Dispatches from the privacy front, State Division

According to a report on Sunday from WKMG-TV in Orlando, Florida,

[a]uthorities are sending convicted sex offenders to jail on probation violations for having racy magazines such as Maxim, or sex manuals such as the Kama Sutra....

State probation officials are empowered to conduct surprise searches of the homes of sex offenders as a condition of their probation. It does seem, however, that they are going a little overboard on enforcing a ban on "sexually stimulating" material.

In one case, that of one Andrew Calderon, the search revealed

a sexy calendar, a racy poster, and a few copies of Maxim magazine. Calderon, 23, was jailed for six days before a judge ordered his release. ...

[I]n court papers, Calderon's lawyer, Mel Black, described Maxim as far from obscene. The men's magazine contains no nudity, nor does it depict sexual acts.

"This is beyond schoolmarmism here. It's really mind-blowing," Black said.

In another case, the offending "sexually stimulating" item was a copy of the Kama Sutra in a bed table. The man in question, Joseph Conte, is married and lives with his wife.

A judge is still to decide on Calderon's case; the probation complaint against Conte was tossed. Still, state officials are unrepentant.

"Anything that is sexually stimulating, we are going to violate them on and the judges are going to make those decisions," said Debbie Buchanan, a Department of Corrections spokeswoman. "If there's any question at all, we're going to violate them."

Corrections officials say they will leave it to judges to ultimately decide whether something is obscene - and whether an offender must go to jail over it.

They call it a "no tolerance" policy; I guess that stuff about all the discretion law enforcement has doesn't apply here. Personally, I call it a "jail first, think later" policy on the part of people who seem to get titillated remarkably easily and appear to be getting a little to much of a charge out of the power they are wielding.

I wonder if they went through Conte's wife's clothing as well. Maybe she owns a bustier and they could get him for that.