Sex Offender Confinement Poses Tough Questions

2-16-2010 Connecticut:

Post-prison treatment programs get constitutional scrutiny

In December, an anonymous veteran corrections officer in Connecticut wrote a letter to state officials voicing his concern over the then imminent release of Brian Wright, who has been in prison the past 25 years for sexual assault.

The officer claims Wright committed six “male-on-male sexual assaults” while in prison and expressed fear he would be a threat to both men and women when released from prison. “He is notorious in the prison system,” wrote the officer. “I fear that he will offend again, this time with more serious consequences.”

Wright, sentenced before the state required mandatory probation for sex offenders, got his release and is now living in a homeless shelter without any formal supervision. So is three-time convicted rapist Ransome Moody, who was also released in recent months after decades behind bars.

State Rep. Michael Lawlor, co-chair of the General Assembly’s Judiciary Committee, wants to see a secure residential sex offender treatment facility in Connecticut so people such as Wright and Moody have someplace that will help them transition from prison to free society.

Plans for a 24-bed facility in Uncasville in eastern Connecticut were approved by the legislature in January 2008 but so far the project hasn’t gotten off the ground. Lawlor blames the governor. The governor blames the Judicial Branch. Of course, Connecticut’s financial crisis hasn’t helped matters.

While the finger-pointing continues politically, the issue of keeping dangerous sex offenders in any type of government control past their prison sentence completion is drawing constitutional scrutiny nationwide.

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in U.S. v. Comstock. In question is a provision of the federal Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006 that allows the civil commitment of individuals deemed by the federal government to be “sexually dangerous.”

Defense lawyers in North Carolina challenged its usage as a violation of due process, saying that the continued confinement of sex offenders after they have completed their prison sentence allows the government to mete out a second sentence without proving anything beyond a reasonable doubt.

The lawyers, representing a man who had already served three years in prison for possession of child pornography, scored a victory from the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va.

The federal government appealed, and Solicitor General Elena Kagan told Supreme Court justices the federal law is “necessary and proper” to protect the public from offenders who they suspect may commit acts of future sexual violence.

Thirty state attorneys general nationwide submitted amicus briefs supporting the 2006 federal act. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal was not among them. Blumenthal did say he supports plans to open a treatment facility in Connecticut.

Alternative To Roaming

Connecticut currently has a civil commitment statute that could be used to confine a prisoner past his release date but Lawlor said an offender like Brian Wright doesn’t meet the criteria of someone with a mental abnormality, despite what others might think.

So the sex offender treatment facility would enable the state to prevent people like Wright from hitting the streets immediately after their sentences ended.

“A nighttime bed in a homeless shelter and unsupervised roaming of our city neighborhoods during the daytime is simply not an acceptable strategy for protecting the public,” said Lawlor. “Every study has shown that serious violent offenders are most likely to re-offend during the first few months following their release from prison.”

Lawlor believes a Connecticut program could be constructed to protect both the public and the rights of sex offenders. He said the offenders could be moved to the treatment facility before the end of their prison sentence and would stay there after the sentence ended as part of their probation.

His view is also that the facility would be less restrictive than a prison in that offenders might have the right to wear their own clothes or have access to certain amenities.

Defense lawyers agree with Lawlor that sending sex offenders straight from prison into society is problematic. But they also caution that the state has to be careful how it restricts anyone’s freedom after they’ve served their prison sentence.

“The problem is our [state] infrastructure can’t nearly treat sex offenders the way modern science, medicine and psychiatry would have them treated,” said Stamford attorney Matthew M. Maddox. “The knee-jerk reaction from officials from every level of government and law enforcement is to lock them up. It’s easier, right?”

Maddox said it’s “fundamental” that the state cannot keep an offender past his or her sentence date. Maddox does, however, support the use of a treatment facility for defendants who willingly agree to be placed there when they accept a plea bargain.

“Then I suppose, it’s just like any other contract, as long as the parties are doing it knowingly,” said Maddox. “The only problem arises if there is an attempt to add that condition after the defendant has already been sentenced and entered into a plea bargain that didn’t include that.”

Eric Janus, dean of William Mitchell College of Law in Minnesota, has authored a book on the topic, “Failure to Protect” and as a lawyer argued against the constitutionality of Minnesota’s sex offender civil commitment law.

He said about 20 states now have such laws that permit sex offenders to be held in treatment facilities after they have served their sentences. (Connecticut does not have such a law; in the past, the legislature has felt that the state’s general civil commitment statute was sufficient.)

Janus said requiring sex offenders to live in a treatment facility as part of the terms of their parole would not be unreasonable, as long as the facility doesn’t have the same level of confinement as a prison. He compared it to having a convicted burglar stay at a halfway house for six months after his release from prison.

“When you start getting into legal problems is when either the state is trying to impose these requirements when someone is no longer under [government] control or conditions of confinement aren’t consistent with normal probation or parole,” said Janus.

'Cesspool Of Despair’

The effectiveness of treatment facilities for sex offenders in other states is still up for debate. Maddox said some states pay up to five times more to treat sex offenders in residential facilities than they do to house prison inmates.

In Missouri, a 2005 newspaper investigation found that the state’s sex offender treatment program had existed for more than six years, housed more than 100 people considered “sexually violent predators,” and had not one person graduate back into society. Missouri officials have since been quoted as saying that the program has had a better recent success rate.

According to a 2007 New York Times report, Florida has more than 500 sex offenders in its treatment facility. A former worker there described it as “a free-for-all prison” while a local mental health counselor described it as “a cesspool of despair and depression and drug abuse…”

U.S. Justice Department statistics show that more than 4,000 sex offenders are civilly confined after their sentences have ended nationwide at a cost of about $700 million a year to taxpayers.

Waterbury lawyer Jerry E. Attanasio knows full well the controversy that surrounds the release of a violent sex offender back into society. He was hired by Janice Rosengren in 2007. Rosengren’s brother, David Pollitt, was a serial rapist who had just been released after serving 24 years in prison, and he had come to live with his sister in Southbury.

The entire town was up in arms about his presence. At the time Gov. M. Jodi Rell and Attorney General Richard Blumenthal tried to temporarily delay his release. But Superior Court Judge Susan B. Handy ruled that Pollitt had completed his sentence and was entitled to his freedom.

“A lot of questions need to be ironed out, but on the basics of it I think [a residential sex offender treatment center] is a pretty good idea,” said Attanasio. “Guys who are out on the street, his family doesn’t want to take them. Where’s he going to go?”

“It’s still kind of somewhat institutionalized,” said Attanasio, “but at the same time I think it would ease these guys back into society and gives these guys a chance.” ..Source.. CHRISTIAN NOLAN