NH- Sex offender treatment requires wait

4-5-2009 New Hampshire:(Posted by eAdvocate)

Praised program doesn't have enough space

There are 865 male sex offenders in the state's prison and only 90 spots in the 18-month treatment program most must take, meaning some sex offenders are being held past their parole dates while awaiting treatment.

Even those unsympathetic toward sex offenders might be persuaded by this: Keeping an inmate in prison one year past his parole date costs the state about $30,000. Paroling him would cost less than $800 a year.

One 53-year-old Concord man sentenced for child sex assault said he wasn't allowed to apply for the treatment program until a year after he became eligible for parole. He tried but was told, "We have such a vast number of people on the waiting list," he said, asking not to be named because he's now on parole.

The treatment, once he got it, changed his life, he said, but the delay kept him incarcerated an additional 18 months.

(Posted by eAdvocate)

The same thing happened to a 46-year-old man now living in Concord on parole for a child sexual assault. He also praised the treatment he got. But the delay getting into the program kept him in prison an extra 18 months, too. "You just keep writing letters (to prison administrators) asking for admission, and they'll write back and say you are on the list and we have your name," said the man, who also requested anonymity. "Maybe after six months, you write again. A lot of guys don't get out on time."

There isn't the same problem at the women's prison because there are just seven female sex offenders there.

Prison officials acknowledged the program's backlog but noted that not every delay is their fault. Sex offenders can't begin the program until they admit to their offense and may prefer to appeal their conviction first rather than admit their wrongdoing. And if they misbehave while enrolled, they can be kicked out and put back on the waiting list.

They try to avoid delays by putting offenders on the waiting list two years before they are eligible for parole.

Still, prison officials said, there are some sex offenders, especially those with shorter sentences, who can't get through the 18-month treatment program without running over their parole date. Treatment coordinators have introduced new options they hope will cut down on the waiting, but those alone won't solve the problem, they said.

"If we had the money, we would have additional bed space (in the treatment program)," said Corrections Commissioner William Wrenn. "Where we have so many sexual offenders in our population, and the number seems to be increasing, we'll have to expand these programs at some point in time. But we're in the perfect storm with this economy."

The issue came up in Merrimack County Superior Court last week when Judge Carol Ann Conboy sentenced a Hopkinton man convicted of three counts of felonious sexual assault to 1½ to 5 years in prison. Because the man had already served about five months of that sentence in jail, awaiting trial, he'll be eligible for parole in a year.

But there is no way he'll be paroled on time if he has to take the 18-month treatment program. His lawyer, Earle Wingate of Sisti Law Offices, tried to use the timing issue to spare his client prison. He asked Conboy to let the man get private treatment on his own. It didn't work.

"Defense attorneys talk to one another," Wingate said after the court hearing, "and the collective wisdom is that there are others finding themselves in the same situation."

Public defender Donna Brown advises her sex offender clients with shorter sentences to abandon expectations of meeting their minimum parole date. "It's frustrating," she said, "because I think there is this feeling that the only appropriate treatment is going to prison and doing the sex offender treatment program." She said she wishes prosecutors would consider pre-trial counseling and private treatment outside the prison as worthwhile alternatives.

Former public defender Barbara Keshen, now a staff attorney for the New Hampshire chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said she used to lobby the prison to put her sex offender clients on the waiting list early. She knew she had little sway because there are so few spots for so many offenders. ..News Source.. by ANNMARIE TIMMINS, Monitor staff