Judge stands up to gender bias

A Queens judge is blasting the city's Probation Department for going easier on teenage girls than boys - even when they commit the same crimes.

Family Court Judge John Hunt accused probation of gender bias for trying to spare all but the most violent girls from prison time and the scarlet letter of the juvenile delinquent.

A family court judge? WTF??? On the side of boys??? Must be flying giraffe season.

Hunt analyzed the cases of eight teenagers who had come before him - four boys and four girls - and found that probation routinely recommended tougher treatment for boys.

Take Queens eighth-graders Stephen C. and Jennifer S.

The teens took part in the robbery of a boy who was punched, kicked and choked before having his iPod wrested away. Probation recommended that Stephen be put on supervised probation while Jennifer should have her case eventually dismissed.

Judge Hunt disagreed Monday and ordered both teens put on probation for 18 months.

"The court could find no cogent reason why Jennifer S. should be treated differently than her accomplice, Stephen C.," Hunt wrote.

Hunt blamed a "seemingly bizarre, sterile and largely impersonal system" for the disparate treatment.

In an effort to trim the number of locked-up juveniles, the city partnered with the Vera Institute of Justice in 2003 to develop a computer-generated program that would take the guesswork out of probation officers' recommendations.

A higher score on the Probation Assessment Tool (PAT) means a recommendation that could lead to eventual dismissal of charges. A lower score means probation or lockup, not to mention the juvenile delinquent tag.

Hunt claims PAT routinely rewards girls with 14 extra points for gender alone, while boys get 0.

"The system contains a built-in gender bias in favor of female delinquents," Hunt writes.

Probation officials say the computer tool predicts the likelihood of a juvenile being rearrested based on a study of 763 similar cases.

"It is an assessment tool," said Ryan Dodge, a probation spokesman. "The court can always go against it. It is not set in stone."

Hunt said probation offered up no statistics to suggest boys were more likely to get in trouble again.

tzambito@nydailynews.com

Source:click here

A computer is making the decision human beings should be making? WTF?? Who programmed the computer? This should get a lot of cases overturned. To the the judge: thank you for doing the right thing,for being a responsible jurist while dishing out justice.

Mandate to leave the internet alone

From Campaign For Liberty:

Under the guise of "protecting consumers" like you and me with "net neutrality," "open access," and, of course, their favorite - "cybersecurity" - the statists have launched an all-out WAR for total control of the Internet.

But their real target is you and me.

And it's no secret they aren't going to stop unless you and I MAKE them.

Please help Campaign for Liberty fight back by signing the mandate supporting C4L's fight to protect Internet freedom.

To sign the mandate:click here

The statists don't leave well enough alone. Now they trying to make a play to control the internet,again. They won't stop themselves that is why it is up to us to stop them and by doing that is to sign the mandate. By signing the mandate you are sending a clear and concise message to them "leave the internet alone".

Civil Liberties groups opposed to invasion of privacy and indefinite detention

From Fight For The Future:

There's a huge issue looming that we had to be in touch about: Congress is on the verge of ending your right to privacy. The sites you visit, your personal emails, and everything you do online could soon be used by secretive government agencies to hurt you.

Our plan is to stop this bill like we stopped SOPA. But it won’t be easy. A key vote in the Senate next week is our last good chance.

Some background: the House passed the privacy-killing bill CISPA last month after a rushed vote. CISPA would let any corporation share users’ private information with any government agency, from the NSA to the FBI to local police. In just days, the Senate will vote on a similar bill, Lieberman-Collins or the “SECURE IT Act”. Both bills would trump decades of existing privacy laws and establish wholesale sharing of your personal information between corporations and the government.

While SOPA would have empowered Hollywood to take down websites, CISPA and its Senate counterpart, Lieberman-Collins, would let Homeland Security and private companies build vast databases of our data that could be used against individuals at any time and for any purpose. Goodbye privacy, hello police state.

The general consensus among internet freedom groups is that CISPA poses a greater threat to your rights than SOPA. The difference is, the bill hasn’t made enemies of the largest tech companies. This time, public interest groups like us are on our own, and we need your help more than ever.

To be honest, we’re not sure we can win this. Congress is convinced they have to pass *something*. But we’re sure the playbook we’re working from right now is our best shot. And we’ve got a team of three organizers dedicated to making it happen. First we’re asking people to email and call local Senate offices while the Senators are at home for Memorial Day recess, and drop in at Senate offices to express their concerns about the bill. We’re planning a call-in day for later in the week, and we’ll also be pressuring President Obama to keep his veto promise (this won’t be easy). But the first step is to either write or call your Senator right now. If we’re going to win, everybody needs to be heard.

One thing that’s in our favor: timing. This is an election year, and there’s just a few more weeks before Congress *shuts down*. If we can make Senators think twice before voting on this, we can run out the clock and hold on to our privacy rights. Even if you’re not a US-citizen, this still affects you: any information that passes through US-based services could be shared with the US government. Help us spread the word and find every single one of your friends who cares about their privacy and can help save it.

Thanks for always being there for the internet.

- Tiffiniy Cheng, Fight for the Future

P.S. We also just redesigned our website and put two beautiful billboards outside SOPA sponsor Lamar Smith’s offices.

P.P.S. If you’re in Europe, click here and make a call. There are important votes on ACTA this week.

Send email click here

And from Demand Progress:

Tell Senate To Oppose Cyber Security Bill And Indefinite Detention

We're teaming up with several other groups on a call-in day to the Senate today. Demand Progress is fighting on two fronts:

1) We're opposing the National Defense Authorization Act -- especially its provisions which would legalize the use of propaganda on American citizens and permit the indefinite detention of civilians.

These dangerous, detestable violations of our basic freedoms will have our own government treating Americans as though we're the enemy.

2) We're opposing the Lieberman-Collins cyber security bill -- similar to CISPA but not exactly the same -- because it will violate Americans' online privacy.

It will tear down barriers that prevent corporations from sharing your info with one another and with the government.

Source:click here

You can find your senator here. Either email them or call them either way it'll go to defeating these two monstrosities. Time is running out now is the time to act.

June is false allegations awareness month

From Save Services:

June is False Allegations Awareness Month.

Help us bring awareness to False Allegations of Abuse during the month of June. Here are some ideas to get you started. Like posting this link to your social media network, where your friends will learn that 700,000 persons are wrongfully arrested for domestic violence each year.

We hope you'll join us at the Connecting for Change false allegations awareness conference in Washington, DC on June 30. You can also join us as citizen lobbyists on Capitol Hill June 29. In order to lobby, you must attend a June 19 teleconference. Register for either or both events by sending an email to info@saveservices.org.

You've seen what happens when we all work together. Let's put this unity to work to end false allegations!

Sincerely,

teri

Teri Stoddard, Program Director
Stop Abusive and Violent Environments
www.saveservices.org

June is a couple of days away so let's observe June as False Allegations Awareness month. Perhaps we can tell our representatives at the state level about false allegations not only in domestic violence but for rape as well and let them know that June is False Allegations Awareness month. We were able to get somewhere with VAWA we should give this a try and see what happens.

Men's centers in acadamia

I'm reading where a lot of college men are starting men's centers on university and college campuses and they are getting a lot of flack from feminists and manginas. If you are anti-feminist,pro-MRA and you are one of these guys we have your back. If you fit the criteria I previously mentioned then we will back you and help you get the center set up and fight off the feminasties. Universities and colleges should be the place for free speech and the fair exchange of ideas. Under feminism it is anything but that. It is time to restore what once was and return freedom to university and college campuses. You young college men are the future and when we get these centers set up and running things should get better for college men everywhere. A men's center will give men a male positive perspective by letting them know that masculinity is not evil just as femininity is not virtuous . The day and age of men accepting female abuse is over and we are not going to take it anymore and we're going to let other men know they don't have to take it either. Let's get those centers up and running.

No anonymity for New York State residents if S 6779 passes

New York State Senator Thomas F. O'Mara

New York Senate bill seeks to end anonymous internet posting By Tecca | Today in Tech – Thu, May 24, 2012

Anonymity is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the United States was founded, in part, thanks to Thomas Paine's anonymously written, pro-revolution pamphlet Common Sense. On the other hand, 12-year-olds who post anonymously on the internet can be rather unpleasant and cause real problems by cyberbullying. Whether you think the good outweighs the bad, this news is troubling indeed: A far-reaching bill introduced in the New York State Senate could end the practice of posting online once and for all.

Introduced by New York State Sen. Thomas F. O'Mara (R—Big Flats), S6779 would require that any anonymous post online is subject to removal if the poster refuses to post — and verify — their legal name, their IP address, and their home address. From the (likely well intentioned) bill: "A web site administrator upon request shall remove any comments posted on his or her web site by an anonymous poster unless such anonymous poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post and confirms that his or her IP address, legal name, and home address are accurate. All web site administrators shall have a contact number or e-mail address posted for such removal requests, clearly visible in any sections where comments are posted."

Critics are quick to point out how dangerous and ineffective the anti-privacy bill would be in the off chance that it somehow passes. After all, IP addresses do nothing to verify a person's identity, and including your home address on a controversial internet post could open you up to real-life threats.

In effect, the bill is an online stalker's dream. Of course, the most likely result of the bill's passage would just be the full-scale elimination of all comment systems everywhere, because the system is an unworkable burden on both the poster and the "web site administrators" who would need to respond to ludicrous take down requests at all times of the day.

Source:click here

If you live in New York State and you use a pseudonym you may want to oppose this bill. I use a pseudonym because feminists are amoral,psychopathic douchebags that stop at nothing to censor those they disagree with. We've seen it on this blog and other places in the manosphere so we know it's true. I don't know how far this bill will get but if you live in NYS you may want to write your representative and tell them to oppose it.

Prisons take anti-rape stance

Justice: Prisons to step up anti-rape efforts The Obama administration ordered federal, state and local officials Thursday to adopt zero tolerance for prison rape as it issued mandatory screening, enforcement and prevention regulations designed to reduce the number of inmates who suffer sexual victimization at the hands of other prisoners and prison staff.

By JESSE J. HOLLAND
Associated Press

WASHINGTON —
The Obama administration ordered federal, state and local officials Thursday to adopt zero tolerance for prison rape as it issued mandatory screening, enforcement and prevention regulations designed to reduce the number of inmates who suffer sexual victimization at the hands of other prisoners and prison staff.

Anti-rape advocates and victims of prison rape, while saying the standards are not perfect, cheered the new regulations. The rules have been under development since Congress passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act in 2003 to fight rape and sexual victimization in the nation's prisons, jails and halfway houses. The regulations were announced only minutes after the Justice Department unveiled a new survey of former state and local prisoners that showed that almost one in every 10 reported at least one incident of sexual victimization by prison staff or other inmates.

Garrett Cunningham was raped in a Texas prison by a guard in 2000, and now works with Just Detention International, an anti-prison rape group. "If strong national standards had been in place when I was in prison, my abuse may have never happened. Now that the standards have been released, we can make sure it never happens again," said Cunningham, who testified to Congress about his ordeal.

The regulations are immediately binding on federal prisons. States that don't fall in line face a loss of 5 percent of their Justice Department prison money unless their governor certifies that the same amount of money is being used to bring the state into compliance. Prison accreditation organizations also will be barred from federal grants unless they include similar anti-prison rape standards in their accreditation process, which means local jails could lose their accreditation unless they comply.

"Sexual violence, against any victim, is an assault on human dignity and an affront to American values," President Barack Obama said.

Obama announced that the Prison Rape Elimination Act would apply to all federal confinement facilities, and all other agencies with confinement facilities were required to have protocol to fight prison rape within a year. That means the Homeland Security Department, which runs immigrant detainment facilities, will have to have similar rules in place by this time next year.

"The standards we establish today reflect the fact that sexual assault crimes committed within our correctional facilities can have devastating consequences for individual victims and for communities far beyond our jails and prisons," Attorney General Eric Holder said.

But immigration advocates immediately denounced the idea that Homeland Security would be allowed to come up with its own rules instead of following the ones announced by the Justice Department.

"It was clearly the intent of Congress that every person in confinement in the U.S. would be protected from being raped. Holder's decision leaves those in Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities, many of whom are not accused of a crime, at the mercy of sexual predators," said Pat Nolan, president of the Justice Fellowship and former member of the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission.

The administration announcement came as the Bureau of Justice Statistics released its first-ever National Former Prisoners Survey, which found that 9.6 percent of former inmates said they were sexually victimized in jails, prisons and halfway houses. A somewhat similar survey of still-imprisoned convicts done by the same agency in 2008-09 found that only 4.4 percent of state and federal inmates said they were sexually victimized.

The difference may be because the former inmates in the current survey were asked about a longer time period than in the previous survey, said Allen J. Beck, an author of the survey. But it also could be that former inmates may be more willing to talk about the sexual victimization than the inmates currently housed inside those facilities, who have concerns about retaliation for speaking up.

Critics have said inmates may be willing to lie on these surveys in an attempt to embarrass a facility or refuse to report an incident for fear of retaliation.

The study defines sexual victimization as any type of unwanted sexual activity with other inmates, abusive sexual activity with other inmates and both willing and unwilling sexual activity with staff.

Among the findings:

- Almost the same number of former inmates were victimized by facility staff as were victimized by other inmates. About 27,300 - 5.4 percent - reported incidents with other inmates, while 23,300 - 5.3 percent - reported incidents that involved staff. Of the former inmates who reported incidents with staff, 6,300 said they had unwilling sex or sexual contact with staff, while the rest said they "willingly" had sexual contact. And half of the former inmates who were victimized by facility staff members said they were offered favors or privileges in exchange, while a third said they were talked into it.

Any sexual contact between staff and inmate is officially classified as nonconsensual. Prisons uniformly forbid inmate-staff sexual contact.

The new regulations require prison officials to screen inmates for the potential of sexual victimization and use that information in assigning housing and work, require background checks on employees and prohibit hiring of abusers. The regulations also say firing will be the presumptive punishment for staff members involved and ban cross-gender pat downs of female inmates and juveniles.

- A fourth of the former inmates victimized by other inmates said they had been physically held down or restrained, and a quarter also said they were physically injured or harmed during the attack.

The new rules would require juvenile inmates to be kept away from adult inmates, allow anonymous and outside-of-prison reports of sexual victimization and require evidence preservation after a reported incident. Facilities also must produce plans for adequate staffing and video monitoring.

- Gay and bisexual men seemed by far the most frequently targeted. The survey said that 39 percent of men who were gay and 34 percent of bisexual men reported being sexually victimized by another inmate, while only 3.5 percent of heterosexual men reported incidents. Lesbian and heterosexual women reported incidents with other inmates at the same rates - 13 percent - while staff victimization was double for lesbian women - 8 percent - compared with heterosexual women - 4 percent.

The new regulations would require detention facilities to incorporate the "unique vulnerabilities of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and gender nonconforming inmates into training and screening protocols."

Source:click here

This is a good idea when you take into consideration that more men are raped in prison than women are,whether in lock-up or on the street. If men are not raped in prison then they may have less hostility toward society and are less like to go back to prison.