Vol. 71/No. 14      April 9, 2007

The law will “keep the most dangerous sexual predators off our streets,” Spitzer said. It will “protect our children,” said State Senator Joseph Bruno.

Under this legislation, mental health “experts” will screen all those who finish their sentences and issue a prediction of whether they are “likely” to commit a future sex crime. A jury then determines whether they pose such a risk, and a judge decides whether to detain them or put them under parole supervision. “Behavioral” treatment is mandatory both for those reincarcerated and those released.

Various devices are used “to determine if people continue to offend once conditionally released or have deviant thoughts” before being freed, the New York Times reported in a March 6 article, part of a three-part series. These include the polygraph, “to make sure an offender has admitted all his crimes,” and “the penile plethysmogragh, which measures changes in the circumference of the penis while the offender is shown sexually suggestive pictures of men, women, or children,” the article said.

The new law builds on previous reactionary legislation. The Sex Offender Registration Act, better known as Megan’s Law—also a federal law—requires public notification when a person who served time for a sex offense moves into a neighborhood. The names, addresses, and photos of 24,000 people in New York State appear on this public registry. Another measure, dubbed Jessica’s Law, requires some individuals to wear Global Positioning System tracking devices for 5 to 10 years. “The law faces a likely constitutional challenge,” the Associated Press reported March 23. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, has upheld “civil commitment” laws on the basis that their goal is to offer treatment, not to punish someone twice for the same crime.

Spitzer suggested that New York’s law would become a “national model” for confining the “most violent predators.” President George Bush has signed a law offering money to states that keep past sex offenders locked up beyond their prison terms.

In 1990 Washington became the first state to pass a “civil confinement” law. Since then, nearly 3,000 people have been locked up in detention centers for former sex offenders.

Most of these centers are basically prisons, with barred doors, guard stations, overcrowded conditions, and razor wire fences. Inmates average less than 10 hours a week in “treatment.”

Those detained often refuse therapy because admission of misdeeds at those sessions may prolong their incarceration or lead to new charges.

Criteria for who is to be detained as a future sex offender are arbitrary. Prosecutors have sought to detain some convicted of noncontact crimes like public exposure. “In Florida, prosecutors tried unsuccessfully to civilly commit a man who was imprisoned for driving drunk even though his last sex arrest was decades earlier,” the Times reported.

A growing bevy of private companies and specialists have gone into the lucrative “sex offender” detention business. Among these are Liberty Behavioral Health and Liberty Healthcare Corporation, which as of last year had picked up annual contracts worth up to $26 million.

A March 5 New York Times article reported on nightmarish conditions in the Liberty-run center in Arcadia, Florida: crumbling facilities, arbitrary punishment for minor infractions, and sex between staff members and inmates. In February 2005, when detainees protested, hundreds of cops in riot gear were sent in to “restore order.”  
 
 
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