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Amplified Voices
Amplified Voices is a podcast that lifts the voices of people and families impacted by the criminal legal system. Hosts Jason and Amber speak with real people in real communities to help them step into the power of their lived experience. Together, they explore shared humanity and real solutions for positive change.
Amplified Voices
Emily Horowitz: Breaking the Stigma: From Rage to Reason Season 4 -Episode 4
How does society treat people based on their criminal conviction history and how can we better understand the unique experiences of people who are convicted of sexual offenses? Why, in an age where second chances and demands to reduce mass incarceration have become mainstream, are people with these convictions often excluded from reform and relief efforts? In this episode of Amplified Voices, Jason and Amber speak with Emily Horowitz, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at St. Francis College, ahead of the release of her new book: From Rage to Reason: Why We Need Sex Offense Laws Based on Facts Not Fear.
During this conversation, Professor Horowitz details her own personal and professional journey, along with powerful stories from the years she spent interviewing people impacted by the registry. The discussion reveals a deep empathy that comes from being in close proximity to people who are experiencing banishment and stigma, as well as an exploration of how laws based on vengeance rather than justice or evidence create new forms of harm while failing to address the real and pervasive problem of sexual violence.
About Emily Horowitz, PhD
Professor Emily Horowitz teaches courses in sociology at St. Francis College. She is the founder and co-director of the Justice Initiative. Her scholarly research addresses the causes and consequences of mass incarceration, with a focus on the harms of conviction registries and banishment laws.
Her latest book, From Rage to Reason: Why We Need Sex Crime Laws Based on Facts, Not Fear (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023), explores the human carnage wrought by decades of draconian and fear-based sex offense policies. She is also the author of Protecting Our Kids?: How Sex Offender Laws Are Failing Us (Praeger, 2015), which was awarded a 2016 Choice Outstanding Academic Title by the American Library Association, and co-editor, with Law Professor Larry Dubin, of Caught in the Web of the Criminal Justice System: Autism, Developmental Disabilities and Sex Offenses.
Professor Horowitz frequently engages in advocacy efforts and public scholarship aimed at challenging myths and misinformation that lead to ineffective and draconian laws. Select recent news publications and media include The Real Monsters (a 2022 essay in Inquest: A Decarceral Brainstorm), a Reason article about the man wrongfully convicted of raping prominent author Alice Sebold (2021), a NY Daily News editorial about the Supreme Court hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson (2022), and participation in an
Everyone has a voice, a story to tell. Some are marginalized and muted. What if there were a way to amplify those stories, to have conversations with real people in real communities, a way to help them step into the power of their lived experience? Welcome to Amplified Voices, a podcast lifting the experiences of people and families impacted by the criminal legal system. Together, we can create positive change for everyone.
Jason:Hello and welcome to another episode of Amplified Voices. I'm your host, jason, here with my co-host, amber. Good morning, amber.
Amber:Good morning Jason.
Jason:And Amber. today we have a special guest. It's Dr Emily Horowitz. Hello, emily.
Emily :Hi, thank you so much for having me. I'm a big fan of both of yours and your amazing work.
Jason:Thank you so much. As we are And as I mentioned before, we even started recording a lot of the listeners to this podcast Already know your name and are familiar with your work and you have hero status with them. There are going to be some other listeners that are meeting you for the first time. Can you tell us a little bit about who you are and how you came to the work that you're doing?
Emily :Yeah well, so I'm a professor of sociology and criminal justice at St Francis College and I teach classes and I do all the stuff a normal professor does. I also work very closely with students who are justice impacted. I help run a scholarship program for students with prior justice involvement And I teach courses in a detention center aimed at students who are kind of on their way out of correctional facilities so that they can finish their college degree when they return to the community.
Jason:How long have you been doing that?
Emily :I've been doing that program, So I started it about 10 years ago, maybe eight years ago, And it's really interesting because when I started it there was a lot of pushback from the administration from other students, Like why should they get scholarships when I haven't broken any laws and I don't get a scholarship right? Why should students in prisons get free college classes when we didn't break any laws and do anything?
Jason:wrong, right So, and your college is in, you're in New York City.
Emily :Yeah, we're in Brooklyn, but things have really radically shifted, and so quickly. When we started, they had taken Pell grants out of prisons. Now they've been returned, and Obama and Trump and Biden have really been supportive of restoring Pell grants to people in prison, which was taken away in the early 90s. But everything has radically shifted so quickly, and part of my work and Amber has been really good on this in her own activism is to create a situation where people who have sex offenses are treated similarly to anyone else who's been charged with a crime, and so the thesis of all of my work in recent years has been if you commit a crime you commit. It doesn't matter if it's a sex offense or any other crime. You should be given the same grace and opportunities as anyone else.
Jason:Right, but going back to the point about people, shouldn't be. why should somebody who is incarcerated have access to an education? How do you respond to that? What do you tell people?
Emily :So well when it started. I would explain that it makes us all safer. We know that if you earn a college degree in prison or afterwards, you're far less likely to reoffend. you're far less likely to need it. It saves money because it's cheaper to give somebody a college degree than to keep them in prison. It helps their children, it helps their family. They're less likely to be on public assistance, so it helps us.
Emily :So it's kind of a make like a selfish argument. right, they're less likely to commit another offense and they're more likely to have housing and jobs and not need social services. And also they're less likely to go back to prison, which is a lot more money. But it's interesting because things have really shifted and I don't have to have those conversations anymore about people who commit non-sex offenses anyway. It's almost so many colleges now have these programs. They have these programs in prison and out of prison. It's really been an amazing radical shift in attitudes about this And, like I said, from Trump to Obama, democrats, republicans people are pretty united on the idea that people who are incarcerated should get access to higher education and also that they should be deserving of post-incarceration scholarships and support.
Jason:So we could do an entire separate podcast on just this topic alone, i think, in the interest of time, though I know there are some things we want to talk about. We're going to talk about the new book that you have coming out very shortly, so to get to that, my question then becomes how did you get involved in having this focus on people of convicted sex offenses and working with that population?
Emily :Yeah. So one of the reasons why I was sort of talking about that a lot right now is that it really informs this book I have coming out in June because I've seen this bifurcation. I've seen the grace and support that people who are formerly incarcerated are now receiving in society And I see much less of that for people convicted of sex offenses. So having this kind of role as somebody who researches sex offenses and also separately professionally helps other people who have criminal histories really speaks to what this new book is about. So I got into this because I met a journalist named Debbie Nathan through a mutual friend. Debbie Nathan was one of the first journalists in the country to identify the panic around the daycare centers and the satanic panic. I was really lucky to meet her about 20 years ago And after I met her I read her book And it was called Satan's Silence And it was really.
Emily :It blew my mind that all these people in the late 1980s and early 1990s were falsely accused and wrongfully convicted of sexually harming children, and she does a great job identifying the causes and the consequences, from the feminist movement's emphasis on believing victims, believing women and children, to the rise of the new right who are angry about women going back to work and kids being in daycare centers and how they kind of came together and this panic emerged And the left as well as the right embraced this panic. And she was this really brave journalist who was like this is fake, this is not happening. And she wrote this amazing book and helped a lot of people. And then, after being familiar with kind of her work and theories, i met somebody through her who had recently left prison and was on parole for a sex offense. He was falsely accused and wrongfully convicted in one of these daycare cases And she was helping him kind of get on his feet. And I met him And I was shocked at his life. He had served his time even though he hadn't done the crime, but that's another story. I'm less interested in innocence than his experience afterwards.
Emily :So he'd spent over 10 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. He was on parole And the parole conditions because he had a sex offense conviction blew my mind. He had housing, he had family that had nice homes. He couldn't live there because of residency issues And in another case he moved in with another family member But the neighbors freaked out and the management threw him out of the home.
Emily :He had become very religious in prison And he joined a religious congregation And he was kicked out of that, which I think was kind of and Jason, i know you can relate to this that was kind of what really blew my mind. I was like isn't religion about redemption and helping? But he's not allowed to go during the reentry process and get the support he needs. How could somebody who claims to have any kind of religious principles justify kicking anyone out of a congregation who wants to go there? He had so many restrictions. He wanted to go to college. He couldn't go on a campus because of the sex offense conviction And this kind of really made me think.
Emily :I'm a sociologist. I'd been working on various criminal justice research issues And I was like I want to figure out why this is happening. He's not a threat to anyone. Even if he'd done the crime. He was convicted at 19 and had spent over a decade in prison. He was on parole. None of these restrictions were about supporting him or helping him reintegrate and not reoffend. They were all meant to destabilize him.
Amber:How long ago was this?
Emily :This was in the early 2000s so about 20 years ago That I met him and got to know his experience And, like I said, things are way worse today. I think about some of the things that he was going through. And then Debbie said well, if you're so outraged, i'm on the board of this organization that helps people who are falsely accused of sexual offenses, and I joined that board And then very quickly we started to work on people who were rightfully accused of these offenses. What if they'd done it? Isn't this punishment enough? Like decades in prison, parole, polygraph treatment all of these punishments were more than enough.
Jason:So how does that work? I mean, you're a professor, you're teaching other classes and doing other work. You just this intrigues me and you start researching it. I mean, what was your life Like? how did you incorporate that into your world?
Emily :Well, it was. I mean, it wasn't completely out of the blue, because I met Debbie through like-minded friends and my dissertation, which I had was almost finished with at that time, was about a domestic violence court. So I was a sociologist and I was kind of doing criminology and I started studying the prosecution of domestic violence. And it was kind of like this parallel experience, because I was spending every day in a domestic violence court project and I'd initially been really excited like wow, the criminal justice system is gonna like stop domestic violence and, like you know, prosecute people who commit domestic violence. And I'm gonna write about it and write about how this is a great success for the feminist movement, because only 20 years before nobody cared about domestic violence.
Emily :And so I sat in this courtroom and I saw really poor men, mostly of color, mostly unemployed, being given extra long sentences because their conviction was domestic violence rather than something else. And I was really saddened and shocked because I had come into that project thinking that it was like a great success for feminism. It was the title of my dissertation was institutionalized feminism And my hypothesis was like it's great because feminist principles are being integrated into the criminal justice system. So I was really shocked and disappointed to see how it really wasn't about helping women, it was about punishing men, and I met many women who were the quote unquote victims This was the terminology was very different then And they would say, like I don't want him to go to prison for a long time, i don't want this restraining order.
Emily :I called the police because I was harmed, but he's the sole support of our family. There was a lot of. It was a lot less clear cut than I thought And I realized very quickly like the court system was not the answer for social problems. So it wasn't like I was completely detached from this. So both of these things happened at the same time And then I sort of shifted to seeing sexual offenses as something that I wanted to study and understand.
Amber:Emily, i think you're bringing up a really important sort of concept that I think a lot of individuals, particularly people who are just learning about these issues and they are self-described feminists in terms of really wanting to deeply move women forward And so it seems like when you were in the situation where you were learning more, you really expected it to be one way because of your feminist logic, and what you saw in real life turned out to be completely different. What would be your response to someone who's sort of at the beginning of that journey as a feminist, like what are some ways someone could learn about how things really are?
Emily :Well, that's funny. You say that because Aya Gruber, for example, has a book that came out called The Feminist War on Crime, which talks about the incompatibility of most feminism of sort of non-carceral feminism with punish, punish, punish, pitchforks, pitchforks, pitchforks and, even more importantly, more and more relevant since Judith Levine and Erica Miners have an amazing book called The Feminist in the Sex Offender, which talks about how feminism is not like just this. You know single focused. You know ideology It's very complicated.
Emily :There's all different types of feminism, and carceral feminism might be the feminism that we all know and see and that's been most successful, and it's the strain of feminism that's most successfully worked with the state and that most people kind of like know about. But a lot of feminism is not about carceral responses. A lot of feminism is about changing the world and changing our culture and not inflicting more violence, right? So I would argue that you know, anything you do with the carceral system inflicts more violence, and a lot of feminism is not about increasing violence, and we understand that the prison industrial complex creates conditions for sexual violence and domestic violence. Ironically enough, Thanks, Emily.
Jason:So how did you go from you became interested in it, you started researching it, studying it, to then writing a lot about the topic, speaking publicly, doing debates that get passed along where everybody watches them. Well, how did that transformation happen?
Emily :Well, i think part of it is that, like I started to get really angry because when I would talk to people about it and it seemed so obvious to me, i'd be like this guy went to prison and now he's homeless, not because he doesn't have money or family or support, but because the neighbors don't want him there, right, he can't go to his church because the leader of the church was like you know, it's not safe for you to be here. And it made me really angry. When I would talk to people and they'd be like, well, maybe he did it. If he did do it, that's worth it. And I'm like, who cares if he did it? I don't care if he did it or not. He needs, he's out, he's among us, he needs a human being. Why can't we forgive him? It was so angering And I'm sure you two have this experience too.
Emily :You talk about it with people and they're such a disconnect. So I thought, okay, well, i'm a sociologist, like I finished my dissertation, i can write a book, i can write articles and explain to people like why this is crazy, why this is wrong, and it's interesting. I mean, i wrote this book in 2015 and I kind of had expected to like move on and work on other stuff, but I just have this other book coming out now because I feel like things have actually gotten worse, which is really discouraging. I mean, you like to think there's this arc and things get better and people become more open-minded, but my conversations have grown like more combative, worse. People are angrier. People are less rational about it. I mentioned that when I met Debbie Nathan.
Emily :I joined the board of this organization. It's called the National Center for Reason and Justice And the goal is to be rational and focus on justice and not panic and hysteria. But everything about sex offense law and policy has to do with panic and hysteria. It's completely divorced from any kind of research or findings. I don't wanna like preach the choir here.
Jason:No, no, preach What's interesting is when you talk about people being able to almost compartmentalize.
Jason:It's like you know well, we believe in human rights, except, you know, we detach, we think it and like for a researcher, like somebody who's doing the type of work that you're doing, it seems like there are people that can think of other human beings as just a subject in or material, as opposed to real human beings. And it sounds just from talking. I mean, i've read your work and seen you, but in talking with you it seems like you really take it personally, like these are real people, and you connect quickly with people, so you feel you can, you're empathic and can feel their pain to an extent.
Emily :Yeah, and I mean it definitely makes me like very personally upset when I see the way people are treated And I think there's like there's a lot of really amazing people working on this. Like I said, when I met Debbie Nathan, i was like, wow, she's able to see this, she can think critically about this. You know people like Judith Levine, people that I'm like kind of mimicking, but it is. It's very, it's really hard to work on something where so many people are so irrational. But I guess that's like the point of sociology and social sciences. You try to use research, data, stories, provide evidence so that people can think clearly about this.
Amber:I just wanted to ask you to sort of, if you could, just briefly, because we have a wide variety of listeners, some who are more familiar with your work and the social science. So, when you're talking about the social science and what it tells us, what are, like the key takeaways that we know about individuals who may have been convicted or committed a sexual offense?
Emily :Well, we know that recidivism rates are low lower than for many other offenses but, more importantly, we know that things like the registry, residency restrictions, community notification, presence restrictions, don't do anything to decrease it further.
Emily :In fact, all of criminological research shows that the number one way to reduce reoffense and make everybody safer is through post-incarceration support, housing, family support, employment, and so what really challenges me about working on this is that the registry and all of these laws we have actually make it more likely that people or not more likely but it doesn't make it less likely that they will commit another offense. So it's infuriating because it's so obvious. There's decades of research that shows us this. There's also no research that shows a policy such as residency restrictions would protect anyone. It undermines the reality of almost all sexual abuse. Almost all sexual abuse is not stranger. Danger is not because somebody lives in your neighborhood or lives too close to a school, and we've known this from the beginning, from the start of residency restrictions. I think it's been like almost 20 years since article after article has appeared undermining this as a way to prevent new sex offenses. Yet the laws keep expanding and they never get rolled back.
Jason:I have so many questions.
Emily :Yeah, but a lot of this I'm rehashing in my book.
Jason:But I know, I know, but I have so many questions.
Emily :If you want to, you're totally welcome to.
Jason:And I'm going to go back. Well, actually, before I ask any question, let's say the name of your book now and then we'll say it again later, but it's say you're the name of your book.
Emily :From rage to reason why we need sex crime laws based on facts, not fear.
Jason:All right, so go look for it. So you were, you were making the point before you know when you, when you're there's, there's so much lack of reason, and so how's that affected you in your life, being someone who you know you talk about that a little bit in the book that if you are somebody who's studying murder, nobody calls you, you know, a murder apologist, right? So how has that impacted you and what, what? what type of personal toll has it taken in your life that you work in this field?
Emily :Yeah, i mean I definitely have certain fears that my other colleagues don't have about backlash, about people accusing me of being, you know, in favor of sexual violence. I've gotten accusations of that from, like, random people who call my office or people on the internet who say things, and I don't see that with people who work on violent crime, right, they'll work on all those study like. I always use this example if you study serial killers, you don't have a bunch of people you know calling your office and calling you somebody who likes serial killers right, you don't get people putting things up that you don't care about humanity. But if you advocate for rational and just post incarceration, post probation, parole, rationality and fairness, you are accused of supporting sexual violence, which makes a lot of people very spooked. to work on this And I've talked to other researchers who yeah, right.
Jason:So there's a chilling effect in the, in the whole field, because you're going to, you have to get people who have, who are willing to pay that price. So, on behalf of, on behalf of humanity, i thank you for for the work that you do.
Emily :I mean, there's a lot of very brave social scientists, lawyers, journalists who do work on this. But I have definitely seen people say like, yeah, like I hear you, but you know, and definitely I've had like friends and family say like well, you already wrote a book enough, you know. like you made your point why, why can't you work on something else? But it reminds me of one time I remember, kelly Michaels, who was a woman who was wrongfully convicted in the daycare panic of sexually harming children And she said she got to prison. she wound up being exonerated, but she said when she got to prison she just thought anything else couldn't. I have been convicted of anything else besides this. And she just I remember her saying that and thinking, yeah, like this is the worst, this is the worst thing you can defend, the worst thing you can be convicted of And so many people I interviewed in the book said similar things. like anything else.
Amber:So, emily, can I'd like to talk to you a little bit more about, like, your experience of doing research for the book and talking to different people, just sort of the mechanics of, like you know, pulling back the curtain on how these things happen. So how, what was the methodology? How did you like reach out to people? How did people get back to you? You know, how long did it take? all of those sort of interesting tidbits?
Emily :Yeah well, so I was pretty lucky because I had this book that came out in 2015. So I wasn't going to write about it again But, like I said, when I saw things getting worse, i felt like I had no choice, just because, again, like it made me really angry that the laws kept building up, in spite of the evidence that kept building up that they were ineffective. So, because of the first book, i knew people. I engage in advocacy and activism, so I put out a call. I got permission from my university to interview people on the registry and I put out a call through a number of activist groups that I'm involved in and know about.
Emily :And I think one of the good things because I had that first book, i got a lot of responses And I also got a lot of people to talk to me in a way that was very open, because they knew I wasn't, they knew my position on this. Like, right, you engage in activism. Since, after my first book came out, i did a public debate about the registry where I went on record publicly on YouTube saying this is like nonsense, there's no need for a registry at all, and so I think things like that like made people aware that because a lot of people on the registry tell me they get a lot of calls for researchers And so there's a lot of people who want to study people on the registry, so I think they felt like I was at least an advocate. So I got I had really good experiences interviewing people And I got a lot of people wanting to be interviewed And I couldn't use all the interviews I conducted. I spent about two years interviewing people.
Jason:One of the things that struck me about a number of the people you spoke to. they said that they were more privileged and that they were lucky relative to other people that were on the registry or committed sex offenses And so, and then you would go on to describe how they were living very difficult lives. So what was? how did you react to that? What were your thoughts?
Emily :Yeah, i mean, it was really like this existential experience because I'd be talking to people and they would always start out by saying, like I know I'm really lucky, i'm luckier than other people, like I have a house or like I have a wife, and then they would go on to tell these stories where they were suffering so much. So it really made me see that kind of something about humanity that being, having this experience of being banished and being a pariah also makes you have this extraordinary empathy for people, and I found that kind of like beautiful and very moving And I wanted to convey that in the book that so many people that I interviewed were like, yeah, i got to go, my friend who's in prison needs this. So there was this weird community of people that have this unique experience of stigma and banishment.
Jason:So part of it is that they're, that they do feel like they're more privileged, and part of it is that the people that do have it even worse you probably couldn't even get to. They might not have access to computer, they might not be able to find you. They're still, you know they're. They're on the lowest rung in terms of trying to get just housing or trying to get something that so that they could even like getting on an internet connection to be able to speak with you is a sense of privilege that they don't even have.
Emily :Right, right, i mean, i interviewed one guy who was in his car because he didn't have housing. I mean he had some resources, but there were residency issues. But even he said like, well, i'm okay, you know, my parents helped me and I don't really mind, and I'm in my car, and I found that pretty inspiring. Yet it's also really tragic, right, i mean right So.
Amber:I want to, you know, sort of stay on that for just a second. One of the things that I am not a sociologist but I do work with a lot of individuals who are impacted by the registry And one of the things that I have observed, you know, in my own loved one and others, is this sense of yes, i am really lucky for what I do have, and sort of an internalized cultural shame that they're like, well, if I like, this is what I deserve, not necessarily like really believing that, but because of the way that culture has sort of shunned, they feel lucky to have a job as opposed to really reaching their full potential, right, and that's just like a significant sort of piece of collateral damage that sometimes people don't understand. Is that people, when people are shunned in this way, they start to believe the hype themselves? Sure, absolutely.
Emily :Yeah, that's why I didn't interview anyone. And in all my years of doing this and going to conferences and meeting people, i mean people often reach out to me because they can find me on the internet to talk to me about their experience or ask for advice about something I haven't talked to. anyone who's like this isn't fair, you know, they don't express and maybe they don't express the anger but a little bit is. it might be good if there was more anger, but they feel like they don't have the right to be angry because they've internalized, they've made this mistake that is so unforgivable that they don't even deserve to fight back. They don't deserve to stand up for themselves.
Amber:Jason, what are your thoughts on that?
Jason:Well, that's tough. I mean just hearing that whole idea of like not fighting back. I mean the part of it is, if you have any type of aggression in any way, it feeds into all the stereotypes as well. So it's not just a matter of internalizing it, but it's the world smacking you down the minute you try to live like a normal person.
Amber:That's a good point.
Jason:There's some of that. So I mean, i think it's a mixture of both, because there's certainly people who are walking around saying I'm terrible, i'm terrible, you know, like how could I have done? and of course you know that's good, like how could I have done what I did? you know for that and then understand it. But I think the majority of people who find themselves committing an offense we'll say how did I do that? What do I do to make sure I don't do it again? So there's an element to that. But then the other side of it is like we were saying is, if I come out and I look, i'm going to be accused of looking at somebody the wrong way.
Emily :Right. I mean, one of the things I've talked to Amber a lot about is that, on the one hand, in most movements, it's really important for directly impacted people to speak up and be the face of it, but in this is one of the only cases where, in some way, those of us that are not directly impacted have more responsibility, because if people who are directly impacted are like this is wrong, this is terrible, they do face like you're aggressive, you're out of control, you're a predator. So it's tough. So I think that's also, i think, one of the reasons why I feel like I can't move on, because I do feel like I have more responsibility Because those who are on it are under so much surveillance and so vulnerable, right, i mean, they're the only group of formerly incarcerated people that are subject to vigilante violence whose address is on the internet, right?
Emily :So if you're there giving a talk or you're on a panel or you're doing a debate, you're very easy to find, right, every your whole history is there. So it's tough. Like one time, amber actually did this really lovely thing. I was criticized because I was on a panel that I was moderating and somebody wrote like she doesn't even have any directly impacted people on it And Amber pointed out yes, she did, but the directly impacted people didn't want their picture taken, so it wasn't put on social media, so it looked like I was like alone on the panel.
Jason:Interesting And we've seen that too where we've had people come onto panels and then all of a sudden, the person who's organizing puts the last name of the person. That person gets into trouble. Could even be somebody who's on probation. Why are you being so public about this? We've had situations where you go and you speak in favor of a bill or against the bill And all of a sudden, if you go and you share your story, you're written in the newspaper. So it's just, or even beyond advocating, just doing anything, going about your life, living One of the things as you know, if you could be. I think you even mentioned this in the book, didn't you? About somebody being afraid of actually doing something. No, I think in the book you were talking about somebody having these fantasies about saving people.
Emily :A lot of people said I have fantasies that I'll save a child and the world will forgive me.
Jason:But the reality is that what we would see is if somebody went in I mean, my thought on that would be if you went and you saved a child what would show up in the newspaper is the defender was inappropriately holding a child, i mean as opposed to saving a child. So that's part of the issue as well. When you were interviewing all of these people and writing your book, did anything surprise you? I mean, we talked a little bit about the privilege, but did anything else surprise you, or was just this confirmation of things you have been hearing all along?
Emily :No, i was really surprised by what I did. These interviews were all a minimum of an hour And sometimes I was doing like four a day. Because I had this period of time where I was doing it And I began to feel very detached from the world. I felt like people didn't understand me And I did have friends say I can't hear these stories. I'm like Emily, it's great you're working on your book, but stop talking about it, stop telling me how horrible this is. And oh my gosh.
Emily :And I was struck by how kind of traumatized I was. I was talking to a friend of mine And she said it's kind of like you're the first person and you see Auschwitz, you're the first person there, and then you're trying to tell people and everyone's like that's not happening, they're not doing that Or they must have committed a crime. And so I felt very detached from the world and kind of angry. This is so stupid And we're destroying all these people's lives And it would get me very angry. They had kids and they couldn't help their kids and their mothers and their wives, and that's also what made me so angry. It wasn't just these individuals that were being punished, but the collateral punishment of their entire families. And just for what? For nothing. It's so stupid.
Jason:So, yeah, yeah. So I mean, so you're living all of that. I mean that's a really fascinating way to view it. You're the first person to see it, sharing it, as I'm reading the book and I'm reading these stories and thinking about all the people and their lives And I have empathy for them and you had empathy for them. How do you think? Do you think the average person, who doesn't really understand what it's like, will feel that, will feel that?
Emily :I hope so, because I feel like the data is clear, the research is clear. The recidivism data, for example. It's decades and decades of data. There's a consensus of an entire field right, recidivism is low. There is no reason for this except to punish, punish kind of shame, shame, shame, destroy, destroy, destroy, right. So the reason why I have very little data in this book and I kind of touch on the studies, but it's like I want people to understand the human impact of this. And it's not a few people, right, there's millions of people impacted if you count mothers, wives and children.
Emily :And I'm really careful in the book, like I don't talk about oh, this was a Romeo and Juliet case, oh, this was. They were only nine years old, it doesn't matter what the offense was. These are all people who've been punished. I don't say held accountable, because I don't think prison is real accountability, i don't think mandated treatment. Thank you, thank you. Yeah, i learned that from Amber and Mike Nikki Phillips. But yeah, they're punished, right, and they're punished a lot, they're punished too much And nobody's held accountable, right, it's just a mess.
Jason:So one of the things that you talk about a lot is the moment and the culture and how the word pedophile, groomer and the Me Too movement and all of that is being weaponized, and so can you talk a little bit about that and your journey with, or your whole thought process in terms of how that's evolved and where you think we are right now as a society?
Emily :Yeah, i mean, i think it's really clear now that the P word that you just said is the worst thing you can call anyone right. It's like the ultimate insult. It's worse than being anything. And so I've noticed like I started to notice a few years ago, like I teach college students that they were constantly calling people PEDO to characterize a 22-year-old like a senior dating a freshman. They would call him this all the time. They would just throw this word out there about people they didn't like, and I also saw it on social media about anybody older dating anybody younger, which is so.
Emily :And grooming also right. Grooming started to be used not about a priest or a coach with a young child, but just about any age difference where the older person was more than like four or five years older than the other person, and the quote, unquote, victim or whatever, was 14, 15, 16, 17, which it was just a shift to expand these terms to everything, every imbalance of power, which, of course, those who are actually on this registry are the brunt of this, because then this word is used all the time, all the time, all the time. In fact, i didn't notice this when I wrote my first book. That came out in 2015. But I know friends who are professors, smart people, who will say to me oh, how's your work on pedophiles, how's your book on pedophiles coming up? And I go crazy, right, right, but I don't want to be like the word police or something.
Jason:Well, actually.
Emily :Yeah, i just spoke to a journalist from a really prestigious publication and I got an email from the journalist And the subject was pedophile story. Right When I spoke to her, i kept explaining the origins to the word and the problem of the words. And she's still emailing me questions using this term And she's very nice and she's very critical and smart and everything, but it's just out there. But it's very dangerous for people who actually are on registries, because they're the people who we say well, those are actually.
Amber:And Emily, what do you think about marginalized communities that you see registries and this language being weaponized against? For instance, you see a lot of language around LGBTQ and people utilizing this type of language And then that ultimately one would think anecdotally that that would lead to harm against that community because this language is being utilized that way. And registries we know that registries are weaponized against the LGBTQ community.
Emily :Yeah, i write this a little bit about this a little bit in my book How It Some of the protests for drag queen story hours.
Emily :You'll see people wearing T-shirts that say, quote unquote kill your local pedophile, which you can buy online. You can see these stickers around And equating drag queen story hour with being somebody who sexually harms children, and then the same language that's used to protest those on the registry the vigil anti-violence against those on the registry is now being transferred to that community. I remember speaking to a very long time activist who had been active since Bill Clinton signed Megan's Law And this activist said to me he said well, maybe now that Hillary Clinton is being accused of these things and Democrats are being accused of these things, they'll see what this has done and they'll join us. They'll be sympathetic. They'll see how dangerous it is to stigmatize people and point the finger like that. Needless to say, that didn't happen, but hopeful that Maybe it would, because the Democrats they often buy certain segments of the population. Now They say the quote unquote party of pedophiles, right, and you can Google that and see that that's used in somewhat mainstream Republican discourse.
Amber:And so, for those who may find themselves in some of these conversations, what is your sort of advice to someone who may be in a hostile situation where somebody is saying some of those things? I mean, i would suggest probably they get your book.
Emily :Bull price.
Amber:So what are some common or sort of smaller chunks of things that somebody can utilize, like? so, for instance, somebody it's happened to me before will be in a conversation about this and it'll be like, well, utilizing the term pedophile. So when you're talking about sexual harm and the registry and someone immediately goes to pedophile, how do you avoid being that person? that's like, well, actually the clinical term of this is this What are some tips you might have?
Emily :I mean it's really hard. I mean number one, of course recidivism rates are low. There's a wide range of offenses, not everyone's all the same, but what I really focus on is like, look, there's enough punishment. Prison is serious punishment. Supervision is serious punishment. We don't need additional punishment. We need to help people. Wouldn't you want people to have jobs, housing? Do you want people to be destroyed?
Emily :I find talking about redemption and grace is really helpful, talking about how, for example, people just want to go to college and work, but it's very, very hard. There's so many myths and it takes time. But a lot of people I mean in our community people are like oh yeah, we know recidivism rates are a myth, we don't have to, but so many people still believe that. I teach a course on sex offenses And at the beginning of the semester, of course, everyone thinks the registry's the greatest thing and we need it and da, da, da And by the end, 13 classes, movies, people. Every student is much more compassionate, rational, understanding, but it takes work.
Emily :I would also say that one thing to think about that I think is it's harder to talk about is one of the reasons why people justify registries. They're like well, why should they get their life back. The person they harmed will never get their life back. Their life is over And you kind of need to like pull back the panic and rage about that too. Like it's undermining to that person to say they're destroyed forever. Right, they didn't do anything, it's a terrible thing, but there's all kinds of terrible things that happen in our lives And why are we elevating that thing? That's giving, that's taking power away from the person harmed? right, if you're saying this is the worst thing, right, and Amber and I have also talked about this.
Emily :Yeah, one of the reasons why, like a lot of people who work on this prefaced it by saying like I'm a mother, i'm a wife, i'm a survivor, all of these things And like I really don't like to do that, because I feel like that's saying like, okay, like you know, and and it's on the left generally, this is like you can speak on this because you've had this experience I don't like to do that only because I feel like I should be able to critique these laws, even if I haven't been harmed. These laws are stupid and bad objectively, like I don't have to say that I understand this. Of course I'm a woman in our society And, of course, i've had the same experiences that 90% of all women have had.
Amber:Yeah, and I think that that's one of the things that is a journey for people to to really understand particularly individuals who are advocating, because I remember having like an epiphany at one point And you know I said to myself I don't owe the world the sort of parading of my own trauma for them to believe that my family has been harmed by the registry, but it's a, it's a very significant phenomena that's out there. So I really appreciate your highlighting that.
Emily :Yeah, i mean, i think you know, i think it's excellent when people are comfortable doing that. I just have like this anger about it because I am a sociologist. I feel like you know, maybe if somebody's an advocate it's, it's different. But like I can study anything I want, you know, i can study any social problem and comment on it, and that's the purpose of being like a social critic, right, yeah, and I quote a sociologist in the book saying like that's our job, like we, we study things, even things that might have a lot of like panic and hysteria, and we try to be critical and think clearly about them. So I don't like.
Emily :I don't. I don't criticize people who share that about themselves. I just feel like it's a very deliberate choice. At this point, i don't have to prove anything, you know. I can say that sexual harm is bad without you know, and I can say that it's also bad to destroy people who are convicted of harming others.
Amber:Yeah, i think that's one of the things that we culturally have a hard time doing is holding many truths all at one time. Right, it can be true that sexual harm is bad, but it can also be true that state harm is bad And that we should not be doing it on behalf of individuals who have been victimized, because all the way around we're harming all of us.
Emily :This history is not making my life better. It's not making anyone safer. It doesn't make me feel more whole again. This isn't. They're not being held accountable. This isn't.
Jason:Yeah, and part of that I mean is the fact that we've all been told that the way you make people heal, or the way you make people whole not even heal is by punishing like you know, i'm hurting, so you have to hurt versus how do we make everybody whole again? How do we make everybody heal? So that's just where we are. I have a question a little bit back on something that was in the book, you covered people who had been on the registry or who had convictions going way back, and there were people who had committed offenses before there was a registry and their life wasn't perfect but seemed to be these people. Some of them seem to be doing really well And then when the registry came out, it just increasingly got worse. What, what? what did you learn from doing all that And can you talk about that?
Emily :Yeah, yeah. So there's two points that I make. So, first of all, obviously a private registry, a law enforcement only registry, is not the answer, because I did interview people who are on law enforcement only registries who suffer greatly because background checks bring that up. So they still have housing challenges and all kinds of other problems. However, there were many people who had been on private registries And then in the 90s it became public And their lives grew far worse or worn on registries at all, and then in the 90s, laws were implemented And then actually the third point is that many people who are even on public registries from day one, as the internet expanded and apps expanded and hysteria expanded, things got a lot worse.
Emily :So they were on a public registry from the time that they started, from the time they were released from prison, yet things got a lot worse, like many people I talked about said until six, seven years ago, like it really wasn't that big a problem. People in the workplace didn't mind, my boss didn't mind, and then I don't know if it's because, like, the internet is like more pervasive now, or people are more angry now, or there's more laws now, but things have gotten a lot worse. So many people said I was fine until like six, seven years ago, and then things started to get a lot harder.
Amber:Well, i think one of the things that you know in reading the book really struck me is sort of that progression, and part of it has to do with this idea that the registry is not punishment, like this sort of ridiculous notion that it is for public safety. Therefore, you know, it's outside of those protections of the Constitution, in that anything any legislator can decide that a new restriction is needed, propose it, have very little opposition, have it kind of go right through the legislature And then people are then subject to whatever sanction or restriction. It is So that, combined with sort of the internet and cultural panic, you know, additional cultural panics probably have. Again, i'm not a sociologist, but you would think that all of that might be contributing.
Emily :Yeah, because you think that once, like, you have a social problem and then you have critiques of that problem, critiques of the response, things get better, right, like if you look at things like racial justice, all those things, things are supposed to get better when you highlight the problems. And in this case, as the problems have been highlighted by researchers, journalists there's been many articles and the documentary untouchable and lots of scholarship about the uselessness of registries right, there's basically no scholarship about how they're effective or keep anyone safer, because they don't.
Jason:So if the normal tools to make for social change aren't working, how do we get change? How do we get to a more humane just society?
Emily :Yeah, I mean, I think that there has to be a social movement. Like I said, this movement has unique issues. I think one of the problems with this movement is that people think the lawyers are going to save us, like the lawyers are going to go and have their lawsuits, but in a way that's kind of just empowering right, Like if you just think, okay, we'll just give money and lawyers will load you their thing. Obviously, I think the lawsuits and the research are really important, but at the same time, there does have to be a movement And I think and I'm stealing this from Amber, but I think the larger criminal justice reform movement is who we need to work with. We need to say we're not outside, We're not different. So I think that is one of the answers and mobilizing people and getting rid of the fear. But it's really hard. I mean it's hard, It's going to take time and work.
Jason:Yeah, forging those allies is critical. I think that's really. We've seen some successes there And I think things like your book that touch on the human aspects and real lives a documentary, a drama that shows the lives of somebody just trying to live their lives and living honorable lives and having all these obstacles thrown at them So I do think, i think a lot, i think it's got to come from every direction.
Amber:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So one of the things I do want to say is, just as much as we've seen, like so many people start sort of fall into this panic and culture sort of go the wrong way. I do feel encouraged because there are more conversations out in the open about these issues than there have ever been And there are many voices who are speaking up. It just needs to be built up in a more significant and organized way. So I think, jason, you mentioned that this book is great for that. When I'm thinking about and having read the book, which I definitely will recommend this book really in the hands of individuals who are already in the criminal legal movement, reform or abolition movement, to really have tools that they need and an understanding to understand why we should not be carving segments of the population out, i think is a really really good tool. So in my mind, that is one of the audiences of this book. Would you agree with that, emily?
Emily :Yeah, I mean, that's definitely who it's for. I mean, I actually think it's a hard read for people who are directly impacted because they're going to be like, duh, yeah, got it. I think that I would like this to be for, like, the broader social science community, the broader criminal justice community and, most importantly, the criminal justice reform advocates. So that's sort of my goal is to get it to them and to work with them and to give them something to say look at this, this is like happening. These are men and women that we know about and they're also harmed by the criminal legal system and they also deserve relief.
Jason:And it's not like you met somebody and it was a unique experience. These are representative of generic experiences, like I've talked to people in the few years that I've been doing this. I've talked to people who I could recognize in that book, even though they weren't the same people. I could recognize the story. Oh, this guy, this happened to this guy. Oh, i remember when I heard that story, right. So, but putting it all together and seeing it in one book, i think it might even be helpful to take a story or two, have a discussion with a group and then take another few stories and have a discussion with a group and you know to highlight, like what did this person experience? What do you think it was like to be in their shoes? And-.
Emily :That would be great, i know.
Amber:So, emily, you know, being a college professor and a sociologist, you talked about sort of the way that young people evolve their thinking throughout a course. Right, if you are speaking to other college professors who may be working on this issue or the criminal justice teaching, would you see, you know your scholarship and scholarship of others, and particularly this book as a tool that they might be able to utilize in some of those discussions in their classrooms?
Emily :Yeah, absolutely. I mean, do you think anybody working on criminal justice reform is far more open than like the average person to understanding the human toll of mass incarceration and similar policies? And they just need to be educated too. Like they don't know, they've grown up thinking like you know. People who commit sexual harm are evil, uncontrollable, not human right, and they just have to be taught that they're the same as all the other people you're working with right. 20 years ago, people thought people who sold drugs were not human right And didn't deserve opportunities.
Amber:So I'm gonna say something and it might be a little emotional, but that's how I am. I remember when our lives were flipped upside down and my husband's situation and I immediately I'm the kind of person and I'm like how am I gonna fix this? So I went to Google our friend Google and I sort of Googled the issue, And one of the first things that I watched was a debate, a SOHO debate, with this amazing woman who just tore down all the myths about the registry, and that really inspired me. So I just have to say that out loud And that was you, and so I want to thank you for that, and anybody who has not seen that debate and the newest debate that you've done really should see that. So thank you, emily.
Emily :Thank you. I'll say something about that, though It's kind of interesting because I'm not really a good debater, like I'm not a really good public public. But when I was preparing for it, like I said to this friend of mine who's a really smart lawyer who understands the stupidities of registry, i said, all right, like let's do a mock debate. Like you know you be the person who's supporting it and I'm gonna work on my argument here. And he was, like you know, there's no arguments for it. The only argument for it is like we hate these people. This makes us feel good.
Emily :We love vengeance, and he was right, which is why, like you, should never be scared to debate anybody because there are no. The only reason for it is vengeance, that's it. There's no other reason for it. It's not doing anything except over punishing. So thank you for saying that it was a good debate, but it's a great opportunity to everyone. Should debate people about it, because there's no argument for it. I say to my students like you can write your paper about how the registry is great, but just admit it's cause you hate these people and think they don't deserve a second chance or a third chance.
Jason:I'm gonna pile on to the Dr Emily Hurwitz fan club. You know we people can have people can be armed with the facts and you do a phenomenal job. You know, i've watched it out in the two debates and I've seen you live talking about the issue. You do, you do present in a way that is very compelling And so hopefully it rubs up on other people.
Amber:I think for me and it's just again not to go back to it but I think for me the biggest part of that was I was so astounded that there was somebody doing that, not that it was true or not true, but there was somebody willing to do it, and so I think that's where the thanks come in. It's difficult work and it's appreciated, so that I mean I think that was more my point, not whether it was. We all know there's no good argument.
Jason:So we recommend that everybody go and watch both debates. We can put them in the show notes.
Emily :Yes, we will.
Jason:And buy your first book and your second book, and there we go.
Emily :Thank you guys so much And thank you for having a podcast where you focus on life experiences. So in some way my book is kind of like the embodiment of your podcasts, where you let people speak and tell their stories and how these crazy, cruel laws destroy their lives And you give them also. Then people can hear like wait, these are men and women, these are people.
Amber:Yeah absolutely So, emily. are there any like final thoughts that you want to share on the book, or to encourage other individuals in scholarship, or any just final thoughts?
Emily :Yeah, i mean, if you're directly impacted, like, get involved, speak up to the extent that you can without hurting yourself. Don't think you don't have the right to stand up for yourself. I feel really sad when I talk to people who say, like I want to get involved, i want to do something, but I'm so scared Plus, as Jason pointed out, i did this terrible thing. I don't even deserve to stand up for myself.
Jason:Right, Amber. how about you? Any additional thoughts before we wrap up?
Amber:I think my last question for Emily is if you were talking to someone who was at the beginning of their career, right, and they were thinking about studying this sort of issue, what would your advice to them be?
Emily :I would say do it because it needs to be done And like I think we all want to study things where we do make a difference, right. So, like I mean, unlike studying certain topics, like if you do study this, you do have people like you guys who do these podcasts, you do have some organizations where you will have an impact And you want to study things that I mean, look, things can only go forward, right, And so if you want policies to change and get better, like this is something you should do. If you go into sociology to make the world a better place, this is a really big problem And there's not a lot of voices, right, There's some problems where there's a lot of voices. Here's a problem where there's not a lot of voices and all voices have impact.
Jason:And I know we're towards the end here, we're wrapping up, but what you just said, you know there's not a lot of voices. It was interesting. in the last debate the guy you were debating basically said you were coming from the popular position and I had to laugh. I mean, what was? what were you thinking in the moment when someone's telling you Well, here's the thing He was saying.
Emily :You're coming from the popular position because there's no peer reviewed scholarship except for mine that says the registry is good and should exist. And he's correct. Because you can't to get something like peer reviewed, to get a scholarly book published, you have to have an argument besides, i hate these people. Right. So he was correct that I am mainstream in scholarship. But there's not that much. I mean, all the scholarship on this says the registry is stupid and terrible. There's no evidence for it. But in the world of politics and humanity everybody hates the registry. Yeah, there's some studies that say it's not effective, but nobody cares. Every week there's a new proposal. I mean, in the world everybody loves the registry.
Emily :Right sorry, in the world everyone loves the registry, right Yeah. So yeah, there's a few sociologists and criminologists who study it and said wait a second, this is ineffective and expensive and dumb. Yeah no, that's very frustrating, but he was the only one who tried to write a scholarly book about why it's a good thing.
Amber:Well, his whole argument is that we democratically decided that we want this as a society Right, and so we also have democratically decided that women shouldn't vote and that people should be discriminated against because of the color of their skin and all of that. So that doesn't make it not a human rights abuse.
Jason:Right, exactly. Tell us one more time the name of the book.
Emily :From rage to reason why we need sex crime laws based on facts, not fear, and when is the approximate release date? June, in June 2023.
Jason:All right, so everybody go out by the book, and you've been listening to Dr Emily Horowitz. Emily, thank you so much for joining us today. It was a real pleasure to have you and to talk with you. We're gonna continue working with you. So thank you so much. Like I said, we could probably do a whole other podcast on the work that you've done inside of prisons. It's just amazing the kind of life, the value that you're bringing to the world. So thank you so much for being here.
Emily :Thank you so much, thank you.
Jason:Until next time, Amber.
Amber:We'll see you next time.
Outro:You've been listening to Amplified Voices, a podcast listening to the experiences of people and families impacted by the criminal legal system. For more information, episodes and podcast notes, visit AmplifiedVoicesshow.
