I was emailed yesterday by a humbly polite man whose family was under threat of eviction from their state-subsidized living quarters if his wife refused to swear out a restraining order against him. He admits to a criminal past but says he’s engaged in no recent conduct that would warrant this invasive action. Nevertheless his inaccessibility to legal representation and his family’s being in dire financial straits make his wife’s “choice” inevitable: either he lives in a refrigerator box on the streets or he shares one with his wife and children.

Browsing the Internet brings up similar accounts of coercion by government agents (of a process that is itself inherently coercive: “Do what we say or live in a cage”):

And these stories are echoed by others that have led visitors to this blog over the past year.

So unregulated and debauched is the restraining order process that even agents…