Lemon Creek (Correctional Facility) hosts sex offender treatment program

3-6-2010 Alaska:

The Department of Corrections has started the state's first sex offender treatment program in a prison in seven years at the Lemon Creek Correctional Center.

There has not been a similar program in Alaska since funding for sex offender treatment was cut in 2003 under former Gov. Frank Murkowski's administration. The Legislature last year approved roughly $200,000 for a pilot program for 24 inmates.

"It's a real comprehensive, intensive program and it's meant to run for roughly 18 months," said criminal justice planner Rose Munafo.

Fourteen inmates were transferred to Juneau last month and joined 10 offenders already at the prison in a separate secured living unit. The 24 inmates have undergone assessments and began group therapy last week, Munafo said.

"We do have offenders coming there that didn't start out in Juneau because for awhile that will be the only institutional program that we have and it's also in the most secure programming facility we have at this point in time," she said.

The 14 offenders transferred to Juneau will be sent back to the facilities they came from after completing the program, Munafo said.

"They are not allowed to be released in the Juneau halfway house or community unless that's where they came from," she said.

Most people don't have a real good idea of what sex offender treatment is supposed to do, Munafo said. It does not entail a "soft and warm therapist" that tries to make the offenders feel better about who they are, she said.

"One of the main things you do in sex offender treatment is learn as much as you can about that offender because they are never cured," Munafo said. "So in order to manage them you want to know as much as you can about them. That is what sex offender treatment does."

The DOC has laid out a five-year plan with the intention of expanding the program to other facilities up north in the future. Part of that plan hinges on the new $240 million Goose Creek Correctional Center being built in the Matanuska-Sustina Borough that is expected to open in 2012.

"Part of the problem we have getting offenders into programming is we're so overcrowded we can't get them moved," Munafo said. "So a lot depends on getting the new prison opened so we can move these people into the places they need to be."

According to the latest DOC figures released in December, there were 362 sex offenders in state-run correctional facilities and an additional 239 offenders serving time in a Colorado prison. There were 28 sex offenders incarcerated at LCCC prior to the transfer of the 14 more inmates to Juneau.

The department was highly selective of the 24 inmates chosen to participate in the new program.

"We looked at guys that we felt were serious enough offenders that they needed some treatment in an intensive place in the institution before they got out," Munafo said.

There were certain benchmarks the offenders had to meet to be allowed into the program. They did not want anyone that had failed in sex offender treatment programs in the past or had a history of disciplinary problems while incarcerated, Munafo said. They also wanted inmates that had an extended sentence in order to complete the 18-month program, she said.

The program is initially only for men. The department is hoping to expand the program next year to include treatment for women and people with chronic mental disabilities. As of December there were eight women sex offenders incarcerated in Alaska.

However, the future of the program is still uncertain. The DOC has requested funding for the program from the Legislature but the state's budget has yet to be finalized. ..Source.. by Eric Morrison | JUNEAU EMPIRE