Citizens for Criminal Justice Reform – New Hampshire

I knocked on the steel door to Ron’s office, then fidgeted in the windowless concrete hall outside. Behind me, sounds of the one o’clock inmate movement echoed through Hancock Building: electric locks snapped open, prisoners’ state issue boots clomped on metal stairs, a guard yelled something through shatter-proof glass. I waited alone, uneasy in this empty stub of a hallway, unsure how long I should stand here.

The Arizona Supreme Court issued a stunning and horrifying decision on Tuesday, interpreting a state law to criminalize any contact between an adult and a child’s genitals.

A Justice Department division will no longer refer to people released from prison as “felons” or “convicts” because of the stigmatizing effects of the terms, an agency official announced in a Washington Post editorial Wednesday.

When Josh Gravens was 12 years old, he made a terrible mistake. He and his sister, who was 8, had sexual contact, twice. “Like, where my body part touched her body part,” he says. “It was never penetrative. Obviously, it couldn’t have been what they call consensual, but it was playing.”