I disagree. The way these hearings are conducted is completely unfair. The prosecutors use evidence that is unconvincing at best and falsified at worst. Certainly the implementation of the laws is unfair; the prisoners have virtually no chance of ever being released. People should be sent to jail for specified periods of time. This law is a way to keep them there forever.
So if you just want all sex offenders to be imprisoned for the rest of their lives, at least don’t defend a law that is being abused. But I feel that it’s wrong either way. It seems kind of ridiculous when an inmate can say that he would have been better of killing the child.
If they want them to be imprisoned more, they should pass a law to do so. Anything more violates civic processes.
Personally, if anything I think they should be imprisoned less (than their official sentences, I am sure a lot of them get released early.)
Especially if we do not provide more security for them. I am sure that a lifetime of abuse under nightmare conditions far outweighs the damage they did by one instance in the lightest of cases. Going more toward the systematic end of things, I am not so sure. But given the choice between suffering the two I know which I would choose.
I think the slightly higher child abuse rate perhaps caused by this would be worth it so that those who did not truly commit the crime can taste freedom again instead of spending decade upon dusty decade wasting their lives, and to give those who truly changed another chance.
On the other hand, if you are reconvicted of the offense, you have established that it’s pretty certain you were not falsely convicted, and that you haven’t reformed yourself either. In which case I would not mind long-term or lifetime commitment, as long as it is duly sentenced.
How so? Each sexual offender is evaluated by the Department of Corrections, and only the worst of the worst are further evaluated. A petition is then filed, and notice given to the offender. The offender has the right to be present, to be represented by counsel, if the offender is indigent, he gets appointed counsel. He has the right to remain silent. He has the right to be present during testimony, and the rith to cross examine any witness. He has the right to have the hearing recorded. He has the right to retain experts on his own behalf, and if he cannot afford one, the State will pay for one. He has the right to reasonable access to his examinor, as well as the right to have all records provided to the expert and himself. In Illinois, he has the right to a jury trial, although I understand that is not everywhere, and in my experience, the offender almost always wishes to waive jury. The burden of proving he is a sexually violent person remains on the State. If he is found to be a sexually violent person, he has the right to a dispositional hearing to determine his release conditions. He has the right to appeal. He has the right to an attorney to handle that appeal. If he is committed, he has the right to be reviewed, with reports filed in the court. He has the right to petition the court for release.
Well, if the evidence is unconvincing or falsified, as you seem so easily to say, but not to back up, then the judge or jury hearing the case should be able to tell that, shouldn’t they. The evidence in many of the cases to determine if somebody is a sexually violent person includes their medical history, their social history, their sexual history, their criminal history, their psychological history, their evaluation by a clinical psychologist, actuarial studies and tests, their behavior while incarcerated, their support system, their plans for release, their insight into the offenses, their current mental state, and if they comply, their reactions to plethsmographs and other diagnostic tools. They are allowed to present any relevant evidence they wish, including the testimony of family, friends, their expert, etc. Once again, the system for the commitment of sexually violent persons is fair, is just and is based on competent evidence.
Once again, could you explain this, because I don’t see how you reach this conclusion.
The law is there to detain them until they are no longer a substantial risk to reoffend. Once that happens, they should be released.
I understand that you may be upset by the Times piece and feel an injustice was done to poor Mr. Twice Convicted Rapist Deavers. And since I haven’t been able to find anything about his case, you may be right, I don’t know. But you are taking one example of what you see as a miscarriage and railing against the entire system. And I’ve tried to show you why you shouldn’t do that.
If the law is being abused, it isn’t necessarily the laws fault.
You say it’s unconvincing evidence. But you’re not the fact-finder. You could as well say that criminal convictions should be reversed because the evidence was unconvincing to you.
The question is: did the evidence convince the finder of fact? And is it sufficient as a matter of law?
Do you have a cite for the “falsified” evidence claim, by the way?
I’m fine with that, but that doesn’t seem to be how it works. The judge & jury who heard the case found the individual guilty of the offense and sentenced the individual to a punishment they felt was commensurate with the crime (within the guidelines established by legislature, etc). Then the individual, having served the time sentenced, was detained without due process because psychiatric professionals felt that the individual might do additional bad things if not kept incarcerated.
Am I missing something here? Or, alternatively, are you?
The determination of whether or not a convicted sexual offender is a sexually violent person and subject to commitment is decided by the judge or jury hearing the evidence on that issue. It is not the same judge or jury hearing the prior sexual offenses. And, as I’ve tried to point out, it is not decided by psychiatric professionals, nor is there a lack of due process. So I guess I’d answer your question that it is you who may have missed something, although I should have been more precise with my use of the term “case.”
The procedure is presented as a civil procedure, comparable to a hearing to institutionalize someone for incompetency. If someone is so obviously unfit to take care of his own affairs, due to dementia, for instance, he is removed from society, for everyone’s protection. He isn’t “imprisoned.” When we commit gram’paw to the mental hospital, he isn’t in Jail.
BUT… This process of keeping sex offenders locked up is keeping them in jail. The notion that it’s a civil procedure or a medical procedure is (in the opinion of some here) a sham. It’s only an excuse for society to break its own rules and keep people imprisoned in violation of constitutional guidelines.
Query: other than committing mentally incompetent people to hospital, is there any other form of civil action to isolate (imprison) people?
If it helps put your mind at ease, sex offenders found to be sexually violent persons are NOT commited to the Department of Corrections. They are not taken back to prison. They are not in jail. Here in Illinois, a committed sexual offender is committed to the Department of Human Services (which also handles the involuntary commitments), and are placed in a secured treatment and detention facility in Joliet, that is specific to sexual offenders. It is not a “sham”, it is not an excuse to lengthen prison sentences, it is an attempt to protect society from the most dangerous sexual offenders until they are no longer have a substantial probability to reoffend.
I’m honestly not sure, but I would guess that INS and deportation proceedings are civil in nature also.
Well, if the prisoners of the criminal justice system are given a full-scale civil competency hearing, with the right to an adversarial hearing, a jury trial, and the right to an attorney and the right to call witnesses on their own behalf and so on, that’s considerably more rights than allegedly “mentally ill” people have outside of the CJS when involuntary incarceration or involuntary psychiatric treatment is under consideration.
But that’s not the way the articles I read described it. I was under the impression it was the same kangaroo court that mental patients get hauled up before, where the court is dedicated to hearings of this exact nature and this exact population, and where the standards are much lower:
• for involuntary incarceration, merely that the individual be “a danger to self and/or others” and “mentally ill”; and neither of these need be proven via a preponderance of the evidence, just testified to by psychiatrists who have examined the patient.
• for involuntary treatment, that the individual be mentally incapacitated to the point of being unable to make this decision personally, i.e., lacking in judgment and insight; which would be pretty good standards except that again this need not be proven through evidence, just testified to by psychiatrists, who need not justify how they have arrived at this conclusion.
•_in both cases, the determination is made by a judge, not a jury of the individual’s peers.
As is the case with psychiatric patients outside the CJS except most likely even more so, the predisposition is to err on the side of caution and with a concerned eye towards public relations: “If there’s any remote chance that this person could do something if not retained and treated, and we don’t retain and treat, we could get sued”.
The default assumption should be “subject possesses decision-making capacity until proven otherwise”, in the same way that when facing criminal charges a defendant is considered “innocent until proven guilty”. Before it should be OK to declare someone incompetent in a courtroom it should be necessary to demonstrate the absence of competence right there in that courtroom to a jury that has no vested interest in the outcome. If you can know your name, explain how to get to the airport, make and explain some decisions in response to hypothetical situations described to you, and generally comport yourself in the courtoom as a coherent person who acts with reason, then you get to sign your own checks, you get to vote, you get to open a checking account, you get to say no to the Prolixin needle, and you get to walk out the door when you’ve served your time in prison. Period.
Otherwise you’re on one hell of a slippery slope here. Sex offenders today, disturbers of the peace tomorrow – setting a precedent for holding people indefinitely because a worried judge and a psychiatrist think you might do something is a really really really piss-poor idea.
As others have said, better to make sex offenses carry a mandatory lifetime prison sentence if we believe that their sex-violence problems are incurable and indeterrable. At least that leaves intact the best part of the criminal justice system, which is that punishments are finite and specific, and that you cannot be deprived of liberty without due process.
The article follows the standard form of such news stories: It starts of with an illustrative example intended to elicit emotion from the reader and fills in the facts along the way.
There are numerous statements from psychologists and other workers:
If the law is so broad that it can easily be manipulated, it needs to be changed. As it stands, there is a dangerous mix of psychiatrists colluding with prosecutors (as shown by Gerald Groves saying that “the institution might go find another psychiatrist who would be willing to commit” and the erroneous explanation given by Dr. Kern–one that is difficult to see as anything but intentional) and prosecutors misinterpreting (deliberately or through simple carelessness, although I’d be inclined to see it more from the former) the evaluations of the psychologists (e.g., Patrick Madden’s substitution of a word that is favorable to his case for a completely different word).
In defense of the instutition, they’re sometimes the people in the best position to determine whether or not an inmate is a danger to society. They see and interact with the inmate every day. They monitor his behavior, and progress through various programs. They know if he’s devious and deceptive, cruel, or threatens the other inmates. (Actions like these don’t always make it into the records.) They can see signs of dangerousness which might not be readily apprarent to a psychiatrist who sees the inmate for only a brief session while he’s on his best behavior.
In such a case, I can understand if the staff would seek a second opinion. It can be frustrating and scary if an inmate the staff knows is a threat to others is recommended for release.
Well, it’s true that the guards and other staff of a prison would be more familiar with an inmate’s daily behavior. It’s also possible that, having only had one session with a patient, a psychiatrist might misdiagnose him. In this instance, the institution is warranted in seeking another opinion. They should not be looking to “find another psychiatrist who would be willing to commit.” And such actions would make it into the records. Is bumping into a guard not an example of such an action? And he took a polygraph over it. Every note a psychiatrist makes is interpreted, so even their evaluation as to whether a prisoner should be released is open to interpretation. With such attention paid to detail, it is particularly detrimental to the process–not to mention the prisoner in question–when a prosecutor goes to such lengths to alter the meaning of a psychiatric evaluation.
If the Supreme Court can change the interpreted meaning of the Constution without changing its actual wording through an amendment, then the entire system rests on a fundamentally arbitrary foundation. It’s all meaningless.
The Constitution should have clear and unambiguous meanings – at worst, it should be necessary to determine how to apply it to new circumstances when they occur. The SC should not be able to decide one thing and then “reinterpret” the rules to say something else.
Maybe I’m interpreting it differently, but I read the last statement as the opinion of the psychiatrist who had been over-ruled. Just continuing to play devil’s advocate, it’s not unreasonable to think he might be a bit hostile at having his analysis challenged. His statement could be an exaggeration. After all, he doesn’t note that they went through x-number of psychiatrists until one finally gave the diagnosis that they wanted. It’s entirely possible that the very next doctor deemed the man dangerous.
What is the motive of the institution to lie to keep the man? The institution in which my husband works is grossly overcrowded. When inmates apparently pose no danger to society, the staff often assist in the parole process. They’re actually a little happy to see them go, if only so they can give more attention to the “problem” inmates.
Just from my personal experience with correctional employees, my opinion is that it’s unlikely that there’s some sort of “conspiracy” to keep certain inmates locked up. Most correctional employees are honest, decent, good folks. (And there are a hell of a lot of safeguards in place to get rid of the ones who aren’t.) If they feel strongly that a certain individual is dangerous, I’m inclined to believe them.
**
Yes, every note the psychiatrist keeps is examined, but what about the guard in his cellblock? Yes, reports are made of concrete incidents of behavior, but unless a rule is broken, a staff member has difficulty in “writing up” an inmate. Guards often hesitate to report something like tone of voice, salacious looks, or actions which don’t techically break the rules, but frighten them or feel creepy. Inmates are very clever at pushing up against a rule without actually breaking it.
The incident in which the inmate was written up for brushing against the female guard is a valid reason to suspect him, in my opinion. From the story:
**
First of all, a prison is not a place where inmates accidently brush up against guards. It had to be intentional.
The common practice in many institutions for an inmate to “yeild.” If a staff member approaches a door, the inmate must stand back. Physical contact between staff and guards is forbidden, especially with female guards (unless, of course, it’s during a altercation.) Unless the inmate was fleeing from a fire, there’s no excuse for him to brush up against her.
The part about the polygraph means very little to me, especially since there’s no information as to how it was administered. Was it done by a licensed poylgraph technician, or given by someone who had taken a weekend class using a portable unit? Is the inmate on medication? Is he mentally ill?
Well, there are two possible reasons.
The prosecutor is evil, and wants to keep this man in prison just because he feels like it.
Or:
The prosecutor knows this man is a danger, and is willing to go the extra mile to keep him behind bars.
I’m inclined toward the second.
Nor do I see it that they altered the meaning of a psychiatric evaluation. They simply got another opinion. If my mechanic recommends a new part for my car, how does it alter the meaning of a “twelve point inspection” if I go to another auto repair shop to see what they say?
I will agree that some psychiatric diagnoses sound a lot like, “We know the guy is crazy . . . we just don’t have an exact category for him, so we’ll call it this.” Sometimes, people have multiple disorders which make them difficult to “place,” or they may just have some of the symptoms, but not others. Not ever mental illness is the same. Unfortunately, the DSM can’t cover every possible variation, which is why you get differing diagnoses from different doctors.
No doctor can see all of the pieces of the puzzle unless they spend a lot of time with an inmate, especially if the inmate’s intent is to decieve the psychiatrist. The calm, lucid, pleasant man who talks to the shrink for a couple of hours may not be the same man the staff sees every day.
Perhaps it’s my bias from being around corrections folk (of all ranks and positions-- from guards to state adminsistrators) but if they feel that something is wrong, most of the time, there is.
Even if the individual is creepy as all get-out and everyone who has spent more than 20 minutes with him becomes convinced that he makes Hannibal Lecter look like Mother Theresa, unless he’s non compos mentis to the point that he would be found “not guilty by reason of insanity” if he killed dismembered and make spoor-art out of the corpse of the female prison guard when presented with the opportunity, the opinion of 10 billion people as to his creepiness should have no bearing on the fact that he has not done anything aside from that for which he has already served his sentence, and therefore you let him go.
If it were a parole hearing to consider letting him go early, that is (perhaps) different.
I’m with sleeping on this one. I can’t see this as anything but a transparent way of extending incarceration without the benefit of trial.
Which, IMO, will never happen.
If the rape or molestation deserves a life sentence, then make it a life sentence.
If the perp is sick and needs and needs ‘treatment’, then maybe prison wasn’t the place for him. “Sick and needs treatment” sounds a bit like diminshed capacity, something I’m sure the prosecutor would have argued against at trial.
There very well could be a tacit understanding to restrict the freedom of this class of convicts in order to avoid the bad publicity that could result if someone slips through the cracks and commits a notorious re-offense.
No, of course not. We have our fair share of theives, murderers and other assorted Bad Guys, but a large portion of the insitution does consist of sex offenders. (I’ll have to ask Hubby tonight for the percentage.)
Before the new sentancing guidlines, when folks got a sentance like “twenty to life”, staff opposed the parole of anyone they considered dangerous, be they thief, rapist, or what have you. With the new flat-time sentances, staff don’t have that option, except in states where civil commitment exists. They are forced to release people they know are a danger to society.
Not every sexual offender is considered dangerous. A man who has sex with his under-age girlfriend is technically a sex offender, but the staff wouldn’t lump him in with people who are sexual predators.. They don’t consider every sex offender equally dangerous, just because of the nature of his offense. They take into account the circumstances of his crime, his attitudes, his steps towards rehabilitation, and the likelihood that he’ll re-offend.
Bad publicity is usually the last thing on their minds. After all, it’s not their fault that the judge gave such a short sentance. Prison officials (except for parole board members) aren’t usually blamed for the shortcomings of the justice system, nor should they be.
What’s on their minds is their wives’ and their childrens’ safety.
Prison employees follow the law, they don’t make it. Whether or not they agree with a law, they are duty-bound to obey it. If it decrees they must release dangerous felons, then they will do so. If the law allows for civil commitment, then they will use this tool in order to keep dangerous offenders off the streets.