June 29, 1997|By NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE
The campaign to tighten the noose on sex offenders by notifying communities of their release from prison has intensified with a new legislative assault on pedophiles and rapists. This one is intended to keep the most dangerous of them from getting back on the streets in the first place.
Going beyond the notification measures prompted by the Megan Kanka case, several states have enacted laws giving officials the power to commit violent sex offenders to mental hospitals involuntarily once their prison terms are up -- a strategy that employs civil laws after criminal ones are exhausted.
In the past few years, more than 250 sex offenders have been committed to mental hospitals. And the movement to confine those who are considered most likely to strike again is expected to spread across the country with a Supreme Court decision last week upholding Kansas' law allowing the involuntary commitment of people found mentally abnormal and likely to commit a violent sex crime.
Commitment laws are being used particularly aggressively in New Jersey, where Megan Kanka was killed. There, an average of more than one sex offender a month is involuntarily sent to a mental hospital as prosecutors use the state's expanded definition of mental illness.
Wisconsin has committed 82 convicted sex offenders to mental hospitals since its law was enacted in 1994.
Two days after the Supreme Court announced its ruling in the Kansas case, the New York state legislature hurriedly passed its own version of the law. Officials in several other states said they planned swift action to make it easier to forcibly hospitalize sex offenders who are deemed dangerous.
Sending offenders from prisons to hospitals is the clearest reflection yet of a perception that sex criminals are different from others and require criminal justice mechanisms intended for them alone.
Driven by horrific sex crimes and a growing public angst, a law enforcement apparatus dedicated to sex offenders has been constructed around the country in just the past few years, covering everything from longer sentences to enhanced parole supervision and many things beyond.
All states require released sex offenders to register their whereabouts. The federal government is requiring states to establish public notification programs. DNA data banks collect samples from sex offenders and, in some cases, other felons.
In California and Montana, officials have approved using hormones to reduce sex drives of repeat offenders. "Enticement laws" in many states make it a crime to lure children for an illicit purpose.
"We're grasping at what to do with these people," said Carla Stovall, the attorney general in Kansas. "Because of the harm that they pose, we need to have different methods for dealing with them because they are so different from bank robbers."
Even as advocates for tough restrictions on sex offenders celebrate the Supreme Court's decision, new measures are under discussion. On Friday, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a prime force behind the passage of sex offender laws nationwide, convened the Sex Offender Strategy Summit in Washington to discuss its recommendations for state officials. On the list for consideration were measures such as chemical castration and trained teams of "cybercops" to combat "sexual exploitation, pornography and enticement" on the Internet.
Against this wave, lawyers for convicted sex criminals and some doctors who treat them have warned against hysteria, questioning the perception of sex offenders as a monolithic group of dangerous recidivists for whom there is no treatment.
"Politically, it is easily the slowest moving target in the political spectrum," said John S. Furlong, a former sex crimes prosecutor in Trenton who represents convicted sex offenders trying to fight commitment actions.
Fred Berlin, a psychiatrist who founded the Johns Hopkins Sexual Disorders Clinic in Baltimore, said treatment is often effective in reducing the proclivities of sex offenders. He said that a 1991 study of 600 men treated at his clinic found that about 8 percent repeated their crimes after five years.
A study released in February by the Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics found that three years after being released from prison, about 41 percent of all violent offenders had been arrested for new felonies, while 19.5 percent of rapists had been arrested for a new crime.
"The notion that these are the most dangerous people in the community, and the most likely to repeat, needs to be looked at a lot more dispassionately," Berlin said.
But the passion for new laws runs high, especially since law enforcement officials report that two-thirds of those serving prison terms for sexual assault victimized children or teen-agers.
The Justice Department reports that the number of prisoners serving time for violent sexual assault has increased by 15 percent a year since 1980, twice the average growth rate of the prison population as a whole.
