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Application
Issue:
A program is needed to reduce the number of children who are
victims of sex offenses
Status:
Draft
Discussion:
Sex offenses against children do lasting and
devastating harm. They are risk factors that cause or exaserbate a
number of mental disorders: e.g., post traumatic stress disorders,
depression, and borderline personality disorders. Hence, advocates
want to reduce these risk factors.
Many people who
sexually molest children suffer from a personality disorder, which is
very difficult to treat. Many offenders have molested numerous
children before they are caught. Imprisonment removes the offender
from the street, but once they complete their prison and probation
time, most become repeat offenders.
There is no simple solution to this issue. Although
this is the subject of extensive research, no easy solutions are in
sight. Some offenders can be managed in the community under closely
supervised long-term probation, which is a few cases can be helped
with medications. Indefinite sentencing meets stiff resistence from
advocates for the offenders rights.
Hence, NAMI advocates have asked the Alaska Mental
Health Board and the Department of Corrections to appoint a taskforce
of the best professionals available to review the research and
recommend a course of action to the legislature.
In 1998 the Alaska Legislature passed SB 216 "An
Act providing for the civil commitment of sexually violent
predators." This calls for the indefinite in-patient civil commitment
of these offenders. Alaska's law is patterned after one passed in
1990 by the State of washington.
As part of our review of SB 216, we searched the
National Library of Medicine's abstracts of research on sex
offenders. Our query found 507 citations. One of these was an article
by Brody and Green in the Bulletin of American Academy of Psychiatric
Law 1994, entitled "Washington State's unscientific approach to the
problem of repeat sex offenders." The authors concluded that the law
is unscientific, treatments are inadequate to ensure future safety,
and the law selects poor candidates for treatment.
We sent the Alaska legislature citations for that
abstract and for articles in the Spring edition of the National
Technical Assistance Center for State Mental Health Planning (NTAC)
newsletter, which carried two negative articles about state laws
similar to SB 216: Message
from NTAC's Director and
"States Consider
Sex Offender Commitment Laws"
Despite the negative reports on similar legislation in other states,
Alaska passed SB 216 with a fiscal note of $1.4-million. At the
Alaska Psychiatric Hospital's cost of $200-thousand per year per
patient, the legislature is only planning for 7 sex offenders. Alaska
has 3500 registered sex offenders. How, many of these would qualify
as "violent" and "sexual" predators we don't know, but it would be
many times 7. Additionally, many child molestors would not meet the
"violent" definition. Hence, at the time they passed the law, the
state legislature knew that it would not sigificantly reduce the
number of victims of sex offenses.
This is an important issue for both children
and adults. Because of the complex issues, we believe a special
taskforce is needed to review the issues, the available research, and
recommendations by the American Psychiatric Association and the
National Technical Assistance Center for State Mental Health
Planning.
The purpose of this taskforce would be to recommend
legislation and other action ot the state legislature and to the
Departments of Corrections and Health ans Social services.
Because of the complexity of these issues, the
taskforce should include the best professionals available plus
advocates for the victims and the offenders.
&emdash;prepared by Dick Wilson
Strategies:
After a period of review of this
issue ask all advocacy groups concerned with sex abuse, children or
mental disorders to request the state government to form the
recommended taskforce.
- Planned Action steps:
- By November Prepare a sample letter for
advocacy groups interested in children to send to the
following:
- Governor,
- HESS Committees of the Senate and House,
- The Commissioner of Health and Social
Services
- The Commissioner of Corrections
Progress:
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Date Last Modified: 5/7/01