As States Detain Sex Offenders After Prison, Doubts Rise

[rodeodance]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/us/04civil.html?ref=us

As States Detain Sex Offenders After Prison, Doubts Rise
Eros Hoagland for The New York Times

A ‘MALL’ AT A STATE HOSPITAL: A new $388 million facility in Coalinga, Calif., offers an area where patients can buy products or go to the library or barbershop.


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By MONICA DAVEY and ABBY GOODNOUGH
Published: March 4, 2007

The decision by New York to confine sex offenders beyond their prison terms places the state at the forefront of a growing national movement that is popular with politicians and voters. But such programs have almost never met a stated purpose of treating the worst criminals until they no longer pose a threat.
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Locked Away
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Next: Inside the troubled center for sex offenders in Florida.
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Kevin J. Miyazaki for The New York Times

BALANCING SECURITY AND THERAPY: Sex offenders confined at the Sand Ridge Secure Treatment Center in Mauston, Wis., are monitored by a series of closed-circuit cameras.

About 2,700 pedophiles, rapists and other sexual offenders are already being held indefinitely, mostly in special treatment centers, under so-called civil commitment programs in 19 states, which on average cost taxpayers four times more than keeping the offenders in prison...........

But in state after state, such expectations have fallen short. The United States Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of the laws in part because their aim is to furnish treatment if possible, not punish someone twice for the same crime. Yet only a small fraction of committed offenders have ever completed treatment to the point where they could be released free and clear..................

[LiberalFighter]

1. Are they really providing treatment or just holding them out of the population?

How do they determine if the offenders has completed treatment?

What if there is no progress in the program?

[yurbud]

3. what if they have a condition that can't be cured? some pedophiles seem to be hard-wired

like a sexual orientation to be straight or gay. You can't fix that.

[LiberalFighter]

4. Then they need to take them out of the general population

But they shouldn't pretend that they are being treated and use that as the excuse they are put in those places.

[yurbud]

2. I support this if it is limited to pedophiles and serial rapists

like any good idea, as soon as someone realizes they can make a profit on it, it gets expanded to the point of insanity.

I would like to see the pedophiles treated, then spend the rest of their lives in a mental institution making pot holders and coin purses.