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March 11, 2006
NY: Civil Commitment Opponents Mount Case
"If (New York) leaders are talking about the need for cost containment in the state budget, why replicate a bottomless pit that has failed elsewhere?" said Liske, whose group represents rape crisis programs."
The Post-Standard
Syracuse, NY
Civil commitment opponents mount case
Laws would cost more money and offer less results, opponent groups say.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
By Erik Kriss Albany bureau
Civil libertarians, sex offender treatment providers and rape crisis programs are banding together to try to stop the post-prison civil confinement of sex offenders.
The coalition fears state politicians are trying to ram through an ill-advised, election-year law to create such a program.
Gov. George Pataki has been leading efforts for such a law and has proposed spending at least $130 million to turn the minimum-security Camp Pharsalia state prison in Chenango County into a 500-bed civil confinement facility for sex offenders.
The opposition group, which also includes mental health advocates, criminal defense lawyers and families of prisoners, says such a law could cost taxpayers billions of dollars annually without offering New Yorkers the best protection.
The state Senate and Assembly have passed separate civil commitment bills this year and are trying to craft a compromise.
Opponents say civil commitment would drain money from treatment and supervision of offenders in the community.
Those programs are better solutions and could be paired with preventive education, lifetime probation or parole for sex offenders and longer prison sentences for truly dangerous offenders, they say.
The cost of civil confinement could reach $250,000 annually per offender, Richard Hamill, president of the New York State Alliance of Sex Offender Services, claimed during a news conference in Albany Monday with other opponents.
Hamill and Anne Liske, executive director of the New York State Coalition Against Sexual Assault, pointed to reports that Kansas is considering scrapping its civil commitment program and Florida is looking at overhauling its program.
"If (New York) leaders are talking about the need for cost containment in the state budget, why replicate a bottomless pit that has failed elsewhere?" said Liske, whose group represents rape crisis programs.
Civil commitment is in place in 16 states. Of the 34 states without such a law, Vermont, Connecticut, Maine and Kentucky have rejected the idea, said Jonathan Gradess, executive director of the New York State Defenders Association.
Opponents say the New York bills are too broadly written and could result in civil confinement for offenders who are neither violent nor predatory.
Robert Perry, legislative director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said civil commitment could become this generation's Rockefeller drug laws. Lawmakers have begun rolling back what they have called overly harsh and ineffective drug laws the late Gov. Nelson Rockefeller championed in the early 1970s.
"And now it's sex offenders, and here we go again," Perry said.
Opponents put some of the blame on the media for focusing on a handful of horrific cases.
"People have been made frightened" and politicians have seized on the fear, Gradess said. "That's pandering."
Erik Kriss can be reached at erikriss@aol.com or (518) 463-8038.
http://www.syracuse.com/news/state/poststandard/index.ssf?/base/news-1/11417
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Posted by lois at March 11, 2006 10:58 AM