VT- Sex offender treatment a false cure the state of Vermont is failing to learn from history.

7-7-2008 Vermont:

In the 1960s and 1970s, the Catholic Church in North America went through a spasm of sexual abuse by significant numbers of priests against children in their care; many of those cases have only come to light in the past decade and so are still wending their way through the courts today, including a sheaf of filings in Vermont.

In most such cases, one cornerstone of the church's defense is that they were acting on the best advice of psychiatrists at the time by providing treatment to priests found to have abused children and then returning those "cured" priests to parishes. In case after case, juries find that argument wanting.

In part, it's because that advice is now considered hopelessly out of date: We would never declare a convicted pedophile "cured" and return them to active care of children. Or would we?

Michael Jacques, charged in the violent death of Brooke Bennett, was first charged — although not convicted — as a sexual offender in 1985 in a case involving a 15-year-old relative; in 1993, he was convicted of rape and kidnapping and sentenced to six to 20 years in prison. He was released early due to a good- behavior policy in effect at the time.

One of the elements considered in early release is typically whether a prisoner has completed therapy in prison.

The state sex offender registry lists three categories beyond name, date of birth and city and county of residence: Whether a subject is wanted by law enforcement; whether the Department of Corrections considers him a "high-risk" offender; and whether a subject has completed treatment. Jacques' record, now deleted from the registry, listed him as not wanted, not high risk, and having complied with treatment.

In fact, registry listings without any red flags may provide a false sense of security. One person active in the field said that if general society were ranked on a risk-to-molest scale of 1 to 10, a "low-risk" offender on the registry might be a 6.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to treat sexual offenders in prison. Statistics show that it may do some inmates some good, and it doesn't hurt. But that's a world away from using it as a key barometer for whether an offender is likely to re-offend after release from jail.

It's a myth that all sex offenders repeat their crimes if given the chance. One major study confirmed previous data that indicate about 35 percent of child molesters and 53 percent of men who raped adult women were later convicted of a violent crime; somewhat lower percentages were convicted of a second sexual crime.

The study, conducted at four sites in Canada, was able to accurately predict how many of a given group of inmates would re-offend within a five- to seven-year period following release.

The authors themselves identify two major caveats: First, like an insurance company's actuarial table, it's only accurate for groups. Your insurance company can predict how many 45-year-old, overweight male smokers are likely to die in the next year out of every thousand, but nobody can predict with certainty which of the men will die. It's the same with sex offenders. Given data on enough risk factors, the study can accurately predict how many inmates will be back behind bars in five years, but not which ones.

The second caveat is on treatment. About one-third of the inmates studied had completed treatment programs, but the study was inconclusive on whether it reduced recidivism.

According to the authors, "Until effective treatments for sex offenders are developed, risk assessment is unimpaired by excluding consideration of participation in or response to therapy." In other words, treatment does not significantly reduce the likelihood an offender will commit another crime.

Yet the state, in both the sexual offender registry and in decisions from judges and parole officers, continues to consider treatment when the system decides whether a given inmate is a threat or not, what kind of reporting a parolee must perform, and so on.

In short, the state — like many states — is overreliant on the best guesses of the inexact science of psychiatry — exactly like the Catholic Church hierarchy from the 1960s — and is making individual decisions based on data that's only valid predicting the behavior of groups, not individuals. ..News Source.. Opinion of: Rutland-Herald