December 31, 2010
Sex offender registries ruin many lives
12-31-2010 Washington:
BAINBRIDGE ISLAND, Wash. - Ed Gonda and his family moved to Bainbridge Island upon hearing it was a pastoral "laid back, forgiving" kind of place.
After finding a rental, he and his wife enrolled their daughter in school.
As Christians, they found a local church they liked. They made friends with neighbors and island residents.
But eventually, word got out.
Gonda had a criminal past. And not for burglary or drug possession, but for a sex offense.
The news traveled fast, and people who they thought they knew well acted swiftly. His daughter could no longer play with friends down the street, he said. The church pews around them were vacant on Sundays. They more or less stopped going out anywhere on the island.
"We're treated like we're diseased," his wife said.
Having a daughter, Gonda can empathize with islanders. He would never want a pedophile around her, and he has family members who were the victims of sexual abuse.
Gonda didn't go to prison for being a pedophile. In 1995, when he was in his early 30s, he had a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl he lived with at the time.
Gonda pleaded guilty to his charges and did about four years in state prison. He participated in and paid more than $10,000 for sex-offender treatment. He has committed no new crimes since he got out of prison about a decade ago, according to a check of his criminal history. As sex offenders go, he is considered a "Level 1" by law enforcement, the level least likely to re-offend. He said that just to be safe, he avoids places where teens close to his victim's age congregate.
"I admit, I was wrong," Gonda said. "But I've changed. Why are people still looking at me for something I did 15 years ago?"
Law enforcement makes a determination of how likely a sex offender is to re-offend and rates them on a scale of 1 to 3.
But the public often fails to see any nuance.
"People look at them in a bucket," said Bainbridge Island Police Commander Sue Shultz. "They say 'Any kind of sex offender is a sex offender, and always will be a sex offender.' "
The registration of sex offenders in Washington state was one of three components of the Community Protection Act of 1990, passed in the wake of two tragic and brutal killings. It's a popular measure with the public, and the Legislature has strengthened and spent more money on the laws surrounding sex offenses. Lawmakers have also bolstered penalties for failing to register as a sex offender.
There is also a national registry for sex offenders.
The subject of debate is who is included in the registries, who is not and how often should they be checked on.
While extremely rare, recent horrifying crimes committed by sex offenders have galvanized lawmakers to act.
Kitsap County Prosecutor Russ Hauge uses the analogy of an airplane crash.
"It doesn't happen very often," he said. "But when it does, it's a tragedy."
Hauge chaired a task force convened by Gov. Chris Gregoire in the wake of the killing of Zina Linnik, a 12-year-old girl abducted and murdered by Terapon Adhahn, a Level 1 sex offender. A result of that task force was the creation of a sex-offender policy board that reports to the governor, and the creation of a pot of grant money awarded to local law enforcement to make face-to-face contact with every sex offender in the state.
"Nobody knows how much of a safety factor it adds," Hauge said. "But a murder of a young girl damages the community in an incalculable way."
Thomas Weaver, a defense attorney who handles sex cases, questions the indiscriminate nature of a sex offender registry. While lower-level sex offenders might not have their pictures in the paper like Level 3 offenders do, they're still on the list, he said.
Weaver also wonders about a slippery slope in registration. For example, why not enact a burglary offender registration to notify the public when such convicts are released, he wonders.
A kidnapping registry was created in the wake of Washington's sex offender registry, he said. Nevada has a registry for convicts of many different crimes. And there have also been calls in some states for a registry of arson offenders, a crime that also often involves an underlying psychological component.
Where to draw the line?
As a sex offender, Ed Gonda can understand why people would be afraid of Level 2 and Level 3 sex offenders. His family's few options of places to live are apartments and houses that accommodate sex offenders. But he doesn't want to go to those places out of fear for his wife and daughter.
Other landlords, however, won't rent to him because of his status.
"So where can we live?" he wonders.
While in prison, he changed his name. He still feels blessed to have found a family and for the neighbors on Bainbridge Island that do accept him.
"God gave me a family, a wife and a new start," he said. "I just wish someone would give us a chance." ..Source.. Josh Farley
AR Sex Offender Arrested for Refusing Screening Process
I wonder, did he refuse to show up for the screening, -OR- did he refuse to participate in the screening. It doesn't look like he is on parole or probation, so why would he have to "participate" if that is what he is arrested for?12-31-2010 Arkansas:
A sex offender who allegedly refused to undergo the screening process required by the state has been arrested in northeast Arkansas.
The Lawrence County Sheriff's Office says ___, 56, of Walnut Ridge, is being held in the county jail on a felony failure to comply charge.
Deputies say ___ was arrested Monday at his home without incident.
At last report, he was being held for a bond hearing. ..Source.. by Arkansas Matters.com
December 30, 2010
Group to sue if city tightens sex offender rules
At some point this "Not in My Back Yard" has got to stop. Praise to those that will sue to stop politicians that do not know what they are doing enacting "Sounds Good" laws to make them look good to a few in the community.12-30-2010 Ohio:
GREENVILLE — Officials of a nonprofit law firm in Cincinnati on Wednesday said they will file suit in federal court if the Greenville City Council passes an ordinance extending residency restrictions to the point it makes Greenville virtually off limits for registered sex offenders.
The council on Tuesday is to hear the first of three readings on a proposal to prohibit sex offenders from living within 1,500 feet of any school, preschool, daycare center, library, park or playground, up from the statewide restriction of 1,000 feet.
“We’ll take it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary,” said David Singleton, executive director of the Ohio Justice & Policy Center in Cincinnati. “These laws are ineffective, they don’t increase public safety and, in the worst of cases, they undermine public safety by giving the community a false sense of security.” He said such laws also cause offenders to stop registering their addresses, making it difficult for police to track them. “It’s just foolishness. It’s not smart law enforcement.”
Mayor Mike Bowers did not return a phone call seeking comment.
Greenville would join a growing number of Ohio communities enacting “buffer zones” for sex offenders that go well beyond those set by state law. They include Deerfield Twp. in Warren County, Anderson and Sycamore townships near Cincinnati and Upper Arlington near Columbus. Lebanon City Council has postponed until February a vote on similar legislation.
At the center of the controversy in Greenville is John Graham, whose Good Samaritan Home houses sex offenders trying to re-enter society from prison. Graham said the house has a recidivism rate of less than 1 percent. He said if all cities enact such laws, there will be nowhere for Ohio’s 30,000 registered sex offenders to live legally.
Proponents say extra tough residency restrictions protect a community by forcing offenders to live elsewhere. But some studies have shown residency laws do nothing to prevent new sex crimes against children — partly because many offenders are related to their victims — and create undue strain on law enforcement agencies. ..Source.. Tom Beyerlein , Staff Writer
December 29, 2010
State's sex offender program questioned
12-29-2010 New York:
The sex offender — identified in court papers only as "Douglas S." — was clearly ready for release from a state psychiatric facility, according to a judge.
He had accepted the treatment and excelled in the programs. In fact, he was a model example that even pedophile sex offenders considered dangerous by the state — those civilly committed in a secured facility — can benefit from treatment to a point where they can be released to community supervision.
And Douglas S. even went a step further. He requested and received chemical therapy — chemical castration in essence — that experts said made the likelihood that he would commit a new sex crime less than 5 percent.
Despite all of that, state Office of Mental Health officials refused to release Douglas S. In fact, they would not even advance him to the fourth and final phase of treatment at the Central New York Psychiatric Center in Marcy.
In a ruling released last week, a Syracuse-based state Supreme Court justice, James Tormey, blasted OMH officials for their handling of the case of Douglas S. The justice questioned whether OMH officials have set such tough barriers to release that offenders have little motivation to cooperate with treatment.
"There needs to be a light at the end of the tunnel for each of these patients who cooperate, accept, acknowledge and show their willingness to work with the system to correct their behaviors as such so they are no longer a substantial threat to society," Tormey wrote in a ruling last Thursday.
Tormey ordered that Douglas S. be released from confinement and put in the parole-based part of the civil commitment program.
If such challenges to treatment mount, the legal foundation of the civil commitment program could be at risk.
Under the law, sex offenders near the end of their prison or parole term are evaluated by state mental health experts.
Those who experts decide suffer from a mental defect that makes them among the riskiest to release can become eligible for civil commitment.
Tormey's ruling is likely to resonate more than most, because he has extensive experience with civil commitment cases in New York.
Civil commitment cases can be heard in the jurisdiction where offenders are jailed or detained awaiting a resolution of the civil proceeding. Tormey has the Central New York Psychiatric Center and several prisons in his district. He has handled close to 100 civil commitment cases.
Douglas S. is not alone: The state's civil commitment program is almost four years old, and no one has completed the four-phased treatment regimen so far. None have even entered the fourth phase.
OMH officials say they are working with a difficult population — dangerous sex offenders with a psychological predisposition to commit new crimes — and treatment will be prolonged for many.
Some may never reach a point where they're safe for release.
Experience from other states — New York was the 20th to begin civil commitment — supports that conclusion. In Minnesota, where civil commitment began in 1994, only one of nearly 600 offenders has been discharged.
The apparent inability of treatment to render many offenders safe for release proves that states are locking away the most dangerous sex offenders, said Roxanne Lieb, associate director for the Washington State Institute for Public Policy, which has studied civil commitment programs.
"It stands to reason that if you confine a lot of people and you were letting them go in a year or six months, you would have to ask yourself if you've picked the right population," she said.
OMH officials had no comment and said they were reviewing Tormey's decision.
OMH also declined to allow the Democrat and Chronicle to tour the civil commitment facilities, citing the confidentiality of treatment for offenders suffering from mental ailments.
Assessing risk
For decades mental health professionals have struggled to find ways to identify the worst sex offenders. Some experts say that psychological tests have been fine-tuned enough to help them distinguish the riskiest. "Now we have a pretty good grip on who the most dangerous are," said Carl Christensen, a counselor at the Linden Oaks Sexual Abuse Treatment Services offices in Penfield.
"And we have a pretty good grip on who the least dangerous are."
Studies show that sex offenders in New York who are not routed into civil confinement or a parole-supervised civil management program have low re-arrest rates: Less than 3 percent are arrested for a sex crime within two years of release.
This proves, OMH officials say, that they are ferreting out the worst sex offenders for civil confinement.
OMH this year added several psychologists because of the growing number of offenders who must be evaluated for possible commitment, said Richard Miraglia, the OMH associate commissioner of forensics sciences.
In last week's ruling, Tormey praised the treatment providers at the Central New York Psychiatric Center, where Douglas S. was confined, for "their outstanding job in treating these individuals."
But, testimony showed, a panel of OMH psychiatric experts must recommend offenders for the fourth phase and the panel did not recommend the advancement for Douglas S. Two of the panel members had not worked with him, Tormey wrote.
Testimony in hearings showed that the supposed fourth and final treatment phase is ill-defined "with no real criteria for entry or completion," Tormey wrote.
In the ruling, he noted that the state may have spent close to $1 million to date for the treatment of Douglas S. yet seemed unwilling to release him, despite ample evidence the offender was ready.
Best use of resources?
Better sex offender treatment in prisons could reduce the number of offenders the state decides need civil commitment, some treatment providers say; still, it could be years before officials know whether that outcome is likely.
In concert with the 2007 passage of civil commitment, state officials say, they increased the availability of sex offender treatment within the prisons. Program slots for treatment went from 715 to 1,200, said Department of Correctional Services spokeswoman Linda Foglia. The annual cost is about $9.5 million — largely salary costs — at 18 different institutions.
Still, those costs are dwarfed by the spending for civilly committed offenders.
Now, however, the state is running out of room for civilly detained sex offenders, and the costs continue to mushroom each year.
Those costs will only worsen if the goal, as Tormey contended, isn't the eventual release of some offenders.
"It is quite evident to this Court throughout these (civil commitment) processes for over 3.5 years, that the Office of Mental Health is not completing its medical treatment obligation to (Douglas S.) or others by denying any efforts of the individuals to be released," Tormey wrote. ..Source.. Gary Craig, Staff writer
Civil confinement of sex offenders costs state $175,000 a piece
12-29-2010 New York:
In New York, the end of a criminal sentence for a sex offender doesn't mean he's going free. In 2007, state lawmakers took steps to protect the public from sexual predators. That year they approved a civil commitment program designed to route dangerous sex offenders whose sentences are ending into treatment in secure state psychiatric facilities.
However, little thought was given to long-term costs or the likelihood that space for treatment could one day become an expensive dilemma.
That day has come.
Only in its fourth year, civil commitment is already coping with cost and space strains. Since many offenders who are locked away are unlikely to be released for years, if ever, the costs will continue to escalate.
The state Office of Mental Health, or OMH, is now transforming office space and storage areas into bedrooms at a Marcy psychiatric center to make room for the increasing number of sex offenders.
Before the program was even 2 years old, OMH officials warned in a report that "the population growth (of committed offenders) will continue unabated for many years and at costs that may well be unsustainable in an uncertain fiscal climate."
By 2012 OMH, which treats the offenders, will likely need more space for civil commitment, according to spokeswoman Jill Daniels.
Although Republican lawmakers pushed unsuccessfully for civil commitment for years, the program finally cleared its legislative hurdles in 2007 with the vigorous support of then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat. Lawmakers hailed civil commitment as a way to keep New Yorkers safe from the worst sex offenders.
Civil commitment operates largely outside of public view and scrutiny. The cases are civil — not criminal — and courtrooms can be closed and records sealed because of confidential questions about an offender's mental stability.
Only the case of Nushawn Williams has garnered statewide attention. The state is trying to commit Williams, a drug-dealing drifter who was imprisoned for 12 years for having sex with women while knowing he had HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. He is being detained while the civil commitment case continues; the state can hold offenders through the commitment court proceedings.
The program is far costlier than imprisoning criminals: a civilly detained offender costs four times the spending for an inmate jailed in a state prison.
New York's average price tag to treat sex offenders in secured facilities — about $175,000 a person — makes it the costliest program of its kind in the country, slightly more than in California. Twenty states have civil commitment programs, but they vary in approach. Texas, for instance, only uses outpatient treatment.
Although only a small percentage of the pool of convicted sex offenders ends up civilly institutionalized in New York, the state still has one of the highest rates of civil confinement in the country, records show.
For New York lawmakers, this will create a demand for tens of millions of tax dollars in coming years at the same time that officials face dire budgetary constraints.
"We are facing capacity issues, census pressures," said Richard Miraglia, the OMH associate commissioner of forensic services.
The courtroom fights over civil commitment have their own costs, often outstripping the costs of criminal cases.
Civil commitment hearings and trials can become a duel between psychiatric experts warring over whether the offender has a "mental abnormality" that makes him unable to control criminal impulses — a legal requirement for confinement.
A 'sacred cow'?
In New York, a sex offender slated for release from prison or parole is evaluated to determine whether he suffers from a dangerous mental defect.
During the year ending Oct. 31, only 4.3 percent of the offenders eligible for civil commitment — those who had committed sexually motivated crimes — were ultimately deemed by the state to meet the legal requirements. A trial determines whether the offender suffers from the mental ailment. If the accused is found to have the mental abnormality — there is no verdict of guilty or not guilty at the civil trial — a state Supreme Court justice then decides whether the offender is too dangerous to release. The criminal can either be confined in a state treatment facility or released to an intensive parole program.
Already, civil commitment has the earmarks of a political sacred cow.
Some lawmakers who once questioned the wisdom of civil commitment found themselves under attack during the recent election cycle. Attorney General-elect Eric Schneiderman, for one, voted against the 2007 bill for civil commitment because of concerns he had about the offenders' civil rights.
During the 2010 election, he reversed field, saying the program had adequately resolved his fears.
"I don't know that there was a whole lot of thought (about the costs of the civil commitment program)," said Al O'Connor, a staff lawyer and civil commitment expert with the New York State Defenders Association. "Probably there were people who voted for this and knew better."
Some politicians likely feared that opposition to civil commitment could be used to paint them as soft on crime and an ally to sex offenders.
"It's a potent political weapon during an election," O'Connor said.
A Democrat and Chronicle review of dozens of civil commitment cases across New York shows that, as state officials contend, many of those targeted for the program committed serious and sometimes heinous sex-related crimes — offenses such as those committed by Williams, the HIV-infected man who once bragged he had sex with more than 200 women, and the case of a Rochester man, Frederick Peters, who used a gloved hand to sexually assault prostitutes in a manner too savage to describe.
The U.S. Supreme Court has consistently upheld civil commitment, allowing states to push sex offenders into locked-down treatment programs after their prison terms come to an end. Rarely, as the experience in other states demonstrates, are the committed offenders deemed safe for release.
Minnesota, for instance, has had civil commitment since 1994 and has released one of the nearly 600 men who have been institutionalized.
Ongoing debate
New York lawmakers did provide extra funding for OMH when civil commitment started in 2007 but with little foresight on the escalating costs.
Other states provided plenty of evidence for New York to recognize the budgetary strains of civil commitment programs. Minnesota's program has tripled in cost over the past six years and a $62 million facility that opened in Virginia in 2008 is nearing capacity.
In New York, funding was based on an assumption that most offenders would be routed into the cheaper parole-supervised program and not institutionalized. Instead, more than two of every three offenders found to have a mental disorder have been sent into the state facilities instead of the parole option.
In 2007, even some anti-violence activists challenged whether the money for civil commitment could be better spent bolstering treatment for sex offenders in prison.
One state-sponsored committee of experts and advocates recommended many approaches to curb sex crimes that did not include civil commitment, recalled Anne Liske, who was then executive director of the New York State Coalition Against Sexual Assault.
"There's a better use of money" to address sexual violence, Liske said.
However, those who'd seen the results of violence firsthand were powerful advocates.
Connie Russo-Carriero, for instance, was murdered in White Plains in 2005 by Phillip Grant, a homeless sex offender who was released after serving his sentence of 23 years for multiple rapes. Russo-Carriero's family became strong advocates for civil commitment, questioning how a man suffering from dangerous mental illnesses could be released from prison with no oversight.
"Maybe (Grant) would have been better off civilly committed," said Russo-Carriero's cousin, Vincent Scala. "The man who did this to Connie was almost a walking, talking poster child for it."
The facilities
New York operates two facilities where the detained sex offenders are treated — the Central New York Psychiatric Center in Marcy near Rome and the St. Lawrence Psychiatric Center in Ogdensburg. Both centers are now at capacity — 150 beds at Central and 80 at St. Lawrence.
An unused building at Marcy could be converted into space for 150 beds, but that transformation would come with costs that have not yet been determined.
"We would look to that as a full-fledged treatment facility," OMH's Miraglia said. Still, that measure would handle only about two years worth of new commitments.
OMH is talking with corrections officials about the conversion of some unused prison space, but those discussions are only in preliminary phases.
At the current rate of growth — about 70 newly confined offenders annually — treatment costs alone will grow by about $12 million a year. OMH has already trimmed its costs by reducing staff at facilities; originally the average cost per offender was $225,000 a year.
What's clear is that solutions to the space crunch, regardless of the cost, will be needed soon.
Lawmakers will find answers because civil commitment is a vital part of the state's public safety measures, said state Sen. Michael Nozzolio, R-Fayette, Seneca County. Senate Republicans "supported it aggressively," he said. "We believed it was an alternative that needed to be pursued."
Assemblyman Joseph Lentol, D-Brooklyn, supported civil commitment but admits that the costs are a concern.
"There is a real problem and 30 years from now we may be doing what we did with Rockefeller (drug laws) and repealing civil confinement because it's not working," Lentol said. "But we haven't reached that point yet." ..Source.. Gary Craig
Civil commitment faces rocky legal terrain
12-29-2010 New York:
In 1988, Mustafa Rashid broke into a home in the Bronx, raped one woman, sodomized another, and stabbed a third person who tried to break up the home invasion. In 2000, less than a year after being released on parole, Rashid robbed three homes over four days. In a Queens robbery, he threatened a woman with an ice pick, took the woman’s 8-month-old daughter from her arms and allegedly fondled the child, then caressed the woman and masturbated at the home. He left after she gave him cash, court records say.
Last month, New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, decided Rashid could not be civilly committed as a dangerous sex offender.
The judges did not say that Rashid wasn’t dangerous. Nor did they rule that he didn’t suffer from the mental disorder required to commit a sex offender to a secure psychiatric facility in New York. Instead, the Court of Appeals based its decision on its interpretation of New York’s civil commitment statutes, which were enacted by the Legislature in 2007. And they weren’t alone: a regional appellate court had reached the same decision earlier with Rashid’s case, a ruling affirmed by the Court of Appeals with its Nov. 23 decision.
Questions raised
Offenders can only be civilly committed if they’re leaving prison or parole after conviction of a sexually motivated crime. Rashid, appellate judges ruled, was jailed on robbery and weapons charges that were not, under the law, sexually driven.
Rashid had been one of nearly 400 criminals who state mental health officials determined were so much of a risk that they should be confined in a psychiatric institution for sex offenders or placed in a strict community supervision program. But the case and its legal contortions reveal how the state’s civil commitment program will likely face numerous legal challenges.
In New York, more cases are wending their way through regional appellate divisions, and the Court of Appeals has only sounded off on a few cases thus far. Until rulings from the Court of Appeals help lower courts sort out the legal nuances of civil commitment, the program will continue to be the target of many legal challenges.
“I suspect it’s going to take a while for these cases to work their way through the (legal) system,” said local lawyer Mark Davison, who has handled several appeals of civil commitment decisions. “I think it’s going to take a while because the statute is so new.”
For years, civil libertarians have blasted civil commitment laws nationally, which typically lock away sex offenders in psychiatric facilities after their prison terms have ended. But the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently found that the programs are constitutional, as long as there is solid evidence that the offender has a mental defect making him likely to commit more crimes.
In New York, there have been questions by lawmakers and even judges about whether civil commitment is an apt use of courtroom resources. Each year, the demands will grow as more offenders are institutionalized.
Civilly committed offenders are evaluated each year, and, based on opinions from mental health experts, a judge has to determine annually whether the criminal should remain detained.
“It appears that both (political) parties wanted to pass a civil commitment statute in the worst way,” Onondaga County Court Judge Joseph Fahey wrote in a 2008 legal article. “And they did.”
In a recent interview, Fahey was not as tough on civil commitment. “I would say that it seems to be working reasonably well and has survived any legal challenges to the statute itself,” said Fahey, who has handled some civil commitment cases as an acting state Supreme Court justice.
But the challenges to the law are sure to mount in coming years.
Some defense lawyers who handle civil commitment cases are also questioning — though informally — whether offenders who were confined in the early months of the program received adequate representation from their attorneys.
Prompting those questions is the number of early cases in which offenders consented to confinement. State records show, for instance, that 32 sex offenders agreed to civil commitment in an institution — a possible life-long confinement under the law — in the first year of the program. That’s four times the number who consented during the past year and 45 percent of the total cases in which a criminal agreed to institutionalization, state records show.
Ripple effects
The case of rapist Rashid, now 54 and a free man, has already had ripple effects.
Rashid was on parole in 2008 when the state tried to civilly commit him as a dangerous sex offender. At a civil commitment hearing, a state psychologist alleged that Rashid had significant psychopathic traits and often used drugs when free to do so, leaving him unlikely to maintain “independent impulse control” over his sexual desires.
Lawyers for Rashid argued, however, that he was not eligible for civil commitment. To be a candidate for civil commitment, a criminal has to have committed one of a number of sexually motivated crimes. Rashid’s attorneys maintained that he’d been released on the sex crimes and was actually paroled on an ineligible crime when the state sought to commit him.
Appellate judges agreed. They also noted that the Attorney General’s Office filed the petition to commit Rashid a day after his parole supervision ended. The Attorney General’s Office answered that the process formally started with an earlier notice to Rashid of the state’s plans to try to institutionalize him.
John Nuchereno, a Buffalo lawyer representing notorious sex offender Nushawn Williams, said he’ll use the November Court of Appeals ruling with Rashid to push for dismissal of the case against Williams. Williams is detained for a civil commitment decision after serving 12 years for having sex with women while knowing he had HIV. His criminal case spawned nationwide attention and prompted HIV notification laws.
One Rochester case has also been affected by the Rashid ruling.
Authorities alleged that Terry McFadden, 49, was a sexual predator. In the early 1990s he ran a Rochester clothing store, called “The Jiggy Shop,” and hired young women as salespeople.
“He used his position as their employer to seduce most of the victims for his own sexual gratification,” authorities alleged in a court record.
McFadden was charged with rape after police alleged he sexually assaulted a 16-year-old whom he’d given crack cocaine. A 15-year-old girl alleged that he fondled her against her wishes, records show.
He pleaded guilty to a rape count in 1999 and was sentenced to three to six years. He was paroled in 2003, then arrested for promoting prostitution the next year.
In June 2008, state authorities tried to declare him a predator deserving civil commitment. The rape conviction made him eligible for civil confinement, the Attorney General’s Office said.
Lawyers for McFadden answered that he was instead jailed for promotion of prostitution in the third degree, which is not on the list of eligible commitment offenses.
In April, state Supreme Court Justice Thomas Van Strydonck decided that he could not declare McFadden a candidate for civil commitment, as much as he wanted to do so.
“The court, while bound to follow Rashid, disagrees with its results here,” Van Strydonck wrote in April.
Van Strydonck’s ruling was based on the earlier regional appellate ruling with Rashid, a decision affirmed by the Court of Appeals with its ruling last month.
Though ineligible for civil commitment, Terry McFadden is not a free man. He is now imprisoned on a drug charge, and likely to be released next year. ..Source.. Gary Craig
Two Decades of Sounding the Alarm on Sex Offenders
12-28-2010 Washington:
POULSBO — “This notification is not intended to increase fear,” the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office flier reads. “Rather, an informed public is a safer public.”
For 20 years, that statement has accompanied the brief dossier on sex offenders released by the sheriff’s office to the community where they will live.
Washington reserves community notification for the sex offenders it ranks as most likely to re-offend. Whether it has made the state safer in the first two decades of notification’s existence is a harder question to answer.
The concept of community notification, developed by a task force in the late 1980s, was not envisioned as a crime prevention tool. It was a mechanism for law enforcement to inform residents of dangerous offenders — something they were prohibited by law from doing before 1990, said Lucy Berliner, a member of the original task force and head of the Harborview Center for Sexual Assault and Traumatic Stress.
Rather than questioning whether notification makes a community safer, she asks, “Is it right for the government to have information about your safety and be prevented from telling you about it?”
Notification has long endured scrutiny as a public safety tool. But local law enforcement believes it does serve as a deterrent.
“I think that because the public has tasked us with this, we do the best we can and it makes a difference,” said Doug Dillard, a Kitsap County Sheriff’s detective whose full-time job is monitoring sex offenders.
Dillard registers sex offenders, tracks down those who fail to do so for prosecution, and arranges community gatherings when Level 3 sex offenders change addresses.
His most recent meeting concerned the release of Johnathon Daniel Roswell, a 26-year-old man convicted of sex offenses in four different cases. When he was 17, he was convicted of third-degree rape of a 13-year-old girl. When he was 19, he was convicted of third-degree molestation of a 14-year-old girl. And when he was 21, he was convicted of second-degree child molestation of a 15-year-old girl. He knew the victim in each case.
A crowd of about 20 turned out at Poulsbo Fire Department headquarters on Dec. 13 to learn about Roswell, who was moving to Ryen Drive, which is in a neighborhood north of Poulsbo not far from the community’s Little League and Babe Ruth fields.
The meeting didn’t make North Kitsap resident Bruce MacLearnsberry feel any safer.
“It’s merely a reminder that it’s out there,” he said. “But we have to show up, we have to speak up.”
MacLearnsberry, who said he’s disillusioned with a justice system that releases an offender with multiple convictions, quoted Edmund Burke as rationale for notification: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
‘I HAVE TO PROTECT MY CHILDREN’
Community notification was a component of the 1990 Community Protection Act, a landmark piece of legislation passed unanimously that included new tools for the monitoring of sex offenders.
The act was prompted by public outrage at two killings — a young woman who was abducted and murdered in Seattle in September 1988, and the sexual assault mutilation and murder of a 7-year-old boy who was riding his bike in Tacoma in May 1989.
Then-Gov. Booth Gardner ordered the creation of a task force on community protection that was led by longtime King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng and included various stakeholders from the criminal justice system and the mothers of the two victims.
Their recommendations were introduced before the Legislature and were unanimously approved in January 1990.
The Community Protection Act bolstered sentences for sex offenders, provided them with increased treatment opportunities, and enhanced victims’ services.
But it was also a fundamental shift in the way the criminal justice system dealt with a unique criminal population. The state was the pioneer in the nation in establishing three unorthodox systems aimed at reducing the number of victims of sexual violence:
* Registration of offenders to a set period of time beyond incarceration and probation, so law enforcement could keep a better eye on them;
* A civil commitment process in which sex offenders found to have a “mental abnormality or personality disorder” could be committed indefinitely — a process that already existed for mentally ill people found to be a danger to themselves and others.
* A system of community notification, in which the proximate locations of many sex offenders living in the community would become public information.
Community notification of a registered sex offender depends upon the classification of the offender. Level 1 offenders are classified as being at low risk of reoffending; Level 2s present a “moderate risk;” and Level 3s present a “high risk.”
Information about Level 1 offenders is only released upon request by community members. Information about Level 2 offenders is included in public databases and released to schools and other organizations where children congregate. Level 3 offenders’ information is disclosed to the public at large.
Those who attended the Poulsbo meeting felt knowing who was in their neighborhood would help them keep their children safe.
“It is really up to us to watch where these guys are living,” said Brooke Hammett, who has a young son. “The police can’t watch them twenty-four, seven.”
Mitch Smith, who called himself a “hard-nosed grandpa,” said he believes the responsibility of protecting the community — particularly children — falls on everyone’s shoulders and not just law enforcement.
“Any knowledge I can gain to help protect our youth,” he said, “I’m going to use that.”
George Minder of Poulsbo said he believes it’s irresponsible for his fellow residents not to come to such a meeting.
“I can’t sit back and wait for something to happen,” Minder said. “I have to protect my children. My wife. My family.”
THE COUNTY’S CALL
Law enforcement is required to send word to local media if a Level 3 sex offender is released from prison or moves. In Kitsap County, agencies mail notices to nearby residents as well. The office will spend up to $500 out of pocket to send notices to homes near where the offender will be living in a radius ranging from a quarter-mile to a mile, depending upon the population density of the area, Dillard said.
A common misconception is that registration requirements include restrictions on where an offender may live. That’s not true, Dillard said.
An offender could be on probation and face restrictions. But if they’re only required to register, they can live where they want. Offenders are required to register after they’re released from prison for at least 10 years, and those with the most serious offenses may have to register for life.
Level 3 offenders are subject to more stringent registration mandates, including community notification. Level 2 offenders can still be searched in a public database and Level 1 offenders often exist under the radar, though their status is noted in background checks and police databases.
The Department of Corrections assesses an offender upon their release from prison, but law enforcement can classify an offender at any level they choose. Mason County, for instance, has decided to classify every offender that’s homeless as a Level 3. In Kitsap County, there are homeless offenders at the other levels, though they are required to check in once a week and provide a report of where they’ve stayed.
Sheriff’s offices in Washington use a risk assessment to decide into which level an offender should be placed. The test weighs age, prior sex offenses and whether the offender’s victims were related to them or male.
‘PEOPLE WANT TO KNOW’
Notification’s popularity isn’t in doubt. Surveys in 1997 and 2007 found that a majority of state residents knew about and considered the community notification of sex offenders “very important,” according to the state Attorney General’s Office.
“I sense there’s very strong community support for notification,” said David Boerner, a Seattle University law professor, former prosecutor and one of the architects of the Community Protection Act. “People want to know.”
The attorney general’s office goes a step further, arguing that the state’s residents are safer because of community notification. Attorney General Rob McKenna points to a 2005 study by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy that says sex offenders’ rates of recidivism — or re-offense — have dropped 20 percent for violent felonies and 70 percent for felony sex convictions since the 1990 establishment of registration and notification.
But overall research on the topic is mixed, and it “does not consistently conclude that community notification reduces recidivism, prevents sex crimes, protects children, or enhances community safety,” said a report penned by the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers, an Oregon-based treatment and policy group.
Notification can, in some cases, have a negative impact on both an offender’s family and could potentially reveal the offender’s victim, the association said.
Community notification is often damaging for the offender. About one-third to one-half of adult sex offenders have experienced housing instability, job loss, vigilantism and threats, and property damage, the association said. In extreme cases, offenders have been assaulted. Two sex offenders were murdered in Bellingham in 2005 by a vigilante later sentenced to 44 years in prison for their deaths.
There might not be much sympathy for a sex offender. But an offender is most likely to re-offend when they’re unstable, said John S. Furlong, a longtime New Jersey criminal defense attorney.
“You’re actually promoting the recidivism of a new crime,” he said of notification, which he calls “community vilification.”
Contemplating, threatening or committing violence against an offender could lead to the courts or Legislature taking away notification, said Sue Shultz, commander for the Bainbridge Island Police Department.
More important, Shultz said, is that parents keep a dialogue with their children about safety, including appropriate versus inappropriate touching.
“We fail when we don’t teach our kids,” said Shultz, a former special assault crimes detective for the Bremerton Police Department for seven years.
In these days of cost-cutting, notification gives law enforcement one of its few ways to be “proactive,” said Bill Adam, a Mason County detective.
Adam is vigilant in distributing fliers to keep the community abreast of the sex offenders most likely to reoffend. Mason County was rocked by the rape and murder of 15-year-old Jennie Osborn by a sex offender in Lake Cushman in 2001.
Adam’s job exists, he said, so that a similar crime never occurs again.
“Even a remote possibility that notification can prevent that horrific crime, it makes our entire program worthwhile,” Adam said. “How can you even put a price on the life of a child?” ..Source.. Josh Farley
Should All Convicted Sex Offenders Be Required to Register?
12-27-2010 Washington:
BAINBRIDGE ISLAND — Ed Gonda and his family moved to Bainbridge Island upon hearing it was a pastoral “laid back, forgiving” kind of place.
After finding a rental, he and his wife enrolled their daughter in school. As Christians, they found a local church they liked. They made friends with neighbors and island residents.
But eventually, word got out.
Gonda had a criminal past. And not for burglary or drug possession, but for a sex offense.
The news traveled fast, and people who they thought they knew well acted swiftly. His daughter could no longer play with friends down the street, he said. The church pews around them were vacant on Sundays. They more or less stopped going out anywhere on the island.
“We’re treated like we’re diseased,” his wife said.
Having a daughter, Gonda can empathize with islanders. He would never want a pedophile around her, and he has family members who were the victims of sexual abuse.
Gonda didn’t go to prison for being a pedophile. In 1995, when he was in his early 30s, he had a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl he lived with at the time.
Gonda pleaded guilty to his charges and did about four years in state prison. He participated in and paid more than $10,000 for sex-offender treatment. He has committed no new crimes since he got out of prison about a decade ago, according to a check of his criminal history. As sex offenders go, he is considered a “Level 1” by law enforcement, the level least likely to re-offend. He said that just to be safe, he avoids places where teens close to his victim’s age congregate.
“I admit, I was wrong,” Gonda said. “But I’ve changed. Why are people still looking at me for something I did 15 years ago?”
Law enforcement makes a determination of how likely a sex offender is to re-offend and rates them on a scale of 1 to 3.
But the public often fails to see any nuance.
“People look at them in a bucket,” said Bainbridge Island Police Commander Sue Shultz. “They say ‘Any kind of sex offender is a sex offender, and always will be a sex offender.’”
The registration of sex offenders was one of three components of the Community Protection Act of 1990, passed in the wake of two tragic and brutal killings. It’s a popular measure with the public, and the Legislature has strengthened and spent more money on the laws surrounding sex offenses. Lawmakers have also bolstered penalties for failing to register as a sex offender.
The subject of debate is who is included in the registries, who is not and how often should they be checked on.
Shultz said that twice a year, Bainbridge officers “very discreetly” check on the island’s sex offenders to ensure they’re living at their registered address and that they haven’t made any significant changes in appearance that would necessitate a new photo being put on file. Level 3 sex offenders — though Bainbridge doesn’t currently have any — are checked on every three months.
Random attacks by sex offenders are rare. Shultz and other officials point out that more than 90 percent of sexual abuse cases occur between a victim and someone they thought they could trust.
Outside of two incidents of non-sexual criminal activity, none of the 11 Level 1 sex offenders on Bainbridge Island have been reported to police for even an allegation of sexual abuse, Shultz said. That doesn’t mean it can’t happen, but she encourages residents to put it into perspective.
So far, the legislative decree for the registry has been to err on the side of caution. While extremely rare, recent horrifying crimes committed by sex offenders have galvanized lawmakers to act.
Kitsap County Prosecutor Russ Hauge uses the analogy of an airplane crash.
“It doesn’t happen very often,” he said. “But when it does, it’s a tragedy.”
Hauge chaired a task force convened by Gov. Chris Gregoire in the wake of the killing of Zina Linnik, a 12-year-old girl abducted and murdered by Terapon Adhahn, a Level 1 sex offender. A result of that task force was the creation of a sex-offender policy board that reports to the governor, and the creation of a pot of grant money awarded to local law enforcement to make face-to-face contact with every sex offender in the state.
“Nobody knows how much of a safety factor it adds,” Hauge said. “But a murder of a young girl damages the community in an incalculable way.”
Victim’s advocates, who see the impacts sex offenses have on victims, have a hard time finding any sympathy for the registrants, said Lucy Berliner, a longtime advocate and head of the Harborview Center for Sexual Assault and Traumatic Stress.
“The only consequence I can see of registration is the inconvenience for the sex offender,” she said.
Aside from law-enforcement monitoring costs, registration also creates an entirely new class of crime: failing to register. All sex offenders have 72 hours to register with their local sheriff’s office any time they move to a new permanent residence.
The crime carries a maximum of five years in prison, and if the offender’s failed to register twice before, up to 10 years in prison.
Not counting the state’s 37 county jails, there are more than 300 inmates serving time for failing to register in the state’s prison system, at a cost of more than $1 million a year.
The cases take up law enforcement’s time and resources. Trina Washburn, Kitsap County Detectives Support Specialist, has five file cabinets of active county sex-offender registration cases.
Registration, as one might imagine, isn’t popular with offenders. It’s often the worst part of a criminal sentence.
“I’ve had attorneys tell me, ‘My guy will do twice the amount of time in custody — as long as they don’t have to register,’” said Kevin Hull, Kitsap County deputy prosecutor and head of the office’s special assault unit. “That tells me that there is some value to it.”
Registration, however, is not negotiable, Hull said.
“If we can prove a sex crime, then we’re going to prove a sex crime,” he said.
There are more than 20,000 registered sex offenders in the state, with almost 800 in Kitsap. Of those, there are 44 Level 3 offenders, 148 Level 2s and almost 600 Level 1 sex offenders.
The registration period — 10 years for lesser sex crimes, 15 years for midrange sex offenses and life for the most serious — also starts over anytime the offender commits a new crime.
Registration’s effect can be two-fold: law enforcement keeps an eye on an offender for many years after a conviction, and for some cases, a lifetime. Conversely, it also has a deterrent effect on an offender, because, as David Boerner, a longtime Seattle University law professor and one of the architects of the act that created registration, points out, “’They know who I am and where I am.’”
‘A WHOLE NEW WORLD OF JUVENILE SEX OFFENDERS’
Thomas Weaver, a Bremerton defense attorney who handles sex cases, questions the indiscriminate nature of a sex offender registry. While lower-level sex offenders might not have their pictures in the paper like Level 3 offenders do, they’re still on the list, he said.
Currently, Weaver has a case in which the 19-year-old defendant is charged with having a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl. The defendant is permitted to have sex with a teen if he’s no more than 48 months older than the teen — but in this case, he’s 54 months older.
A conviction would require the defendant to register for a decade.
“(The need for registration), I think, is to provide notification to the community of a potential danger,” he said. “I don’t see how, in the case of a 19-year-old having sex with a 15-year-old girl, the community needs to be notified every time he moves.”
“Sexting,” where teens send lewd photos to each other over mobile phones, may seem to some just an immature teenage mistake. Under the law, however, it can be considered “Dealing in depictions of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct” — a class B felony requiring 15 years of sex offender registration for those convicted of it.
Weaver said he also regularly gets what he calls “playing doctor” cases that involve siblings. Typically, an older brother, at least three years older than his sister, has touched her private parts. Such a conviction, if the girl is under 12, is a class A felony — which, barring an appeal from the defendant, means a lifetime of sex offender registration.
“They’re still coming to understand sexuality,” Weaver said. “What we’re saying as a society is you’re supposed to have the sexual maturity of an adult when you’re pubescent or even prepubescent.”
Those convictions are adding up.
“We’re creating a whole world of juvenile sex offenders,” Weaver said.
State Rep. Jan Angel, R-Port Orchard, is for harsh sentences for sex crimes and for monitoring of offenders, such as GPS anklets. But she said she’s heard from constituents that in some cases involving young adults, the rigidity of the law can interfere with an offender’s ability to move on in life.
“Things happen, they’re young,” she said. “Should they be tied with this for the rest of their lives when they become upstanding adults?”
State Rep. Sherry Appleton, D-Poulsbo, a member of the House’s public safety and emergency preparedness committee, is crafting legislation that would help certain juveniles who are not predatory offenders opt out of registration.
“A lot of these kids get into trouble and now they’re labeled as sex offenders for life,” she said. “Then they have no life, they can’t get into the military, they can’t get a job, can’t get an apartment. We have to have a way to get them off these registries.”
Sex offenders can petition the courts to end their requirement. They’re eligible after at least 10 years of registering — two years in juvenile cases. But even if they’ve completed sex offender treatment and kept their nose clean since they were released from incarceration, the time and money to go through the process may still end with a judge hesitant to grant the request, Weaver said.
THE REGISTRY’S LIMITS
Weaver does wonder about a slippery slope in registration. For example, why not enact a burglary offender registration to notify the public when such convicts are released, he wonders.
A kidnapping registry was created in the wake of Washington’s sex offender registry, he said. Nevada has a registry for convicts of many different crimes. And there have also been calls in some states for a registry of arson offenders, a crime that also often involves an underlying psychological component.
Where to draw the line?
As a sex offender, Ed Gonda can understand why people would be afraid of Level 2 and Level 3 sex offenders. His family’s few options of places to live are apartments and houses that accommodate sex offenders. But he doesn’t want to go to those places out of fear for his wife and daughter. Other landlords, however, won’t rent to him because of his status.
“So where can we live?” he wonders.
While in prison, he changed his name. He still feels blessed to have found a family and for the neighbors on Bainbridge Island that do accept him.
“God gave me a family, a wife and a new start,” he said. “I just wish someone would give us a chance.” ..Source.. Kitsap Sun
December 26, 2010
Homeless Sex Offenders Struggle With 'Double Jeopardy' For Crimes
12-26-2010 Massachusetts:
Many sex offenders, after being released from jail, find it difficult to rebuild their lives.
Unable to find jobs or affordable homes due to their crimes, many sex offenders end up homeless after they've served their time. Furthermore, homeless shelters often refuse to house sex offenders.
The outlook for offenders in California is particularly dire -- Jessica's Law, which prohibits sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park, makes locating affordable housing nearly impossible in some parts of the state.
The Mercury News reports on the rise in sex offenders turned homeless in California:
A statewide task force last month found that the ban has led to a dangerous 24-fold increase in homeless sex offenders and recommended repealing the voter-approved limits [...] Since the law went into effect, the number of sex offender parolees who register as transient has risen from fewer than 100 to more than 2,100.While few can sympathize with a sex offender's crimes, the prolonged homelessness that they endure after serving their time could be considered a sort of double jeopardy.
It was this issue brought before the a court in Massachusetts.
John Canadyan Jr., a homeless sex offender, was recently found, by a lower-court, to be in violation of his probation constraints, which require that he keep a GPS tracking unit on and working at all times. However, Canadyan was homeless and staying in shelters that could not provide its residents with access to power outlets. He wasn't able to charge the device and keep it active.
Yesterday, the Supreme Judicial Court upturned this ruling, stating that Canadyan was not in violation of his probation. The Boston Globe reports:
"In these circumstances, where there was no evidence of willful noncompliance, a finding of violation of the condition of wearing an operable GPS monitoring device was unwarranted, and is akin to punishing the defendant for being homeless," the court said...Source.. by Huffington Post
The court noted that the case highlighted a tension between mandatory GPS monitoring of sex offenders on probation and "the practical reality of homelessness."
Ga. lawmakers will face new ethics law in January
12-26-2010 Georgia:
ATLANTA - Georgians will be able to keep closer tabs on what lobbyists spend wining and dining state lawmakers. But new ethics legislation set to take effect Jan. 1 doesn't set a limit on what those lobbyists can spend.
Reeling from a sex-and-lobbying scandal that toppled Georgia's powerful House speaker, state legislators earlier this year ushered through what they touted as a sweeping ethics reform package.
But watchdogs say while the new law makes some needed improvements - such as requiring lobbyists to disclose expenses more frequently - it failed to tackle some of the more pressing ethical issues that have dogged Georgia.
Common Cause Georgia pushed to include caps on what lobbyists can spend entertaining public officials. The group also sought to ban, or at least limit, the transfer of campaign funds between political action committees, a popular way to disguise who is giving to a candidate.
But neither made it into the bill signed into law in the spring by Gov. Sonny Perdue. Alabama recently adopted both as part of a wide-ranging ethics reform package in that scandal-plagued state.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Wendell Willard, a key Republican lawmaker, said he will try again in the coming year to cap lobbyist gifts.
But he could face push-back from House Ethics Committee Chairman Joe Wilkinson, who said such limits would simply force lobbyists to go underground so the public would have no accounting of their actions. ..For the remainder of the story.. SHANNON McCAFFREY
Confining State's Sex Predators: Is It Still a Cost-Effective Solution?
12-26-2010 Washington:
MCNEIL ISLAND
The picture on William Deaville’s purple photo badge shows a younger man with amber hair, a glimpse into the past of the now-grayed 44-year-old who’s lived in secure confinement for 21 years.
Deaville has been on McNeil Island in south Puget Sound since the state opened the Special Commitment Center (SCC), an indefinite holding facility for those found to meet the statutory definition of a “sexually violent predator.” The Bremerton man, like the other 280 residents there, served his time for a sex crime — in his case sexually abusing boys — in state prison. But when he was about to get out, the state attorney general’s office filed paperwork in Kitsap County Superior Court to have him committed indefinitely.
He keeps himself busy with therapy, group sessions, playing video games and gardening.
Deaville was homeless before he went to prison. But he has the potential to go where only a small percentage of the commitment center’s residents have ever gone: to an “LRA” or “less restrictive alternative,” which ultimately means reintegration into society. Such a transition would happen slowly and with around-the-clock monitoring at a facility in Pierce or King County.
He said he’s confronted his sexual deviancy, and staff members at the center have been pleased with the results.
“If you deal with it, you’ll get the help you need,” he said.
The $60 million facility, spread out on five acres on pastoral McNeil Island, has three “program areas.” The most restrictive is a prisonlike pod. The least is a dormitory-style home where residents can come and go, though they’re confined inside the center’s perimeter.
There’s a recreation room, basketball court, yard, pool hall, weight room, barber shop, library, and arts and crafts room for residents. There’s also a groomed lawn with many religious symbols, including a Wiccan Prayer Circle. The facility also has a Native American traditional sweat lodge.
“If they can think it, we have to provide it,” said Dan Gauntz, chief operations officer at the SCC.
Because they’re not prisoners, the residents have access to more freedoms: nonmonitored phone calls, cigarettes, video games (though none with mature themes). They wear their own clothes. There’s no uniforms, though they must always wear the purple badge with their picture and name.
Violence is relatively low, with just a few serious assaults over the course of the center’s history, according to staff. Those who commit them are prosecuted in Pierce County courts. More common are lewd sexual acts, such as public masturbation.
TO CONFINE OR TREAT
Almost all of the facility’s residents are men. One woman has been committed to the center, and she is from Bremerton. They come from all walks of life. There are former marketing executives, military leaders, and homeless people. “Residents” — they’re not called inmates — are as young as 20 and as old as 80.
Washington’s civil commitment process, established along with sex-offender registration and community notification in 1990, was the pioneer in the nation, and numerous states have copied it.
The courts, both at the federal and at the state level, have ruled that while indefinite commitments are constitutional, the residents confined in them must receive expensive mental health treatment and be allowed to “graduate” to less restrictive environments, including to outright release.
The staff believes it’s a place for treatment. But like its counterparts nationwide, the commitment center suffers from an identity crisis: is it truly a place where the sexually deviant can be helped, or is it an expensive holding tank for the state’s worst sex offenders?
Critics come from different corners.
State Sen. Tim Sheldon, D-Potlatch, said the facility exists for the worst of the worst — and that the state should do as little as is mandated but ensure they remain locked up.
“I personally don’t believe that treatment does much. They are supreme con men,” he said. “They can convince people of a lot of things.”
On the opposite end of the spectrum is Rep. Sherry Appleton, D-Poulsbo. She doesn’t believe the facility is constitutional. If an offender’s crime is heinous enough, he or she should be sentenced harshly, she said — but not given a sentence in which they do their time and then are reprosecuted for an offense they might commit in the future.
“The sentence is in perpetuity,” she said.
It costs about $177,000 a year to house each resident at the center, which adds up to about $48 million a year for all those committed. It costs $34,000 a year to house an inmate in a state prison.
Other costs include the roughly $350,000 to put a case before a jury and commit them there, according to the state’s Department of Social and Health Services. Each resident is also entitled to an annual review of their confinement.
State Attorney General Rob McKenna acknowledges that it’s expensive, but he says the center is “highly effective.” Given that many sex abuse victims never disclose the abuse to authorities, McKenna sees an even greater need for the facility. He says that those confined are likely to have many more victims than they were convicted for.
Regardless of how stark the budget outlook is for the state, McKenna insists the center must be prioritized and continue.
“It’s so important given the high likelihood of these individuals to reoffend,” he said.
McKenna points to statistics to make the case. In 2005 and 2006, his office filed for the civil commitment of 42 offenders, whose collective abuse created 370 victims. The average age of the victims was 12.
He also cites a 1998 study by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy that tracked 61 adult offenders who were recommended for the McNeil Island facility from 1990 to 1996. But prosecutors in those cases didn’t believe the need for civil commitment could be proven at trial. McKenna said that of those offenders, more than half were re-arrested in those years — 28 percent for new sex offenses.
McKenna said that only a small percentage of the approximately 1,000 sex offenders released from prison each year — between 1.5 percent and 3 percent — are recommended by the attorney general’s office for civil commitment.
CHANGING IF THEY WANT TO
Part of the expense of the facility comes from the ferry it takes to get there. In 2011, the neighboring McNeil Island Corrections Center will close, further driving up costs. Department of Corrections staff, which run the ferry and provide security, will all be gone. So will inmate labor. That will leave a $2.3 million bill each year for the Department of Social and Health Services, which runs the Special Commitment Center.
Moving it does not seem to be a possibility, according to some.
“Can you imagine the problem of putting it in a neighborhood someplace?” said state Rep. Larry Seaquist, D-Gig Harbor.
Cathi Harris, associate superintendent of the SCC, once questioned the constitutionality of such a commitment center. But she said she saw that predators who wanted help could change.
“This is a group of individuals thrown away by society,” she said. “I don’t believe in warehousing people. I believe in providing people the resources they need to change if they want to.”
Laura McCollum, the center’s sole female resident, is a former Bremerton woman who admits to sexually abusing more than 15 children, both girls and boys. She was convicted of child rape in Pierce County.
She herself was molested, but she said she’s not making excuses.
“You did it because you wanted to,” she said.
Like the other residents interviewed for this story, she believes the treatment is giving her tools, including forming a “relapse plan,” so she won’t reoffend.
“I’ve learned things to help keep me safe when I’m out in the community,” she said. “I don’t want to die in here.”
Deaville and McCollum are actually in the minority on the island. They are part of the 36 percent that have bought into the program and the treatment.
The other 64 percent refuse treatment, and many feel their only avenue is release by the courts — a path that has been successful for about 14 men in the facility’s history, according to DSHS.
“This is a prison!” a few residents grumbled during a recent media tour of the grounds.
There are residents who will stay for the rest of their lives.
Treatment of any sort requires the residents to admit they have a problem. While some residents may be willing to disclose their transgressions, they’re skeptical of how that information is used, said John Cross, a lawyer who represents SCC residents.
“What most of these guys have realized is that nothing is confidential,” he said. “They’re being cast with being transparent, saying every bad thing they’ve ever done in their lives. But a great many of them recognize this is evidence-gathering by the opposition.”
PREDATORS BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT
Deaville, like most residents at the commitment center, had done his time for sex-abuse crimes and was about to be released from prison when he received a notice from the state attorney general’s office.
In the years that followed, lawyers built the case that Deaville fit the definition, created by the community protection act, of a “sexually violent predator.”
A jury indeed found that Deaville, convicted of numerous sex acts with children, met three legal requirements for his indefinite confinement on McNeil Island:
—He’d been convicted of a crime of sexual violence (and in may cases the victims from those cases are called to testify);
—He suffered from “a mental abnormality or personality disorder which causes serious difficulty in controlling his sexually violent behavior”;
—Such an abnormality or disorder made him “likely to engage in predatory acts of sexual violence if not confined to a secure facility.”
Cross takes issue with the fact that residents are found to be sexually violent predators beyond a reasonable doubt. He said that psychologists and psychiatrists — the expert witnesses that sway jurors to or away from a commitment at McNeil Island — often develop a “working hypothesis” that might find a potential resident to be a pedophile or have an anti-social disorder. Problem is, the same doctor could develop an entirely different hypothesis later.
“There is nothing true beyond a reasonable doubt,” Cross said of the cases. “They just don’t know enough about us (as human beings) yet to make these broad decisions.”
Justin Mackey, a 30-year-old resident from Walla Walla, said he believes in the treatment process and hopes he can be successful enough to one day leave the island. He’s admitted to having more than 15 victims.
“I’m a sex offender. There’s no denying that,” he said.
Still, he does question the court process that claims he has a scientific disorder.
“Who’s to say I have a predisposed mental condition, beyond a reasonable doubt?” he wondered.
Port Orchard lawyer David Lacross, who represents some SCC residents, said he believes that flipping a coin would be just as accurate as trying to predict a resident reoffending. And attempting to do so means locking people up.
“These are people that society is not going to have a lot of sympathy for,” Lacross argues. “But they were tried, convicted and sentenced. And we’re talking about predicting what somebody’s going to do in the future.”
All of the controversy will diminish as fewer convicts are committed, predicts David Boerner, a member of the task force that drafted what would become the state’s community protection act.
Boerner said the creation of “determinate-plus sentencing” for certain sex offenders in the early 2000s will whittle the number of potential civil commitment candidates.
Certain sex offenders receive a minimum sentence. When their sentence is up, they go before the Indeterminate Sentence Review Board, whose members are appointed by the governor. The board has the power to hold indefinitely offenders it believes are more likely than not to reoffend.
Only offenders sentenced to the most serious sex crimes are subject to the board.
The SCC will remain for criminals who fail to meet the criteria for determinate-plus sentencing but who still meet the criteria for sexually violent predator.
Deaville thinks he has a shot to get out, and has been approved to join just 14 others permitted outside the barbed wire to a more transitional-style housing.
He thinks that he has the tools to survive on the outside.
Should he feel the urge to reoffend, he has support staff he can call. And while he was in denial when he arrived, he said he’s changed his thinking. “If you don’t try to get it (the illness) out, you’re going to make it worse.” ..Source.. Josh Farley
December 25, 2010
eAdvocate's Happy Holidays Message: There is so much to be thankful for.
 Ashland College in Ohio always has a beautiful Christmas card and this year they have another one. This should get you into the Christmas Spirit. Make sure you have your speakers on and enjoy (CLICK). When you get there follow the messages in the lower left corner of the picture. |
December 22, 2010
Court challenges mount against sex offender law
12-22-2010 California:
Hundreds of paroled sex offenders are winning reprieves from a ban against their living near schools or parks as they flood local courts with constitutional challenges to the most controversial part of Jessica's Law.
Judges in Contra Costa and elsewhere have routinely issued stays permitting sex offender parolees to ignore the ban on their living within 2,000 feet of a school or park where children "regularly gather," pending rulings in their cases.
The slow pace of those challenges means the stays could last until their parole terms expire and the restrictions no longer affect them.
In the East Bay, at least a few dozen sex offenders have challenged the ban.
"I am seeing more, that's for sure," said Martinez attorney David Briggs.
Contra Costa judges have assigned him to represent about 16 parolee sex offenders seeking freedom to live where they want. In each case, he said, judges have barred enforcement of the law.
"There may be other (parole) restrictions on where they can't stay, and they're all on GPS, but this rule does not apply."
The flurry of court actions adds a new wrinkle in an ongoing debate over the residency ban's effect on public safety, and whether it's worth the added strain on parole resources. A statewide task force last month found that the ban has led to a dangerous 24-fold increase in homeless sex offenders and recommended repealing the voter-approved limits.
Parole agents should have leeway to target restrictions for the 6,300 paroled sex offenders living in communities, according to the task force of sheriffs, police chiefs, probation and parole officers, prosecutors and victim advocates. Since the law went into effect, the number of sex offender parolees who register as transient has risen from fewer than 100 to more than 2,100.
The bulk of legal challenges has arisen in Southern California, where about 850 paroled sex offenders have filed petitions in Los Angeles and San Diego counties, most of them after a state Supreme Court decision in February.
The court upheld the 2,000-foot rule against claims that it amounts to illegal, ex post facto punishment of parolees who committed their sex crimes before the law passed. But it left local judges to sort out, case by case and county by county, whether the restriction amounts to unconstitutional banishment, or whether it is unconstitutionally vague.
The sheer volume of challenges came to light last month, when Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza judge issued a countywide stay barring parole agents from enforcing the "predator-free zones." By then, 650 sex offenders had filed petitions in the county, the judge wrote. More than 100 petitions have since come.
A state appeals court panel nixed Espinoza's blanket order. But the judge has stayed enforcement of the ban in nearly all the individual cases, said Dylan Ford, a deputy public defender in Los Angeles County. Ford leads a team of lawyers and legal clerks who are helping process what he called a deluge of challenges by homeless sex offenders. He said about 75 percent of the 2,000 paroled sex offenders there are homeless or living in housing subsidized by the state corrections department.
"What a stay will do is allow a parolee who's living on the street, sleeping in their car, riding the buses at night, living under a bridge, to return home to their family and their social support network," Ford said.
On Friday, a San Diego County judge rejected a similar plea for a blanket stay order. Nearly 100 paroled sex offenders have filed challenges there, court documents show. The state Attorney General's Office is fighting the blanket stays in both counties, aiming to defend a law that voters overwhelmingly passed in 2006.
"I have considered filing a similar action in Contra Costa County. I think we have the same issues," said Briggs, the defense lawyer. "The futility of this policy is apparent to anyone who looks at it."
Men opposing the 2,000-foot rule in Contra Costa County claim similar struggles.
"I have not been able to live at home with my wife, but forced to live in a motel," wrote Wayne Captain, who was convicted of rape in 1987, then was released on parole for an unrelated crime in 2008 and fell under Jessica's Law.
Another foresaw a grim future with the ban.
"My parents allowed me to live with them. ... When I am order(ed) to leave this address I will have to live in my car. Or somewhere on the streets," wrote Anthony Brewer, of Pittsburg.
State corrections officials said they have not tallied how many paroled sex offenders are now free from the 2,000-foot rule. Fred Bridgewater, parole administrator for the North Bay district, said such stays are "sporadic" in the area.
The challenges do not affect conditions that parole supervisors can impose based on individual circumstances. Nor do they affect a different law that prohibits convicted child molesters who are deemed high-risk sex offenders from living within a half-mile of a school.
Growing pressure to overturn the 2,000-foot rule rankles the author of Jessica's Law.
Outgoing state Sen. George Runner, R-Antelope Valley, said he is pushing legislation that would protect it by allowing local judicial panels to adjust the limits but not eliminate them.
"I don't think the voters are concerned whether it's too hard (to find housing). It's whether it's possible," Runner said. He downplayed the notion that homeless sex offenders are more likely to commit new sex crimes, particularly now that sex offender parolees all wear GPS anklets.
"We are not aware of an individual who's on GPS, who is transient, who has committed an illegal sexual act," he said. "So we believe at this point it's a problem that they can't find a place to live. I'm sure that's a personal hassle for them, but that's not my concern."
In the meantime, few of the state's 58 counties are attempting to fully enforce the 2,000-foot rule on sex offenders under court probation, said probation officials.
"The bottom line is we're doing everything we can with the limited resources we have," said Philip Kader, county probation officer in Contra Costa. The department, which oversees about 140 sex offenders on probation, has sustained steep cutbacks and does not adhere to the 2,000-foot rule, unless a judge orders it, Kader said.
"We have not been adhering to the 2,000-foot rule because we wouldn't have any place to put our folks," said Bill Fenton, assistant chief probation officer in Alameda County, where about 200 registered sex offenders are on probation. "To me, the bigger risk is not knowing where they are." ..Source.. John Simerman, Contra Costa Times
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