Risk assessment tools plagued by 'authorship bias,' study finds

9-5-2013 National:

Reported predictive validity higher in studies by an instrument's designers than by independent researchers

The use of actuarial risk assessment instruments to predict violence is becoming more and more central to forensic psychology practice. And clinicians and courts rely on published data to establish that the tools live up to their claims of accurately separating high-risk from low-risk offenders.

But as it turns out, the predictive validity of risk assessment instruments such as the Static-99 and the VRAG depends in part on the researcher's connection to the instrument in question.

Published studies authored by tool designers reported predictive validity findings around two times higher than investigations by independent researchers, according to a systematic meta-analysis that included 30,165 participants in 104 samples from 83 independent studies.

Conflicts of interest shrouded

Compounding the problem, in not a single case did instrument designers openly report this potential conflict of interest, even when a journal's policies mandated such disclosure.

As the study authors point out, an instrument’s designers have a vested interest in their procedure working well. Financial profits from manuals, coding sheets and training sessions depend in part on the perceived accuracy of a risk assessment tool. Indirectly, developers of successful instruments can be hired as expert witnesses, attract research funding, and achieve professional recognition and career advancement.

These potential rewards may make tool designers more reluctant to publish studies in which their instrument performs poorly. This "file drawer problem," well established in other scientific fields, has led to a call for researchers to publicly register intended studies in advance, before their outcomes are known.

The researchers found no evidence that the authorship effect was due to higher methodological rigor in studies carried out by instrument designers, such as better inter-rater reliability or more standardized training of instrument raters.

"The credibility of future research findings may be questioned in the absence of measures to tackle these issues," the authors warn. "To promote transparency in future research, tool authors and translators should routinely report their potential conflict of interest when publishing research investigating the predictive validity of their tool." ..continued.. by Karen Franklin, In the News

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Predicting a predator's next move: Tracking Oregon's high-risk sex offenders

7-31-2012 Oregon:

The case of Adam Lee Brown, a notorious child sex abuser accused of attacking a 10-year-old boy in June while on Multnomah County supervision, has reignited debate over what it takes to manage sex offenders after their release from prison.

Of the roughly 500 to 600 sex offenders who leave Oregon prisons each year, only 4 percent are caught committing another sex crime in the state during their first three years of freedom, state records show.

The question faced daily by the state's sex offender management system: Who's going to be in the 4 percent?

Decades of research have turned sex offender management into a science, but the tools for assessing whether a predator such as Brown will re-offend remain imprecise.

In Oregon, parole officers rely on an assortment of methods. To help predict risk, they use internationally recognized screening tests that determine whether those on their caseload are at high, medium or low risk of re-offending.

To manage the risk, the officers require the offender to make regular visits to their office and attend sex abuse or substance abuse treatment. At the same time, the officers check up on the offenders through home visits, polygraph exams and electronic GPS monitoring.

And yet no risk assessment can reliably predict what a given individual will do, experts say.

"The risk tools are good, but the outcomes vary on factors that aren't in the model," said Karl Hanson, a research officer with Public Safety Canada and the creator of Static-99, the field's most widely used risk assessment test. "They're functional but imperfect measures, because we're missing some stuff."

Predicting a crime

When a sex offender is released from prison, the county responsible for his supervision tries to determine his risk of re-offending.

Overall, recidivism rates for sex offenders are low compared with people convicted of other types of felonies, though experts urge caution with recidivism estimates because many crimes are unreported or hard to prosecute.

Multnomah County parole officers such as Tracey Madsen, who was supervising Brown, rely on risk assessments to guide their approach to a typical caseload of 45 sex offenders.

For nearly a decade, Oregon has used Hanson's test, Static-99. The test rates each offender based on factors such as number of prior sex offenses, prior nonsexual violence and whether victims were strangers or relatives. The test is used only for men because the number of female sex offenders is so low that data on their recidivism are considered unreliable.

The test measures probabilities, not certainties. Offenders deemed low-risk, with a chance of re-offense at 4 to 8 percent, can and do commit new sex crimes. And within the highest risk group, whose chances of re-offense are 21 to 38 percent, there's no telling who will and won't attack again.

As the name suggests, Static-99's predictions of risk do not change over time, because they reflect only the person's history up to his release.

Six months into an offender's supervision, Multnomah County parole officers start giving other tests to measure more fluid characteristics.

"If they're going to treatment and are in a positive, pro-social support system, those people are doing things to reduce their risk," said Patrick Schreiner, district manager who oversees sex offender supervision for Multnomah County Department of Community Justice.

Experts in sex offender management say they're much more concerned about a low-risk offender who is in an unstable situation than a high-risk offender with a stable life.

The Stable test, performed annually, considers social influences: Who is part of the offender's life? Does he have a substance abuse problem? Is he homeless? It factors in any "intimacy deficits": Is he in a stable relationship? It measures cooperation: Is he reporting to his parole officer and complying with treatment?

Last, the Stable test considers the offender's sexual "self-regulation" and attitudes toward sexual assault, attempting to assess whether he can control his sexual thoughts. If the answer is no, it's a hugh red flag.

"That's a lifetime problem," said Schreiner. "You can learn tools to address it, just like an alcoholic can learn tools to address substance abuse. But those sex offenders have a lower rate of success."

The third test, the Acute, is given monthly. It examines factors such as an offender's access to potential victims, any "emotional collapse" due to a job or relationship loss and high levels of sexual preoccupation.

"We're going to talk to them every time we see them about how often they're masturbating, how often they're using porn," Schreiner said.

Containing the risk

No consensus exists on how to manage a sex offender once his level of risk is known, but Oregon and other states rely on what's called a "containment" approach to encircle the offender with many layers of control.

A network of professionals -- not simply parole officers, but treatment providers, landlords and police -- regularly share what they know about the offender's activities.

"We're not counting on the officer to be the only one having contact with them," Schreiner said.

In Multnomah County, once a sex offender is declared high-risk, as Brown was, a parole officer wants to see the offender at least twice a month at his or her office. Although the county used to expect its parole officers to make a prescribed number of home visits to each offender, its policy is being revised to give parole officers greater discretion to determine who requires more frequent visits.

If one offender is participating in treatment and making his office visits and another is not, then the noncompliant offender should be visited more frequently, supervisors said.

Scott Taylor, director of Multnomah County's Department of Community Justice, said specialized training for parole officers who supervise sex offenders is crucial.

"It takes some real specific knowledge," he said, "so they can see things where you and I might not."

Catching a lie

Lie detector tests and electronic monitoring also play a central role in the containment model. Their usefulness is under debate.

Lie detector tests have been used on sex offenders in Oregon for more than 20 years. Multnomah County expects a "full-disclosure polygraph" be done within an offender's first six months of supervision to delve deeply into an offender's background, beyond what's known at conviction. Then a "maintenance" polygraph is done every six months to check whether the offender had contact with minors, abused drugs or accessed pornography.

Research into polygraph testing on sex offenders is relatively new, and the results are mixed. James Konopasek, a polygraph examiner in The Dalles, has found that those who passed a full-disclosure polygraph within a year of being released were 25 percent less likely to re-offend.

But Roger Cook, a polygraph examiner based in Tualatin, studied the same test last year and found it virtually useless.

Polygraph testing may actually be counterproductive, Cook said. The threat of being tested can drive some offenders into hiding, he said, while a passed polygraph test can lull parole officers into a false sense of security.

In Brown's case, shortly after his release from prison in 2004, the right question wasn't asked in a polygraph after he walked up to young girls walking home from school in Douglas County. He was asked whether he'd had any sexual contact with minors, and he passed, saying no. If he'd been asked whether he had any contact with minors, the result might have been different.

Surveillance tools

An ankle bracelet used to electronically monitor an offender's location via GPS is costly but can be effective, studies show. It was recommended for Brown this year before his alleged attack on a 10-year-old boy, but not used.

Multnomah County uses two types of monitoring: passive and active. With passive monitoring, no one tracks the offender in the moment; if there's a violation, a parole officer may get a notice the next day.

Under active GPS monitoring, a text message is sent to a parole officer when an offender goes somewhere he should not be. But there's no staff working 24/7 to pick up the violations. During off-hours, an alert goes to an office, where operators try to contact the offender's parole officer.

Round-the-clock monitoring would be too costly, Multnomah County officials said. They argue that if offenders thumb their noses at supervision, GPS isn't going to alter their behavior. Currently, 35 sex offenders are on GPS in Multnomah County; of those, 31 are actively monitored.

County officials are reviewing why Brown didn't get GPS, but they doubt it would have made a difference.

"This guy would have cut it off," Schreiner said. "It wouldn't have changed anything, I don't think. Unless he was motivated to work with the PO, GPS isn't going to do anything."

A study released this year of high-risk sex offenders in California found that GPS helps reduce recidivism.

In November 2006, California passed Jessica's Law, which mandated that all sex offenders be placed on GPS supervision for life.

The report found the GPS program costs roughly $35.96 a day per parolee, compared with $27.45 under traditional supervision. However, the GPS group was more likely to comply with the conditions of supervision and less likely to re-offend.

Taylor pledged the county will review Brown's supervision. "If we see any patterns or problems that stand out," he said, "we'll make adjustments."

A different path

Although Oregon relies on treatment, office visits and electronic devices to manage sex offenders, officials elsewhere have experimented with other approaches, ranging from the innovative to the extreme.

In Kansas, Minnesota and Washington, sex offenders may be civilly committed indefinitely to a mental institution after they've completed their criminal sentences. A judge must find by "clear and convincing evidence" that the prisoner engaged in sexually violent conduct, suffered from mental illness and would have difficulty controlling himself.

A pilot project in Canada, meanwhile, took a different direction. It found that using trained volunteers to make daily contact with high-risk offenders, when combined with treatment and supervision, can reduce recidivism by 70 percent.

No definitive studies have been done to show which method of sex offender management works the best. But international experts in the field say all of the major techniques currently in use have some effect.

"If the offender is planning and has a strong intention to offend, there's not much you can do," said Hanson, who devised the Static-99 test. "What you're largely working with is making it appear unattractive for them to go that route." ..Source.. by Maxine Bernstein, The Oregonian

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Virginia approaches decision on privatizing sex offender program

6-25-2012 Virginia:

The nation’s second-largest private prison company says it expects Virginia to make a decision by next month on its bid to expand and operate the state’s detention facility for sexually violent predators who have completed their prison terms.

“In Virginia, we submitted an unsolicited proposal for the management of the state’s sexually violent predator treatment facility involving approximately 250 beds,” said GEO Group Senior Vice President Jorge Dominicis during a company earnings call last month. “The state has decided to move forward with this process and is expected to make a contract award by July 1st of this year.”

The detention and treatment of sex offenders represents a growing business opportunity for GEO and its competitors, who hope to score lucrative contracts from state officials looking to keep predators off the streets.

In this case, the facility that GEO wants to run is the Virginia Center for Behavioral Rehabilitation, a civil commitment center that houses and treats “sexually violent predators” who have already completed criminal sentences in a department of corrections facility but are deemed by a special court to be at risk of re-offending. Rather than being released at a predetermined date, these sex offenders are sent to VCBR to participate in what the state describes as “intensive treatment.” Their “eventual conditional release” from the center “is determined by their progress in treatment and reduction of re-offense risk.”

Virginia’s civil commitment program has been operating for about a decade. It grew slowly at first, with fewer than a dozen new detainees per year. But in 2006, the General Assembly greatly increased the number of crimes that can qualify convicts for the program and also made changes to the evaluation process for identifying which of these offenders are sexually violent predators eligible for civil commitment. The result was an explosion in VCBR’s population. In January of last year, Virginia’s Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services warned legislators that the current VCBR facility was already over capacity and that its population would grow by about 80 detainees each year, reaching nearly 700 by 2016. The department released the following chart:

Less than a month later, GEO Care — a GEO subsidiary that operates an array of psychiatric, civil commitment, reentry, and juvenile detention facilities, and also provides prison health care — submitted an unsolicited bid to operate VCBR. Describing itself as “a national leader in the provision of residential mental health services to government agencies with a particular specialization in sex offender populations,” GEO Care pledged to increase VCBR’s capacity to 600 beds while significantly reducing costs for Virginia taxpayers.

GEO Care wasn’t the only company looking to cash in on the state’s growing population of indefinitely detained sexually violent predators. Liberty Healthcare Corp. also submitted a bid to operate the facility, as detailed by The Washington Times.

Civil commitment is “the perfect market” for private detention companies, according to Michele Deitch, a criminal justice expert at the University of Texas’ LBJ School. “No one’s likely to want to close them down. The inmates probably aren’t getting out. You’ve got the growing population feeding into these civil commitment centers. I would imagine private prison companies see it as a fairly safe area for growth.”

These same factors have made civil commitment programs — which exist in 20 states and the District of Columbia — increasingly controversial. Mental health experts say they often fail to provide adequate treatment. The ACLU argues that that the programs undermine offenders’ rights to due process. And as Hannah Rappleye reported for The Crime Report, the low rates of offenders who are ever actually released from commitment facilities have led to spiraling costs across the country.

In Virginia, just 21 offenders treated at VCBR were released between the beginning of the program in 2003 and July of last year.

The politics of civil commitment

GEO Group has long been active in Virginia politics. From 2003 to 2009, it donated a total of $84,600 to state-level politicians, mostly Republicans, according to data compiled by Influence Explorer.

In 2009, GEO contributed $28,000 to Republican Bob McDonnell’s gubernatorial campaign. Four years earlier, GEO gave more than $28,600 to the campaign of GOP gubernatorial nominee Jerry Kilgore. GEO executives Jorge Dominicis and Wayne Calabrese each donated another $1,000 to Kilgore.

Kilgore is currently a partner at McGuire Woods Consulting. According to state lobbying disclosures, GEO Care retained the services of the Richmond office of McGuire Woods in January of 2011 to lobby specifically on “matters related to Virginia’s sexually violent predator program.” As of June 2011, GEO had paid McGuire Woods $13,720 for its lobbying. McGuire Woods and GEO Care declined to comment on the matter.

Both McDonnell and Kilgore have long been outspoken proponents of tough sex offender laws.

As attorney general in 2003, Kilgore urged lawmakers to fund the state’s civil commitment program for the first time and then initiated a number of highly publicized efforts to commit individual sex offenders under the law.

As a state legislator, McDonnell convinced Virginia’s Crime Commission to create a task force on sex offenders, which he co-chaired while running for attorney general in 2005. The taskforce made a number of recommendations regarding harsher sentences, registration rules, and restrictions on sex offenders. In addition, the task force recommended expanding the list of crimes — known as “Sexually Violent Predator predicate crimes” — that would make an offender eligible to be screened for possible civil commitment. It also recommended that the state begin using Static-99, a screening survey designed to assess the risk that a specific individual will commit another sex offense after being released from prison.

As attorney general, McDonnell championed these reforms, which were signed into law by then-Gov. Tim Kaine. And when he ran for governor, McDonnell touted his role in crafting the legislation. He called Virginia’s civil commitment program “one of the most advanced and aggressive in the nation” and pointed specifically to the state’s use of Static-99. Additionally, he called for “intensive lifetime monitoring” of sex offenders who are not eligible for confinement.

The 2006 changes pushed by McDonnell — in particular, the adoption of Static-99 — are largely responsible for the spiraling cost and size of the state’s civil commitment program. A recent report authored by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, a legislative oversight body, chronicles its rapid growth. According to the report, between 2003 and 2006, there were 38 civil commitments in Virginia. But from 2007 to 2010, that number ballooned to 288, bringing the facility perilously close to its limit of 300 — with no end to the growth in sight.

In evaluating the program, the commission sharply criticized the state’s use of Static-99.

Beginning with the 2006 law, all individuals convicted of Sexually Violent Predator predicate crimes were required to be evaluated with Static-99 or “a comparable, scientifically validated instrument” shortly before their release from prison. Criteria in the 10-question Static-99 assessment include age, number of prior sexual offenses, and sex of the victims; offenders receive a score between 0 and 12. The law specified that offenders need a minimum score of 5 to be considered for civil commitment, or 4 for crimes where the victim was 13 or younger. (Since the program began in 2003, about seven percent of Virginians who completed their prison terms after being convicted of an SVP-predicate crime were civilly committed.)

But the commission’s report said the state’s process was flawed because it did not adequately incorporate evaluations from mental health professionals. The commission found that Virginia’s use of Static-99 had contributed to the “release of dangerous offenders,” including one who “admitted to a [prison] counselor that he was still attracted to children and was concerned that if released, he would not be able to control his compulsion to have sex with children.”

At the same time, the commission wrote, the Static-99 method specified by the statute was out-of-date and had a tendency to overestimate the risk of recidivism. The commission calculated that Static-99 led to a 450 percent increase in the number of offenders whose cases could potentially be reviewed for civil commitment.

In response to the commission’s findings, the General Assembly recently enacted legislation that left Static-99 in place for the time being but directed Virginia officials to develop a new risk assessment instrument by the end of the year. The new law also allows the state Department of Corrections to refer offenders for civil commitment screening even if they do not qualify under the Static-99 measurement.

“Profit motive”

The growth in VCBR’s population has contributed to swelling program costs. In 2005, Virginia’s civil commitment program received only $5.8 million; in 2011, the center spent $24.5 million, or about $91,000 for each of the 269 patients, according to the commission.

The commission’s report found that the bulk of that funding goes to activities and operations unrelated to treatment. In 2011, the civil commitment center spent nearly 50 percent of its budget on security and resident services staffing. Sixteen percent went towards medical costs, and another 10 percent to treatment. The latter category includes spending on salaries and benefits for the center’s 38 professional treatment providers.

Referencing GEO’s unsolicited bid to take over VCBR, the commission reported that privatization had the potential to lower costs. The commission pointed specifically to GEO’s operation of a civil commitment center in Florida as an example of a privatized facility that has kept costs down, in part by hiring fewer staffers. That facility’s costs per patient have been about $52,600 lower than those in Virginia.

But the commission warned that the state should carefully consider whether private companies’ “profit motive” was appropriate for a civil commitment program.

“The incentive to make a profit tends to encourage efficiency and quick decision-making that often results in lower costs,” the commission explained. “However, the same profit motive could supersede treatment and safety considerations and lead to individuals being moved through treatment and then recommended for release before they are ready.”

Justin Brown, a commission staffer, says that the state should weigh a range of factors — not just promises of lower costs — in deciding whether to privatize the facility.

“It’s not inaccurate to say that the cost issue is one of the reasons why it would seem reasonable to entertain a bid,” Brown says. But he adds that this “doesn’t mean you should do it. … There’s a lot of other things you’d need to look at.”

One relevant issue could be GEO’s spotty track record. In 2008, a convicted rapist escaped from the Florida Civil Commitment Center (authorities ultimately re-captured the escapee). And in 2010, GEO Group settled a $3 million class-action lawsuit alleging that inmates were subject to unconstitutional strip searches at a facility in Pennsylvania. GEO’s difficulties stretched into last November, when the Florida Department of Children and Families’ blamed the suicide of a schizophrenic patient at the South Florida State Hospital on staff neglect.

GEO Care was awarded the contract to run the Florida civil commitment program in 2006, taking over from the scandal-wracked Liberty Health Corp., which is also bidding on Virginia’s civil commitment program.

Experts differ on whether privatization could potentially improve treatment. Eric Janus, the dean of the William Mitchell College of Law in Minnesota, is a harsh critic of civil commitment. “This is a quintessential public function. This is the state exercising its most awesome power to deprive people of their liberty. I think there’s something inherently worrisome about the state turning that over to a private company,” Janus says.

But given the right mix of talent and funding, Janus thinks it is conceivable that private companies could do better than states and adds that “it’s hard to imagine anything that would make [state-run systems] worse.”

Al O’Connor, an attorney with the New York State Defenders Association, says he would be surprised if Virginia’s rationale for privatizing civil commitment is to improve treatment. “It’s all about saving money. It’s preventive detention,” O’Connor says. With privatized civil commitment, there is “no way to declare success. And no incentive to declare success.”

Mary Devoy, executive director of Reform Sex Offender Laws of Virginia, says she would “see nothing positive” about GEO Care taking over the state’s civil commitment program. “The day this becomes a business, we know no one will ever get out of there.”

In an email to The American Independent, Pablo Paez, GEO Group’s vice president of corporate relations, said the company does not comment on its ongoing business developments or legislative issues, but does “advocate the use of public-private partnerships that have been demonstrated to achieve significant savings for taxpayers while improving the quality of care and outcomes in mental health and residential treatment facilities.” ..Source.. by Siddhartha Mahanta

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New study: Do popular actuarials work?

4-21-2010 National:

From In The News by Karen Franklin:

Newer instruments outperform Static-99 and RRASOR

If you evaluate sex offenders, you may be overwhelmed by the dizzying array of actuarial risk assessment instruments vying for your vote: Static-99, RM 2000, RRASOR, Static-2002, SORAG, MnSOST-R. The list of weird-looking acronyms grows ever longer, and the validity studies more complex.

For help figuring out which instruments do what, and how well, I recommend a study by two Canadians, Jan Looman and Jeffrey Abracen, just published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence. The study compared the ability of four leading instruments to predict recidivism among a sample of 419 high-risk Canadian sex offenders. Overall, about 15% of the released offenders were convicted of a new sex offense when the follow-up time period was held at a constant of seven years.

Among the interesting findings:

•When rapists and child molesters were examined separately, none of the instruments were able to predict sexual recidivism (defined as a new conviction) for child molesters.

•The RRASOR (Rapid Risk Assessment for Sex Offense Recidivism) bombed completely as a predictive tool. The Static-99, a descendant of the RRASOR and the most widely used actuarial for assessing sex offender risk, did not do much better. As the authors note, since their sample was similar to U.S. offenders subject to civil commitment as Sexually Violent Predators (SVPs), the lack of predictive validity of these instruments raises concerns about their use in SVP proceedings.

•Two newer instruments -- the Static-2002 and the Risk Matrix 2000, developed in England -- did somewhat better. Especially interesting is how the Static-2002 performed. Overall, only two of the instrument's five subscales predicted sexual recidivism. Not surprisingly, these were Age at Release and Persistence of Sexual Offending. This is rather common sensical, in that sex offending declines dramatically with age, and a high score on the Persistence scale indicates an entrenched pattern of sex offending, with an early onset, a high rate, and multiple convictions. When rapists and child molesters were separated out, instead of being lumped together as generic “sex offenders” as they often are, only the Deviant Sexual Interests scale predicted sexual recidivism for the child molesters.

•Finally, age matters. It really does. The few who continue to deny this obvious fact are just being stubborn. Similar to other studies, only about 2% of offenders over 50 reoffended (one child molester and one rapist, in this case), compared with 20% of those ages 25 to 35.

Of course, this is just one study. Other studies comparing the accuracy of instruments for assessing sex offender risk have come to various and contradictory conclusions. For example, contrast the present findings with those of the Austrian study that I blogged about last month, testing German versions of the RRASOR, Static-99, SORAG, and SVR-20. The publisher of the International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology has just made that study available for free, by the way. Keeping up with this burgeoning literature is a full-time job, unfortunately necessary for practice in this area.

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Civil Confinement: Controversial reincarcerations must be done with great care

4-21-2010 New York:

Civil confinement of sex offenders after their prison terms have ended has always been controversial.

Though the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly approved the practice, the idea of reincarcerating people in secure psychiatric hospitals, perhaps indefinitely, because someone has determined that they might commit a similar crime in the future seems unjust.

Obviously, it’s in everyone’s interest to prevent rapists, child molesters and other sexual offenders from preying on the public. But incarcerating people for acts that have not taken place appears to be a perversion of justice.

It is paramount, then, for state legislators and rights groups to take a hard, detailed look at the methods used to determine who gets put in civil confinement.

The state Office of Mental Health makes recommendations to the state attorney general on whom to bring to court to be civilly confined. It uses a number of tools in making that recommendation, including some designed to determine a sex offender’s risk of committing another sex crime.

But at least one risk-assessment tool used, called Static-99, hasn’t always been accurate. The Static-99 score is the initial determiner of the path each case takes through the intense review process OMH has set up. Generally, the higher the score, the more likely an offender is supposedly a risk.

Until early 2009, guidelines for the tool were based on old studies of offenders released from prison during the 1970s and early 1980s. Those groups had higher rates of repeating sex crimes than more recent studies showed. That led OMH to recommend more people for civil confinement than it would if it used more modern assumptions, according to an OMH report released in February. When the guidelines were changed to reflect newer studies, the number of OMH referrals to the attorney general dropped.

The Supreme Court ruled that civil commitment must only be used for treatment, rather than punishment. Government does not have the authority to civilly commit a sex offender simply because he or she is dangerous and has committed multiple offenses. But if the Static-99 score is used to determine whether a person is a danger based on the likelihood of committing another sex crime, then is the whole process legally flawed?

Racial disparities among sex offenders who’ve been civilly confined are troubling, too. Black men who are old enough to be put in state prison make up just 5 percent of New York’s population. But they make up nearly 29 percent of sex offenders ordered civilly confined.

That certainly reflects disparities throughout the criminal justice system. But do any of the arcane methods OMH uses to pick who gets locked away play a role, too?

Protecting the public from sexual predators is vitally important. But if the law is carried out unjustly, all of us may be in danger. ..Source.. The Post-Standard Editorial Board

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State's sex offender risk classifications can mislead public

4-11-2010 Texas:

Which sex offender is a higher risk to the public?

A. A 20-year-old unmarried man who exposed himself at a party.

B. A 30-year-old married man who molested his 3-year-old niece and 5-year-old daughter.

If you said B, you probably would be wrong - if you're going by the state's assessed risk level for sex offenders, experts say.

You also might be notified by postcard about the man who exposed himself, but maybe not the other, because public notification is based on the risk level.

Authorities warn sex offender risk classifications can be confusing to the public, though state officials are working to improve that.

"It doesn't measure how violent he is," said Adam Taylor Puckett, a sex offender officer with the Lubbock-Crosby County Community Supervision and Corrections Department.

Forty-eight of 411 offenders in the city and county were considered high risks, according to law enforcement listings as of Thursday. More than 150 were considered low or moderate risks.

Nearly one-third of sex offenders in the city and county didn't even have a risk level assigned to them, most commonly because they were convicted and released from prison prior to the 2000 law that requires a risk assessment.

But while the classification may be misleading, it is widely used with little explanation in sex offender registries, which the public can go online to check and see if any offenders live in their neighborhoods.

Locally, residents may go to the police department's or county's Web sites to check.

Residents are notified via postcard when a high-risk offender moves into a neighborhood, but postcards aren't sent for lower-risk levels.

Authorities urge residents to not discount low- and moderate-risk offenders.

"I wouldn't go by the risk level," said Police Cpl. Mark Long. "We've had low-risk offenders re-offend."

Despite the label, a low-risk offender could be someone who committed a serious crime against a child or multiple victims or be prone to violence.

The state's assessed risk level doesn't take into account the individual offender or even his offense.

The classification is determined by a form called Static 99, which is aimed at providing a statistical analysis of the offender's likelihood to repeat an offense.

The form includes 10 questions, and each answer is associated with a point. The risk level is determined by the number of points.

Questions include such things as the number of prior sex offenses, if the victim was a stranger or a family member and the offender's age and the relationship status. The victim's age is not a factor on the form.

For example, single men in their 20s automatically get more points than an older man who is married because statistically they are more likely to re-offend.

"We're not sure what benefit (the classification) has to the public," said Jennifer Mora, a supervisor with the Lubbock-Crosby County office.

She is concerned the classification may cause residents to "have a false sense of security living next to a low-risk offender."

One example of a low-risk offender who lives in Lubbock is a 45-year-old man who was convicted of three counts of aggravated sexual assault of a 7-year-old girl in 1992, according to the city's sex offender registry. In another case, a man was convicted of aggravated sexual assault of a 6-year-old boy in 1999.

And once a risk level is assigned to an offender, officials said it is not reassessed unless the offender goes to jail for more than 30 days.

Steven Henderson, director of the Community Supervision and Corrections Department, said officials are still learning the best ways to assess a sex offender.

"We're still in the infancy stage of this," he said, noting the standardized form is recognized nationally.

In 2005, the Texas Legislature directed the Council on Sex Offender Treatment to study dynamic risk assessment, which would include assessing the offender based on multiple factors.

"What it's going to provide is a more accurate predictor of risk," said Allison Taylor, executive director of the council. "The main thing is determining the true predators."

She said the public needs to be notified of how dangerous an offender is, rather than just the sexual recidivism level as indicated on the Static 99 form.

The council has been researching the best tools that would help officials determine the danger to the public.

Once complete, the new risk assessment will take into account other factors, such as the age of the victim and how many victims there have been, and provide a better-rounded glimpse of the offender.

The council implemented a pilot program in 2007, for which data are still being collected and analyzed.

The five-year study period is to end in October, but Taylor didn't know when the new risk assessment would be implemented statewide. ..Source.. Robin Pyle | AVALANCHE-JOURNAL

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Sex-Registry Flaws Stand Out

9-3-2009 National:

The case of Phillip Garrido, who allegedly held Jaycee Dugard in his backyard for 18 years despite monthly law-enforcement visits, is forcing California officials to acknowledge a fundamental problem with the state's sex-offender registry: The list keeps expanding, while the number of officials who monitor sex offenders has grown at a much slower rate.

There are now so many people on the registry it's difficult for law enforcement to effectively track them all, and "it's more helpful for law enforcement to know...who the highest-risk offenders are," said Janet Neeley, a deputy California attorney general and member of the state's sex offender board.

A December study of roughly 20,000 registered sex offenders on parole in California found 9% posed a "high risk" of reoffending, and 29% posed a "moderate-high" to "high" risk, said Ms. Neeley. But law-enforcement officials and academics say vast resources are spent monitoring nonviolent offenders rather than keeping closer tabs on more-dangerous ones.

California's sex-offender registry has ballooned to more than 90,000 people now from about 45,000 in 1994, according to the California attorney general's office. Not only has the number of law-enforcement officers failed to keep pace, but recent state budget cuts have forced some local agencies to cut officers assigned to sex offenders, according to the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training.

The Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office, for example, said funding cuts have forced it to field only five officers dedicated to tracking sex offenders in the county, down from eight officers five years ago.

Last year, California's Sex Offender Management Board criticized the system as it stands in a 225-page assessment, highlighting failures in the collection and analysis of data on sex offenders. It's "difficult if not impossible" to track the effectiveness of registry laws, the report said.

Mr. Garrido, who allegedly kidnapped the 11-year-old girl in 1991, was considered high-risk because of a 1977 conviction for rape and kidnapping. But he received about the same number of visits from officers at his Antioch, Calif., home as the 200 or so other sex offenders in Antioch and adjacent Pittsburg, said the Contra Costa County Sheriff, even though many weren't convicted of violent offenses. During dozens of visits to Mr. Garrido's home, authorities never found the tents and shacks hidden behind a backyard fence.

The growing sex-offender list can dilute the amount of attention on the most dangerous offenders, said Nora Demleitner, the dean of Hofstra University Law School who studies sentencing. Some sex offenders "tend to be not dangerous at all," she said. "You have them register as sex offenders, so when you're law enforcement, all these people look the same. If you had much more focused sex-offender laws, maybe they would have been bothered to go into the shack" in Mr. Garrido's back yard.

California has been trying to sharpen its focus, but federal and state laws passed in 2006 offer conflicting rules for monitoring sex offenders, Ms. Neeley said.

Under its law, California has chosen to use a program called Static 99, which categorizes sex offenders based on their likelihood to reoffend. To predict risk, it looks at things like the nature of the crime, the offender's relationship with the victim and whether the offender has been able to form long-term intimate relationships. But the system hasn't been introduced by most local jurisdictions for those convicted before 2007.

Provisions in the federal Adam Walsh Act aim to move monitoring in the opposite direction, so that it's based solely on an offender's type of conviction, not on a complex assessment of risk.

That's problematic, said Jill Levenson, an associate professor at Lynn University in Florida who studies sex-offender registries, since it "overestimates risk for most people, and underestimates risk for people who pleaded down," or struck plea deals by admitting to lower-level crimes.

Now, the state Sex Offender Management Board is recommending that California forgo some federal funds and not adopt the law, which would add to the number of crimes requiring registration.

"There is no available evidence to indicate that expanding California's list of registerable crimes would promote public safety," the board wrote in a recommendation, noting the federal law would create at least $32 million in costs to the attorney general's office and law-enforcement agencies without improving the system. ..Source.. by RYAN KNUTSON and JUSTIN SCHECK

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NY- Sex Offender Assessment Tool Held Inadmissible

7-10-2009 New York:

A recent decision out of New York holds the Static-99, a common actuarial measure of sex offender recidivism, as inadmissible under Frye. In State v. Rosado, 2009 NY Slip Op 29290 , Judge Riviezzo holds:

In the immediate case, respondent's STATIC-99 score of "4" is considered to be a medium-high risk of reoffending. Under the "new" norms, assuming future admission under Frye, that risk percentage varies from 8.2 % to 27.3% over 10 years. Interestingly, respondent's score of "4" - clearly not low, however not squarely high - provides the perfect example of the pitfalls of admitting the STATIC-99 at a jury trial. The testimony could arguably benefit respondent if, for example, the jury believed that the risk was in fact closer to 8%, but could be greatly prejudicial to respondent if the jury accepted testimony that the risk was in fact closer to 27%.

However as discussed above the score of "4" has at best marginal relevance to the issue of whether respondent has a mental abnormality in the first instance, since the score only means that respondent shares certain characteristics of a group found to reoffend at a certain rate without telling the jury anything about respondent's volitional capacity. Given the tenuous connection between a STATIC-99 score and volitional capacity, a jury could easily be confused by the evidence and give it undue significance in either direction.

In this case, a jury, believing this score to be low, might wrongfully conclude that respondent has no mental abnormality when in fact one might exist, even if ultimately confinement might not be required due to his "lower" risk of reoffending.

There's lots of interesting issues discussed in this case, including NY's unique bifurcated commitment statute and whether recidivism tools such as the Static-99 can be used to establish a mental abnormality. Interestingly, it was the state which argued for exclusion of the evidence.

But the case is noteworthy for its extended discussion of the Static-99 tool itself. To be fair, the disparate range of recidivism rates that the court seems concerned about center on the fact that recidivism rates generally go up over time. The instrument itself provides different recidivism rates depending on the length of follow-up. ..Source.. by Steve Erickson, Crime and Consequence

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OR- Judge rebuffs state in Lee case

4-12-2009 Oregon:

In a strongly worded order, U.S. District Judge Owen Panner Friday refused to keep Richard Robert Lee, whose conviction he had overturned last month, on parole while the case winds its way through further appeals.

If the judge’s order stands, Lee should be off supervision about the middle of July.

“Richard Lee served 14 years in prison, while his appeals languished in file rooms and were shuffled between courts,” the judge wrote in an order issued from Portland.

Designated a predatory sex offender by the state parole board, Lee was released from prison Mach 18 and has been living in Albany since.

The office had issued a public notification ahead of Lee’s release. But just six days after Lee completed his years in prison, Panner, a senior federal judge, set aside his conviction and ordered the state to retry him or release him completely — meaning no more parole supervision — within 120 days.

(eAdvocate Post)

This week the state Justice Department appealed the judge’s order to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and asked the judge to stay his 120-day order. That’s the request Panner rejected Friday, implying there is no need to keep Lee under supervision.

“Lee knows he is a marked man,” Panner wrote. “The police and others in the community are carefully watching his behavior, regardless of whether Lee is on formal supervised status or is officially registered as a sex offender. Any misstep and Lee risks returning to prison.”

The judge concluded: “The offenses at issue allegedly occurred in 1993. Lee was indicted in 1994 and convicted in 1995. It is now 2009. At this rate, it would be 2019 before the appeal is finally resolved. I will not require Lee to remain in custody, indefinitely, while that process unfolds.”

Lee, now 49, was convicted of sexually abusing a 4-year-old boy. In his initial decision on the case, Panner ruled that based on evidence the jury never heard, and on the record as a whole, it was likely that no reasonable juror would would vote to convict him.

Lee was branded a predatory sex offender based on an evaluation known as the “Static-99” test, said Nancy Sellers, executive director of the state Board of Parole. He appealed the designation, and the parole board upheld it after a hearing March 3.

The test is based on a person’s conviction and other factors including the opinions of a sex-offender-control psychologist. It is believed to predict how likely somebody is to victimize others, according to the parole board official.

The state Justice Department said that on Monday it would appeal the judge’s refusal to lift his order. ..News Source.. by Democrat Herald.com

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A Multisite Comparison of Actuarial Risk Instruments for Sex Offenders

2003

Introduction:
Four actuarial instruments for the prediction of violent and sexual reoffending (the Violence Risk Appraisal Guide [VRAG], Sex Offender Risk Appraisal Guide [SORAG], Rapid Risk Assessment for Sex Offender Recidivism [RRASOR], and Static-99) were evaluated in 4 samples of sex offenders (N = 396). Although all 4 instruments predicted violent (including sexual) recidivism and recidivism known to be sexually motivated, areas under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) were consistently higher for the VRAG and the SORAG. The instruments performed better when there were fewer missing items and follow-up time was fixed, with an ROC area up to .84 for the VRAG, for example, under such favorable conditions. Predictive accuracy was higher for child molesters than for rapists, especially for the Static-99 and the RRASOR. Consistent with past research, survival analyses revealed that those offenders high in both psychopathy and sexual deviance were an especially high-risk group. ..Rest of Study.. by Grant T. Harris -and- Marnie E. Rice -and- Vernon L. Quinsey -and- Martin L. Lalumiere -and- Douglas Boer -and- Carol Lang

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MA- Defense attorney: Few factors reveal who will offend again

What they fail to say is, that the Static-99 does not predict anything if not used on offenders who have already committed multiple offenses. The Static-99 factors have been brought into question in court and held unreliable.
3-3-2008 Massachusetts:

There is scant scientific evidence available that can predict whether a sex offender will attack again, said a defense attorney who has helped free dozens of men who were civilly committed to the Massachusetts Treament Center in Bridgewater.

“I disagree with the notion that you should be able to put someone away, segregate them from the public for something that you think they are going to do if for no other reason than that we are not very good at prediction,” said attorney John Swomley. “We are putting lots of innocent people away for life without any basis for doing so.”

A Bay State Superior Court judge, Richard T. Moses, has faced withering criticism over the release of three sexual criminals accused of re-offending in recent weeks. Swomley said all but one of his clients have not re-offended, and that judges, juries and others have few truly reliable tools for anticipating recidivism.

The most credible tool for predicting whether a sex offender will attack again is an actuary instrument called the Static-99. The scale, developed by Canadian researcher R. Karl Hanson, takes into account prior sex offenses, sentencing dates, convictions for non-sexual violence, whether the victims were strangers, male, non-family members and other factors.

Offenders are scored on a numerical scale, with people scoring a 1 being the least likely to re-offend. People at 6 or higher on the test re-offend at a rate of 52.1 percent after 15 years in the community, according to the scale.

“This is really the only way you can pin prediction to anything that is scientific. Otherwise it is just tea-leaf reading, flipping coins and total clinical judgment, which has been determined to have no prediciative value at all,” Swomley said. ..more.. by Laura Crimaldi


Chart: The Static 99 table | The scoring system

Consider the following from a prior court case:

§ 9:42 Actuarial procedures—Cross-examining the static-99

1. The Static-99 is a 10-item actuarial instrument designed for assessing the recidivism risk of previously convicted sexual offenders — Correct?

2. The Static-99 combines an actuarial procedure previously developed in Great Britain, the Structured Anchored Clinical Judgment (SACJ), with the Rapid Risk Assessment for Sex Offense Recidivism (the RRASOR) — Correct?

3. The developers of the Static-99, Hanson and Thornton, characterize it as "… this year's version of a work in progress" — Correct?

4. "… this year's version of a work in progress" indicates there are various revisions anticipated for the Static-99 — Correct?

5. And if future revisions of the Static-99 are inevitable, then the Static-99 amounts to an experimental procedure — Correct?

6. And if the Static-99 is an experimental procedure - subject to future revisions - it cannot to be generally accepted by your professional community — Correct?

7. The developers of the Static-99, Hanson and Thornton, also report:
[ read ]

"Static-99 does not claim to be comprehensive, for it neglects whole categories of potentially relevant variables (e.g., dynamic factors)."— Correct?

8. If the Static-99 does not claim to be comprehensive, because of the variables it neglects, this consideration further demonstrates that the Static-99 is an experimental procedure — Correct?

9. Static-99 scores are translated as falling into one of four risk categories:
(1) Low, (2) Medium-Low, (3) Medium-High, and (4) High. — Correct?

10. Commenting on these risk levels, Hanson and Thornton report:
[ read ]

Although Static-99 can meaningfully differentiate between sex offenders with higher or lower probabilities of recidivism, the labels used to describe the various risk levels (low, medium-low, medium-high, high) do not reflect any absolute standard of risk.

Now my question: If the Static-99 risk level labels do not reflect any absolute standard of risk, your using those labels could mislead and misinform this court — Correct?

11. Validity data for the Static-99 were obtained from Canadian and United Kingdom populations — Correct?

12. And because the validity data for the Static-99 were obtained from Canadian and UK populations, we do not know to what extent those data are applicable my client in this particular case — Correct?

13. The validity data reported for the Static-99 are expressed in terms of "Receiver Operating Characteristic" (ROC) values —Correct?

14. Can you define for this court - in understandable terms - what a "Receiver Operating Characteristic" is?

[Surprising as it may seem, most professionals will be unable to answer this question]

15. Would you agree with the following explanation of the "Receiver Operating Characteristic" ?
[ read ]

In the instance of two randomly selected offenders (one a recidivist and the other a non-recidivist), ROC values indicate the probability that the recidivist scores higher on the Static-99 than the non-recidivist.

16. The ROC value reported for the Static-99 is .71 — Correct?

17. Therefore, the chances are 71 out of a 100, that the Static-99 score of a randomly selected recidivist exceeds the score of an randomly selected non-recidivist — Correct?

18. Can you explain to the judge [or jury] how that information can be used for decision-making in this case?

19. In other words, Receiver Operating Characteristic values are not applied in a simple, straightforward manner to this case — Correct?

20. The title page of the previously cited unpublished paper reporting on the Static-99 contains the following disclaimer:
[ read ]

The risk assessment procedures contained in this report, including Static-99 have been developed by the authors in the course of their duties. Anyone choosing to use or adopt the risk assessment procedures, including Static-99, in any way, does so on the sole basis of their responsibility to judge their suitability for their own specific purposes. The Department of the Solicitor General and Her Majesty's Prison Service, London, their employees, agents, servants, and the authors neither assume nor accept any responsibility or legal liability for any injury or damages whatsoever resulting from the use of the risk assessment procedures and Static-99.

Now my question: This disclaimer is less than a ringing endorsement of the Static-99 — Correct?

21. This disclaimer seems to be advising professionals - You assume an unknown level of professional risk when using the Static-99 — Correct?

22. Despite Testing standard 6.1, there is no commercially available manual for the Static-99 — Correct?

23. And the unavailability of a manual can compromise the inter-rater reliability for an instrument such as the Static-99 — Correct?

24. You cannot cite any inter-rater reliability data for the Static-99 published in a peer-reviewed journal — Correct?

25. You have not published any validity data in a peer-reviewed journal supporting the use of the Static-99 — Correct?

26. You cannot cite any validity data published in a peer-reviewed journal supporting the use of the Static-99 — Correct?

27. You cannot cite any data, identifying the levels of sensitivity for the Static-99, published in a peer-reviewed journal — Correct?

28. You cannot cite any data, identifying the levels of specificity for the Static-99, published in a peer-reviewed journal — Correct?

29. You cannot cite any data, identifying the frequency of false positive errors associated with the Static-99, published in a peer-reviewed journal — Correct?

30. You cannot cite any data, identifying the frequency of false negative errors associated with the Static-99, published in a peer-reviewed journal — Correct?

31. Both Ethical standard 2.05 and Testing standard 7.9 obligate you to acknowledge these many limitations related to Static-99 — Correct?

32. And these many limitations undermining the Static-99 - including its falling short of ethical and practice standards - establish that it cannot claim general acceptance from your professional community — Correct?

Source



Further, questionable -by its author- when used for older offenders:

Abstract:
Static-99 (Hanson & Thornton, 2000) is the most commonly used actuarial risk tool for estimating sexual offender recidivism risk. Recent research has suggested that its methods of accounting for the offenders’ ages may be insufficient to capture declines in recidivism risk associated with advanced age. Using data from 8 samples (combined size of 3,425 sexual offenders), the present study found that older offenders had lower Static-99 scores than younger offenders and that Static-99 was moderately accurate in estimating relative recidivism risk in all age groups. Older offenders, however, displayed lower sexual recidivism rates than would be expected based on their Static-99 risk categories. Consequently, evaluators using Static-99 should consider advanced age in their overall estimate of risk.

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Evaluation for Civil Commitment of Sex Offenders: A Survey of Experts

December 2007:

Abstract
At this study’s commencement, 17 states had enacted sex offender civil commitment legislation. Although each statute outlines broad criteria that must be met, civil commitment evaluators are given considerable latitude in how to conduct their assessment. Forty-one experts who conduct sex offender civil commitment evaluations were surveyed to identify the usual practice of these evaluators. A great deal of agreement exists across experts regarding the conduct of sex offender civil commitment evaluations. However, these patterns appear quite different from the usual practice outlined in other types of forensic evaluations. Experts in sex offender civil commitment endorsed documentation as the core method for evaluation. The majority of evaluators reported the assessment of paraphilias, substance abuse, other Axis I disorders, Axis II disorders, and psychopathy as essential to the evaluation. Virtually all survey respondents utilized actuarial risk assessment measures, primarily the Static-99, in assessing for risk of future sexual violence. Although several approaches to assessing volitional impairment were described, the majority of respondents reported that a history of sex offending combined with a personality disorder or a paraphilia established the necessary link between mental abnormality and risk of future sexual violence. An overwhelming majority of experts indicated that it was essential for evaluators to report their ultimate opinion as to whether criteria had been met for civil commitment. Future research regarding the use and incorporation of documentation should be conducted to determine whether the heavy reliance on documentation is unique to sex offender civil commitment evaluations, or whether it is commonly used in other forensic evaluations. ..more.. by Rebecca L. Jackson -and- Derek T. Hess

Note: The Static-99 has been recently questioned.

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Evaluating and Improving Risk Assessment Schemes for Sexual Recidivism: A Long-Term Follow-Up of Convicted Sexual Offenders

March 2007 217618

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Risk assessment plays a central role in the management of sexual offenders in the criminal justice system, impacting every level of decision-making. The specification of which offenders should be included in state registration or community notification, the distribution of treatment opportunities in prison, the determination of parole eligibility, the allocation of resources in monitoring and supervising offenders in the community, and the ultimate decision to remove the most serious offenders from the community through civil commitment all involve critical choices involving risk. The serious consequences to potential victims, to those offenders who no longer pose a threat to the community, but are denied their civil liberties, and to critical community funds that may be squandered as the result of inaccurate decisions all demand the guidance of the most accurate actuarial algorithms available. Because decisions must be made—even doing nothing constitutes a decision—to choose not to employ the most accurate decision-making algorithms is to choose to pay the costly price of a suboptimal decision.

The aim of the present study was to evaluate and to improve the decision-making algorithms that have been generated to assess risk in sexual offenders. More specifically, it was the task of this research project to evaluate the extant actuarials in a sample of sexual offenders on whom long-term follow up were available. We assessed the comparative accuracy of the major risk instruments over time and over subsamples, explored their underlying factor structure, examined the accuracy of a new assessment protocol (SRA Need Assessment; Thornton, 2002), and explored the potential for generating improved predictive instruments.

In a prior study we (Knight, 1999; Prentky, Knight, & Lee, 1997) had followed 599 offenders who had been referred to the Massachusetts Treatment Center (MTC) for evaluation between 1959 and 1984. Of these 266 (Bridgewater Treatment [BT] sample) had been committed to MTC as “sexually dangerous” and subsequently released, and 333 (Bridgewater Observation [BO] sample) had been determined not to be sexually dangerous and returned to finish their sentences. Of the 333 BO offenders 200 constituted a matched sample (on age at evaluation, marital status, and number of prior crimes) and 200 were randomly sampled from the entire sample BO population evaluated. There was an overlap of 67 offenders selected by both the random and matched process. For all these offenders we had accessed and integrated four outcome record sources, including the Massachusetts Board of Probation records, the Massachusetts Parole Board records, the Massachusetts Treatment Center Authorized Absence Program records, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) records.

In the present study we accessed the archival clinical files for these offenders and coded these records both on modern empirically-derived, mechanical actuarials that have been developed since 1997 for predicting sexual recidivism, including the RRASOR (Hanson, 1997), the Static-99 (Hanson & Thornton, 2000), the Static-2002 (Hanson & Thornton, 2003), the SORAG (Quinsey, Harris, Rice, & Cormier, 1998), the MnSOST-R (Epperson, Kaul, Huot, Hesselton, Alexander, & Goldman, 1998), and the Risk Matrix 2000 (Thornton et al., 2003), on two structured clinical guidelines, the SVR-20 (Boer, Hart, Kropp, & Webster, 1997) and the A-SOAP-II (Prentky & Righthand, 2003), and on a new experimental measure, the SRA Needs Assessment (Thornton, 2002). Offenders were also categorized in the Massachusetts Treatment Center Rapist (MTC:R3) and Child Molester (MTC:CM3) typologies and diagnosed according the DSM-IV Antisocial Personality Disorder and Conduct Disorder criteria. All codings and judgments were carried out without any access to or knowledge about the follow-up status of the offenders.

The final report addressed six basic questions. We summarize the findings for each using this framework: ..more.. by Raymond A. Knight, Ph.D. ; David Thornton, Ph.D.

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Sex offenders and the law: Too dangerous to be released?

The men who are being kept in custody after their prison terms expired are a collection of child molesters and rapists of women and children. They range in age from 23 to 70 and have been convicted multiple times of sex crimes.
11-11-2007 Virginia:

They are considered the worst of Virginia's sexual predators, a community of 61 men deemed so dangerous that even after completing their prison sentences, they remain locked up.

A towering, razor-lined fence keeps them in a complex called the Virginia Center for Behavioral Rehabilitation. Although the facility is classified as a mental institution, it has the look of an isolated prison.

In theory, the state hopes to rehabilitate these career child abusers and rapists so that they can be trusted back on the streets.

But to date, no one has been freed.

The men are confined indefinitely under Virginia's four-year-old civil commitment program, which allows chronic sexual predators to be institutionalized after serving their prison sentences.

Eighteen other states have similar regiments and the U.S. Supreme Court has declared them constitutional - if it can be proved that the molesters are likely to repeat their crimes, and if they are receiving psychological counseling to learn how to control their deviancies.

There is no convincing evidence that therapy changes chronic molesters, particularly pedophiles. Across the nation, only about 5 percent of the 2,700 sex offenders civilly committed since 1990 have been released.

By June, Virginia officials are expecting the population at the Petersburg institution to almost double to 113 sex offenders. The high cost of their therapy will require taxpayers to shell out at least $123,000 a year for each sexual predator - about six times the cost of keeping an inmate in prison.

The program is outgrowing its Petersburg home, once a training center for the mentally retarded. The state plans to close the facility early next year and move operations to a $63 million institution being built in Nottoway County near Burkeville solely to house sexual predators.

It will hold as many as 300 molesters. Legislators say it could be filled in three years.

Some mental health experts and civil libertarians say the facility is little more than a new form of prison to keep sex offenders locked up for life.

"It's a violation of due process," said Kent Willis, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Virginia chapter. "Once you've served your sentence, you should be released.

"We don't incarcerate people on the fear they'll commit future crimes.... Our concern is that this system becomes a railroad for the state to keep people in prison for as long as it wants."

Several offenders being held in Petersburg are upset that they're still confined.

"I don't feel that it's fair at all that I am being confined after I have already paid a debt to the society that I owed them for the heinous crime that I am fully responsible for committing," James D. Lewis Jr. of Norfolk wrote in a letter this summer to The Virginian-Pilot. "I feel that I am being forced to pay interest on the debt."

Lewis, now 40, was convicted of molesting children well known to him in 1983 and 1988. After serving prison terms, his probation was revoked in 1996 for "making contact with children." He suffers from depression and "psychotic symptoms," according to a psychological assessment conducted prior to his civil commitment.

Supporters of civil commitment offer no consolation to Lewis and his fellow offenders at the center.

"I'd have to assume the chances are slim and none that anyone will leave the program in Virginia," said state Sen. Kenneth Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, vice chairman of the state crime commission.

Since the Virginia program's inception, about 2 percent of sex offenders have been sent to civil commitment after serving their prison time.

"These are the worst of the worst," Stolle said. "From that perspective, I think the risk of releasing them outweighs the concerns about their civil liberties. I don't have a lot of sympathy for them."

The General Assembly passed legislation setting up the program in 1999 but did not authorize the money to finance it until 2003, when lawmakers were goaded into action by the pending prison release of Richard Ausley, a notorious pedophile.

In 1973, Ausley kidnapped 13-year-old Martin Andrews of Portsmouth, raped and beat the youth in the woods for a week, and left him to die chained in a buried box. Andrews was discovered, alive, by hunters.

Thirty years later, Andrews successfully lobbied the state legislature to spend $2.7 million to start the Petersburg center and keep Ausley confined. Ausley, however, was killed in 2004 by his cellmate before he was to be released from prison.

Andrews remains convinced the program is worth the expense.

"These guys can't control themselves," he said in a recent interview. "When you look at what it would cost to track them down again, convict them and execute those who would go on to murder - not to mention helping all their new victims - the cost of the program seems pretty small."

Figuring that prison is a cheaper alternative, the General Assembly last year mandated 25-year minimum sentences for most sex crimes against children younger than 13. Pedophiles convicted a second time of a sex crime face mandatory life sentences.

Toward the end of their sentences, all Virginia sex offenders are evaluated on an actuarial table for their risk of molesting again. The table, called the Static 99, is widely used across the nation and takes into account factors about each felon's record, including the number of convictions for sexual crimes, the sex of the victims, and the offender 's relationship to each victim.

An inmate is considered a candidate for civil confinement if he or she scores 4 or higher on a 12-point scale. A score of 4 means a person who has been released has a 26 percent chance of being arrested for a sexual crime within five years, a 31 percent chance within 10 years, and a 36 percent chance within 15 years.

The next step for civil confinement candidates is a psychiatric examination and a review by a seven-member panel of corrections officials, mental health experts and a lawyer for the state. A recommendation is forwarded to Virginia's attorney general, who then decides whether to pursue a civil commitment case in the Circuit Court where the inmate was last convicted of a sexual offense.


The men who have been sent to the center, mostly pedophiles, have long histories of predatory sexual crimes. They range in age from 23 to 70, and served an average of almost 10 years in prison before being civilly committed. Many blame their crimes on their victims.

For most of them, the likelihood that they would commit more sexual crimes if released is so high that their risk assessment is not fully measured. Any higher than a score of 6 on the Static 99 test and a person's risk of recidivism is no longer measured. A 6 means a released offender has a 39 percent chance of being arrested for a sexual crime within five years, a 45 percent chance within 10 years and a 52 percent chance within 15 years.

The average score of the men at the center is 6.4, according to a Virginian-Pilot review of their psychological assessments.

The review also found:


About 80 percent of the men are guilty of sexually assaulting children who are 13 or younger - in several cases, as young as 2.


All but eight of the men are guilty of at least two separate sexual crimes.


Slightly more than half of the men have at least three convictions.

Among them is Aubrey W. Layne, 40, of Norfolk. At 14, he was hospitalized at the Norfolk Psychiatric Center for molesting a 4-year-old girl. At 20, he was found guilty of fondling a 6-year-old girl. At 29, he forcibly sodomized an 8-year-old Norfolk girl. At 33, he took indecent liberties with an 11-year-old Norfolk boy.

There's Thomas W. Lambert, 52, of Norfolk. At 7, he was committed to Eastern State Hospital after pulling down a girl's pants. At 17, he forced four teenage girls to strip at knife point in the back of a Norfolk sandwich shop. At 20, he was convicted of raping two Norfolk women. At 34, he was sent back to prison for molesting a woman in a Richmond coin laundry.

One of Lambert's rape victims, who asked not to be identified, said recently that she has not emotionally recovered from the attack 32 years ago.

Lambert entered her home on the ruse of needing help repairing his bicycle and forced the woman and her 25-year-old pregnant daughter to disrobe.

"I'm always afraid," the woman said. "I don't go anywhere after dark."

Of Lambert, she said: "I was afraid when I heard they put him in an institution that would declare him fine after a couple of years and let him out. I don't want to see that man ever released."


Behind the center's tall fences, Lambert and the other men bunk in a one-story brick bungalow and live under tight restrictions. Administrators bar the media from entering the facility. Telephone access to the offenders is tightly controlled.

Although the center looks like a penitentiary, it must operate as a rehabilitation institution to legally detain the offenders - who are officially called residents, not inmates - after they have completed their prison sentences. The distinctions often seem blurry.

While prisons are run by the Department of Corrections, the center is controlled by the Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services.


In their letters, the offenders describe tensions between the security force at the center and its therapists. They complain about high prices at the canteen, bad food and frequent turnover of therapists.

"It is a maximum-security prison disguised as a so-called treatment center," wrote James Jenkins, a resident of the center and former Accomack County electrician with a history of molesting girls.

The offenders say there is no job training or a chance to earn money at the center.

Those conditions will change when the Nottoway County facility opens, said Mario Dennis, the facility's chief psychologist.

Dennis, who specializes in treating sexual deviancies, said offenders have "a much better lifestyle" in civil commitment than in prison. When not in therapy, residents are allowed to roam the yards and common areas. They are not required to wear uniforms, and they have a library with books and appropriate videos. They are allowed to stay up later at night than they could in prison and rise later in the morning.

"There's more freedom here, and more responsibility," Dennis said.

Security at the center is headed by Charles Bise, a former state corrections official who declined several requests for an interview.

The guards, including many who previously worked in prisons, do not carry weapons, said Adam Austin, spokesman for the center.

Dennis said the residents are divided into three groups: mentally retarded; child molesters; and violent and aggressive offenders. They all spend at least 10 hours a week in group therapy, are given homework assignments, and must attend community living meetings with their peers.

"The treatment is not warm and fuzzy," Dennis said. "It's not designed to make the residents feel better. It's designed to have them realize how destructive their behavior has been and learn how to identify the high-risk situations that caused them to offend in the past.

"We never speak in terms of cure; we speak in terms of risk management," Dennis said. "For many of them, deviant sexual desires will continue to exist."

Residents are required to disclose all of their sex crimes - not just the ones that resulted in criminal convictions. Those with hopes of freedom must pass periodic lie detector tests to prove they have been candid.

Some offenders refuse to open up, saying confessions could subject them to new prison sentences because Virginia does not have a statute of limitations on many sexual crimes. Dennis said their fear is misguided because residents are not asked to give the actual names of victims or provide incriminating details about the incidents.

Another device routinely used is the penile plethysmograph, which measures the change in the circumference of the penis while an offender is shown pictures of children, women or men. Some clinicians argue the test can be foiled if subjects avert their eyes from the pictures.

The Virginia Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that test results from using the device cannot be admitted in court without evidence to back up the machine's accuracy. In 2002, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the plethysmograph lacks "scientific validity" and is prone to false positives.

Anti depressant drugs, which dampen sexual desires, often are dispensed to residents. Many states, including Virginia, are experimenting with voluntary use of antiandrogens, which block the effects of sex hormones such as testosterone and are used to treat advanced prost ate cancer. The use of antiandrogens has been questioned, however, because they cause weight gain, osteoporosis and breast development.

Drug therapies also raise another concern, While they may produce results when a sex offender is confined, there is no assurance that the molester will continue to take the medications after being released.

A proposal to allow violent sex offenders to avoid civil commitment by volunteering to be surgically castrated has been floating around the General Assembly for two years. It died in committee in 2006 and earlier this year was tabled for additional study.

Even castration, however, does not shield the worst pedophiles from being institutionalized. Jenkins, the former electrician from Accomack County, castrated himself in a jail shower with a shoestring and a razor blade as his civil commitment trial approached in 2004. He still was sent to the behavioral rehabilitation center.

"He feels because he castrated himself, he's not a risk," said Pamela Sargent, a senior assistant attorney general who heads a staff of six lawyers that handle civil commitment cases for the state. "But the fact is, it's very easy to get replacement testosterone in the form of drugs."


Does any therapy really help sex offenders?

Experts disagree. The only reliable deterrent is aging. Few sex offenses are committed by people older than 70.

Dozens of studies in recent decades have compared the recidivism rate of convicted molesters who received psychological counseling and those who did not. A number of reports concluded there were no differences between the two groups, although most found that those who received therapy were slightly less likely to commit new sexual crimes.

R. Karl Hanson, inventor of Static 99 and a senior research officer for Canada's Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, said the general conclusion of studies is that about 12 percent of molesters who received treatment were arrested for committing new sex crimes, compared with 17 percent who never received counseling.

But even those figures are misleading, Hanson said, because most sex crimes are not reported and do not result in arrests.

Sargent, the senior assistant attorney general, said those who are forced into civil commitment are already career offenders who are not likely to take to therapy.

"They've spent their lifetimes developing their habits, and it's not easy to change them," she said.

Some psychologists say therapy in civil commitment is compromised if promising residents are never released.

"Release is an actual element of therapy," said Ted Shaw, a forensic psychologist in Gainesville, Fla., who has treated sex offenders since 1982. "If there's no hope for release, you can't have effective therapy."

Several residents of the center, in letters written to The Virginian-Pilot this summer, were pessimistic that they will ever be released.

"There is a palpable sense of hopelessness," wrote Nilo R. Figueroa, 52, who three times has been convicted for sexual battery of boys and a girl whose families were well-known to him. "... I share the dread of the center evolving into a state-sponsored banishment instead of a facility for behavior modification and preparation for societal re-entry."

Although Dennis acknowledged that many of the men may never be released, he said others have made "substantial progress" and one or two may be nearing a point where he might recommend release if their movement was monitored by GPS.

"The goal is, have they learned to manage their risk so they can be safely maintained and employed," Dennis said.

The residents receive annual evaluations assessing their progress in therapy. Once a year for their first five years in the program, they are entitled to a Circuit Court hearing to seek their release. After that, they are offered a hearing every two years.

In late August, Orlando L. Butler had his day in Chesapeake Circuit Court before retired Judge Norman Olitsky. Butler, 47, has been convicted 16 times for an assortment of non sexual offenses such as cocaine possession, drunken driving, concealed weapons possession and robbery. In 2000, he was found guilty of fondling the 9-year-old son of a friend.

Butler entered from a court cell wearing a blue jail uniform. He asked to be released with GPS monitoring.

Dennis testified that Butler, while progressing in therapy, has declined to submit to polygraph tests and was not ready for release.

"Mr. Butler has acknowledged in group therapy that he may have as many as 10 victims," Dennis said. "He has not divulged any details about those individuals and it is difficult to create a therapy plan for him without full disclosure."

After hearing from Dennis and others, Olitsky found "overwhelming evidence that Mr. Butler should remain committed because he does remain a sexually violent predator."

Dennis, on cross-examination, acknowledged he has never recommended anyone for release during the four-year history of Virginia's civil commitment program.

"So it's worse than prison," said Sharon Mason, Butler's attorney, during the hearing.

"There is no light at the end of the tunnel. It all depends on opinion. It's like being placed in limbo for a lifetime." ..more.. by Warren Fiske, (804) 697-1565, warren.fiske@pilotonline.com

Chart: The Static 99 table | The scoring system

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