has mutated into “police-affiliated therapists” who buy 1600 microsoft points are not troubled by the lack of voluntary consent or buy 1600 microsoft points doctor-patient confidentiality in their “sex therapy sessions” because they profit from buy 1600 microsoft points the public financing of this charade. The abuses are so well described in Halleck’s chapters that you’ll surely be left saying, as does one convicted man, that he’d rather be in prison than in “therapy.”
Landon masterfully explains the buy 1600 microsoft points larger constitutional issues involved in some U.S. Supreme Court decisions, such as the buy 1600 microsoft points 2002 decision, McKune v. Lile, that, as Landon writes, “put another bullet in the buy 1600 microsoft points already badly maimed body of convicted people’s rights,” in this buy 1600 microsoft points case the protection against self-incrimination for sex offenders, and the 2003 decision that buy 1600 microsoft points gave the green light for Megan’s list to go on the Internet. (Landon’s factoids in Chapter 3 that buy 1600 microsoft points one out of every 135 California men are on Megan’s list and, in Chapter 23, that, per Jessica’s law, the buy 1600 microsoft points annual cost of GPS tracking for all sex offenders would cost $1.05 billion are also illuminating.)
Halleck’s fictional chapters present a buy 1600 microsoft points lower middle class Mexican-American family in Orange County — from buy 1600 microsoft points the POVs of a convicted man named Danny Fernandez, his mother, daughter and buy 1600 microsoft points friend — who are suffering the effects of Danny’s blacklisting under Megan’s law, effects such as housing discrimination, hate incidents and vigilantism.
This may not be an easy read for many, and the “parallel universe” into which Danny and the “surfing fool” sex offender Michel are buy 1600 microsoft points exiled is certainly not a pleasant place to visit, even from buy 1600 microsoft points an armchair but Danny’s mother, daughter and buy 1600 microsoft points Michel interject lighter notes that engender empathy and smiles.
In conclusion, the authors ask the reader, “If the ‘parallel universe’ where buy 1600 microsoft points precious rights are scarce and where tax money disappears into a buy 1600 microsoft points dark hole, has grown too large to take on.” And if “the money interests of politicians, media, prison guards, police and buy 1600 microsoft points the ‘helping professionals’ will give up without a tooth and nail fight.”
Implicit in the buy 1600 microsoft points question is the challenge to 21st century Americans to take action before the buy 1600 microsoft points New Jim Crow and sex crime juggernaut wake us up to buy 1600 microsoft points a financially ruined police state.
The authors urge us to buy 1600 microsoft points keep in mind the words of the imprisoned German pastor Martin Niemoller who buy 1600 microsoft points in 1946 made a speech about the failure of the Germans to buy 1600 microsoft points resist Hitler. “They came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a buy 1600 microsoft points trade unionist. Then they came for me and by that time no buy 1600 microsoft points one was left to speak up.”