Vol. 71/No. 21      May 28, 2007

New York is the 20th state to pass "civil confinement" legislation. The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld such laws, ruling that civil confinement is "treatment," not punishment.

Working people should oppose this legislation and reject the hysteria whipped up by capitalist politicians, as well as cops and the media, against the menace of "sexual predators." Such laws curb democratic rights and erode human solidarity. Their enforcement requires strengthening the state spying apparatus, including expanding the use of DNA banks, global positioning devices, and "criminal profilers." The new laws also make cop and government frame-ups easier. Anything that strengthens the hand of capital against labor is a danger to working people—the vast majority.

An article in the March 4 New York Times described the so-called treatment centers for civil confinement. Most "look and feel like prisons, with clanking double doors, guard stations, fluorescent lighting, cinderblock walls, overcrowded conditions and tall fences with razor wire," it said. "Bedroom doors are often locked … and mail is searched by the staff for pornography or retail catalogs with pictures of women or children."

Evaluations by "mental health experts" using demeaning and unscientific penile plethysmograph and polygraph tests are decisive for determining who is locked up in these centers after serving their sentence. In California, civilly confined men may opt for castration as "treatment."

The ruling class is playing on the revulsion we all feel when a child is molested, or another sexually-based crime is committed, to go after hard-won rights working people need to defend themselves against antilabor attacks by the bosses. These rights include the presumption of innocence, statutes of limitations, the right of appeal, the right to face your accuser, and protections against double jeopardy, entrapment, and cruel and unusual punishment. "Own your crime" therapy for sex offenders tramples the right to remain silent. And these laws undermine basic democratic concepts such as the right to privacy and freedom of movement. Such protections must apply to all or they ultimately apply to no one.

Provisions in these laws institutionalize job and housing discrimination. Many sex offenders released from prison can't get work or a place to live after serving their sentences. Some are forced to live in trailers just outside prison walls. Restrictions on where they can live and protests by neighbors often chase these individuals around the country.

Hysteria around sex offenders is also used to pit one section of the working class against another and promote vigilantism by cops and pro-cop outfits like the Guardian Angels.

Dozens of free private and government websites provide maps of all the registered sex offenders. A click brings up the name, photograph, and address of each such person in a given area, providing a hit list for those so inclined.

An article by anti-immigrant writer Andy Selepak posted on the website of Patrick Buchanan, an incipient fascist politician, is headlined, "Illegal Alien Sex Fiends." Selepak claims "there are approximately 240,000 illegal immigrant sex offenders in the United States… . [I]f ever there was an argument for building a border fence, this is it." A reader of the article posted comments in response claiming that kidnapping and rape are part of Mexican culture.

Another example of how the hysteria around sex offenders promotes vigilantism is the popular NBC television show "To Catch a Predator." In it, agents posing as young girls chat on line with men and lure them to a house rigged with cameras and surrounded by cops. When the man arrives, NBC reporter Chris Hansen leaps out and confronts him with humiliating questions and he is thrown on the ground and arrested on national television. So much for due process.

We must be alert to how the capitalist rulers use a group of people or type of crime that no one defends to undermine civil liberties and get the public to swallow measures they might otherwise oppose. Veterans of the civil rights movement know well how "sex crimes" were used to frame fighters for Black rights.

Alleged rape or abuse by child-care workers are cynically used to make working-class parents, especially women, feel guilty for going to work.

Violence against women and children are rooted in capitalist property relations and the family, where most fatal assaults against children actually occur. For more on this question, I recommend the books Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State by Frederick Engels and Problems of Women's Liberation by Evelyn Reed, both of which are available at www.pathfinderpress.com.

In a socialist society—one based on social solidarity and organized to meet human needs, not driven by the profits of a few with all the related cut-throat competition and alienation of capitalism—those who need medical help would be able get it free of stigma and children can be protected.

Let's not allow scapegoating by the capitalist class today undermine working-class unity and solidarity. Speak out against civil confinement laws!  
 
 
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