Fascinating articles
Submitted by Mark on October 8 2001 19:42:18
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Recently, I met a member of a Christian organization active in criminal justice issues, who is very knowledgeable about BL. She recommended I learn about the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives, an organization dedicated to the ethical and rational treatment of prisoners and opposed to witch hunt approaches to law enforcement. I found their website and they have several fascinating articles, including On Mitigating Professional Arrogance in the Treatment of Sex Offenders. Here's an excerpt: "Helping professionals (at least, in their better moments) have traditionally marched to a different beat in societies which neglect or misuse the poor, the homeless, the errant, and the aberrant. This is no longer so. In the current national mood, psychiatrists, social workers, psychologists and others who have traditionally defined themselves as helpers, now stand in line to lend a gloss of scientific or clinical validity to criminal justice spectacles often inspired by a melange of political winds, ambitious prosecutors and pop psychology which plays to the worst impulses in the citizenry." Another site I found, a private one, has a fascinating description of the witch-hunt phenomenon. An excerpt: "Monsters are proclaimed and witch hunts launched to eradicate them. Monsters are the most expendable of the expendables and are initially found amongst those with the least amount of actual power. But they are portrayed as having immense, sometimes magical, powers and as a dire threat to "normal" citizens, to their loved ones, and especially to their children...The best Monsters are those that most citizens know little about, either because they live far away and are products of unfamiliar cultures, or exist as shadowy and hidden minorities within our own. Monsters supposedly participate in secret international conspiracies. Monsters, of course, have no real power -- they don't even have rights. Monsters cannot speak openly and when Monsters dare congregate they must, for their own safety, meet privately. Monsters are driven underground, and then their underground existence is presented as proof of shadowy Monstrous conspiracies. It's easy to build a cultural consensus that Monsters constitute an extra legal class devoid of the rights of 'normal' citizens. Monsters may be imprisoned at the state's will -- although this sometimes requires the testimony of a certifying 'expert.' (And there is never a shortage of 'experts' eager to be of usually well-paid service.) Members of almost any minority group are candidates for Monsterhood. Historically, Monsters have been witches, Jews, Catholics, Mormons, Freemasons, blacks, Asians, Hispanics, foreigners, Communists, pedophiles, homosexuals. (This list is far from exhaustive.) Any dissenter risks certification, followed by imprisonment or death. Mark |
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