Increase in juveniles fuels Iowa's spending on monitoring, confining sex offenders

6-24-2010 Iowa:

The high cost of monitoring and confining sex offenders who are subject to a slew of new laws in Iowa will be discussed by policymakers this week and later this summer.

State officials have discovered the cost is growing more than expected because more juveniles are being added to new 10-year and lifetime monitoring requirements for sex crimes, said Phyllis Blood, an analyst for Iowa's Sex Offender Research Council.

The council will discuss the change in the juvenile sex offender population Wednesday. A state public safety advisory board created by the Legislature this year also will discuss sex offender costs and potential policy changes at its first meeting in July.

The council recommended this year that lawmakers should focus the state's resources for supervision on the highest-risk offenders. The move came after a Des Moines Register probe in July 2009 showed Iowa's experiment with lifetime monitoring would cost at least $168 million over the next 20 years.

That amount excluded the cost of monitoring more juvenile offenders, whose numbers have been growing since an overhaul of sex offender laws in 2006, Blood said.

"The mean age for most of those adjudicated for (second-degree) sex abuse, the most common crime, is 16," said Blood. Most "are going to have to be monitored for the rest of their lives."

A 2006 change required most sex offenders to serve "special sentences" after completing their original prison or probation sentences. The law was intended to protect children from sexual predators, who previously could walk out of prison with few restrictions after serving their time.

The change took away juvenile court discretion in placing juveniles 14 or older on the sex offender registry for certain offenses.

Last year, 137 juveniles were also adjudicated delinquent for sex offenses - a 19 percent increase from 115 in 2008. Seventy-five will be subject to lifetime monitoring.

In addition to prison, sex offenders are also housed at the state's Civil Commitment Unit for Sex Offenders in Cherokee. None of the 80 patients in the program - which costs about $6.85 million a year - has "graduated" from treatment in its 12-year history.

However, as many as nine patients have made enough progress that they may be allowed to return to their hometowns later this year, state officials have said. ..Source.. LEE ROOD