Three Cheers for One Strike
JR., JOHN J. DIIULIO
Three Cheers for One Strike There are solid reasons to worry about repeat offenses from child abusers. BY JOHN J. DIIULIO JR. THIS WEEK, nearly 300 Catholic bishops are gathering in Dallas to...
...is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute...
...Whatever the bishops' theological arguments against one-strike policies, there is only pseudo-scientific justification for giving pseudo-celibate priests who have molested children psychological counseling, then restoring them to ministry in positions where they have easy access to and authority over unsuspecting children...
...Before going to prison, they had racked up 21,638 arrest charges for sexual assaults and a host of other crimes...
...How helpful is that...
...Compared with other parolees (for example, released burglars, three-quarters of whom are rearrested, and a quarter of whom are rearrested for burglary, within three years), sex offenders are less prone to be rearrested for the same offenses for which they were last imprisoned...
...Some bishops reportedly oppose any one-strike policy in favor of having each diocese use psychological evaluations in deciding, case by case, what to do with known perpetrators...
...Of all persons in prison for sexual assault, about 80 percent victimized a minor, and about 40 percent victimized a child age 12 or younger...
...Some justices are reportedly warm to the idea that, rather than automatically putting released child molesters on public sex-offender registries, they should hold individual hearings to determine which freed sex predators still pose a risk and which do not...
...Whatever either Catholic canon law or U.S...
...On average, offenders released from prison for rape in 1996 had served 5.5 years (53 percent of their maximum sentence), up from 5 years, 2 months (46 percent of their maximum sentence) for those released from prison in 1990...
...After three years back on the streets, they had added 2,444 arrests to their total...
...He cites another such review encompassing 15 studies that focus on the psychological treatment of sex offenders...
...A book published this year, Crime: Public Policies For Crime Control, features an essay by University of Cincinnati criminologist Francis T. Cullen, whose research argues that certain criminal rehabilitation programs really do work...
...So, roughly 8 out of 10 untreated sex offenders, and 9 out of 10 treated sex offenders, are not caught or prosecuted for new sex crimes...
...Prisoner self-report studies across several states find that convicted sex offenders, like other felons, commit more crimes of all kinds each year than they are ever arrested for or convicted of committing...
...For example, in 1994, 3,138 rapists were released from prison in 15 states...
...In the 1980s and early 1990s, many states expanded their prison-based and other programs for known sex offenders, but the rate at which released offenders returned to prison within three years was actually higher for rapists and other sexual assault felons released in 1994 than it was for those released in 1983...
...The two largest recidivism studies ever conducted suggest that, within three years of exiting prison, about half of rapists and other sex offenders are rearrested...
...Bureau of Justice Statistics and other solid sources, we know Contributing editor John J. DiIulio Jr...
...Cullen cites one review of 26 quantitative studies (what social scientists call a meta-analysis) which finds that, on average, 12 percent of the treated sex offenders committed more sex offenses, while 22 percent of untreated sex offenders in control groups did so...
...constitutional law may be interpreted to require in such cases, there is no firm empirical basis for the bishops' and justices' shared assumption that we know how to reform sex offenders or can predict which victimizers will harm children again and which will not...
...Cullen characterizes the latest scientific evaluations of sex-offender programs as showing that "modest, but meaningful, reductions in recidivism can be achieved...
...Those crimes resulted in only 20,068 state felony convictions for rape, about 14,248 of which resulted in prison sentences...
...But they must be balanced against justice for past victims and protection of the public from future harm...
...Still, it is not practical to talk, as some victims' rights advocates do, about incarcerating or tightly supervising most or all convicted sex offenders...
...It shows that, on average, 9.9 percent of sex offenders in "cognitive behavioral programs" commit new sex crimes, while 17.3 percent of sex offenders without such psychological treatment do...
...How "meaningful...
...Over half of sex offenders admitted to prisons have violated parole...
...From the U.S...
...Mercy for pedophile priests and civil liberties for paroled sex offenders are important and legitimate values...
...A few things we do know...
...Supreme Court decided to hear arguments concerning Megan's laws, the neighbor-notification policies in 20 states named for Megan Kanka, the New Jersey child who was kidnapped, raped, and killed in 1994 by a paroled sex offender who had moved in across the street...
...Sex offender advocates concede that released rapists commit lots of serious crimes, but they stress that only a small fraction (2.5 percent in the latest large recidivism study) are rearrested for rape as opposed to other crimes...
...True, but sex offenders, chronic or casual, need not specialize in sexual predation for one to worry about having them back on the streets unsupervised or in job or community settings that may tempt them...
...Most sex offenders favor young prey...
...Overall, 46 percent were rear-rested for a new crime, and nearly a fifth were rearrested for a new violent crime...
...Whatever the justices' jurisprudential arguments against Megan's laws, there is only a flimsy empirical basis for denying that returning unsupervised sex offenders to the community without so much as notifying their nearby neighbors is like playing Russian roulette with residents' safety...
...Especially hard to detect and prosecute successfully are sexual crimes against minors...
...We cannot pretend to know which sex offenders are most likely to be cured by treatment, or which treatments work best under what conditions...
...that, of all sexual assault victims, an estimated 67 percent are under age 18, a third are under age 12, and 1 in 7 are age 6 or younger...
...THIS WEEK, nearly 300 Catholic bishops are gathering in Dallas to discuss whether parish priests who behave as pedophiles should lose their clerical collars after the first offense or be given one or more chances to repent and reform before being demoted, disgraced, or defrocked...
...For example, in 1994 alone (the latest year for which there are complete data), there were 167,550 rapes, plus another 148,610 attempted rapes and 116,590 other sexual assaults...
...Neither, however, is it practical to assume that many or most sex-offender treatment programs work, or that we have psychological tests and other ways of reliably predicting which sex offenders remain dangerous after being treated and which do not...
...Last month, the U.S...
Vol. 7 • June 2002 • No. 39
