[NYAPRS Enews] Times, AP, Post: Accord on NYS Bill to Detain Sex Offenders

Thu Mar 1 07:00:27 EST 2007

Accord on Bill to Detain Sex Offenders 

By MICHAEL COOPER and DANNY HAKIM   New York Times   March 1, 2007

ALBANY, Feb. 28 - New York is poised to join more than a dozen states
that continue to detain sex offenders after they have finished serving
their prison sentences, under an agreement reached this week by Gov.
Eliot Spitzer and the State Legislature. 

The agreement, which officials said they expected to announce on
Thursday, will bring an end to several years of agonizing debates that
pitted victims' rights groups that argued that such laws were needed to
protect the public from sex offenders against civil libertarians who
were troubled that the state could confine people after their sentences
were served.

The new legislation will call for having mental health experts identify
sex offenders in prison who they believe pose a risk of committing new
crimes upon their release, several state officials who were briefed on
the agreement said. Those offenders would be tried before a jury, and if
the jury decided that they posed a threat, a judge would sentence them
to further confinement or would release them under strict supervision. 

The state officials were granted anonymity to describe the bill because
the formal announcement had not yet been made. Members of the
Legislature were briefed on the agreement that their leaders made with
the governor, and an announcement of the agreement was scheduled for
Thursday morning in the Capitol. 

"I think we are in agreement or very, very close to agreement," State
Senator Joseph L. Bruno, the Republican majority leader, said Wednesday
afternoon. "And that, again, is a tremendous result on behalf of the
people of this state." 

Such civil confinement legislation was long championed by the
Republican-led Senate and by the former governor, George E. Pataki, a
Republican, but it met with resistance in the Democratic-led Assembly,
which raised concerns about civil liberties. 

For several years, it became a hot-button political issue, with the
Republicans accusing the Democrats who opposed it of being soft on
crime. Governor Pataki, who failed to get a civil confinement bill
passed, started using the state's mental hygiene laws to detain sex
offenders in psychiatric hospitals after their prison terms ended, a
practice that the Court of Appeals struck down in November.

The mechanics of instituting civil confinement were complex. Some mental
health professionals, who would be asked to screen sex offenders and
supervise them in confinement, complained that it was a waste of scarce
resources to combat mental illness. They warned that some states with
similar laws almost never released offenders once they were civilly
confined, raising questions about their rehabilitation efforts.

Governor Spitzer, a Democrat who campaigned in support of such
legislation, helped persuade the Assembly to reach an agreement, several
officials said.

Governor Spitzer made the bill a priority, calling for it recently in
his first annual address to the Legislature. And his budget proposal
called for the addition of 335 state workers to handle civil confinement
efforts, the largest staff increase he has proposed.

The agreement calls for the creation of a new state office of sex
offender management, an official briefed on the agreement said. It calls
for greater supervision of sex offenders once they are paroled, and
would create a new class of crime, a sexually motivated felony, in which
prosecutors could try to prove that someone intended to commit a sex
crime, even if such a crime was not actually committed, the official
said.

Some groups worry about the passage of the new law.

"I think it's a poor piece of public policy, and won't make things
better in terms of crime prevention," said JoAnne Page, the chief
executive of the Fortune Society, an advocacy group that promotes
rehabilitation and alternatives to incarceration. She questioned the
ability of a state to predict who will commit a new crime.

But the agreement was hailed as a breakthrough in the Capitol. 

Assemblyman Ron Canestrari, the Democratic majority leader, said he was
pleased that the governor, the Assembly and the Senate were continuing
to reach agreements on new bills even as they battled one another
politically.

"I'm pleased with the outcome, and it's another success of this
legislative session," he said. 

Asked if the agreement was closer to the version proposed by the
Assembly or the version proposed by the Senate, he said: "It's a mix.
Maybe the fact that we're all not totally satisfied with it is proof
that it's a real compromise."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/01/nyregion/01civil.html?ref=nyregion&pag
ewanted=print 

------------

Bruno: Spitzer, Legislature close on confining sex predators

By MICHAEL GORMLEY Associated Press   February 28, 2007

ALBANY, N.Y. -- A plan to confine the most dangerous sex offenders after
their sentences are completed is near agreement in Albany, said Senate
Majority Leader Joseph Bruno. 

Gov. Eliot Spitzer and legislative leaders have been negotiating a new
"civil confinement" law after the state's highest court struck down
former Gov. George Pataki's method of keeping the offenders, all sides
have confirmed. Details of the negotiations that would lead to expanding
the number of offenders held at secure mental health facilities weren't
available. 

"Civil confinement, I expect, is going to be announced very shortly,"
Bruno said Wednesday. "I think we are in agreement or very, very close
to agreement and that, again, is a tremendous result on behalf of the
people of this state." 

Spitzer spokesmen wouldn't comment Wednesday. 

"One New York means a state where parents do not have to worry about a
sexual predator being released straight from prison back into their
neighborhood," Spitzer, a former prosecutor, said in his State of the
State speech in January. "That is why we must finally enact civil
confinement legislation." 

A bill circulated privately Wednesday and obtained by The Associated
Press would create an Office of Sex Offender Management. In addition to
public education, the office would work with corrections and mental
health department officials to keep offenders who sexually abuse
children and are most likely to re-offend in state facilities well after
their sentences end. 

In November, the Court of Appeals ruled that the state _ acting under an
order from Pataki _ wrongly confined convicted sex offenders in
psychiatric facilities at the end of their prison terms. 

Pataki had ordered the convicts held because he was frustrated by the
state Legislature's failure to enact a law preventing them from
returning to communities where they could repeat their crimes. 

Attorneys for then-Attorney General Spitzer argued the case for Pataki. 

Pataki recalled the Legislature back to Albany in December for a special
session to pass a law to continue civil confinement, but lawmakers and
Pataki failed to reach agreement. 

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--sexoffenders022
8feb28,0,6988452,print.story?coll=ny-region-apnewyork 

-----------

Hope rises for civil confinement act 

Sexual offenders would enter secure mental facilities after serving
terms in prison  

 By RICK KARLIN, Albany Times Union March 1, 2007 

ALBANY -- Lawmakers and Gov. Eliot Spitzer have all but finalized
agreement on a civil confinement law and are scheduled to announce plans
for the new legislation this morning.

The law, which would allow for continued confinement of persistent sex
offenders in secure psychiatric facilities after they have completed
their prison sentences, has been under discussion for years. But until
now, Senate Republicans and Assembly Democrats have been unable to reach
an accord.

An estimated 200 to 300 sexual predators would eventually be locked up
under the law, if it is approved by the Legislature.

Legislators have agreed on several changes since they discussed the
issue last year, said Sen. Dale Volker, R-Depew, who has long pushed for
the measure. Under the plan, a jury would first have to conclude there
was "clear and convincing evidence" an offender should be confined,
which is a lower standard than "beyond a reasonable doubt," he said.

A judge would then have to agree the offender should be confined.

Additionally, Volker said, sex offenders would get mental health
treatment while incarcerated.

The measure also would increase prison terms for some sex crimes,
keeping offenders in prison longer, Volker said.

"In broad terms, there is some agreement" added Assemblyman Jeffrion
Aubry, D-Queens. While still concerned about much of the law, he said he
and others successfully pushed to have mental health experts play a
larger role in the process.

He added the bill would likely pass in both houses as "there is great
thirst for an answer" to the civil confinement issue.

If agreement is reached and civil confinement becomes law, it would mark
yet another victory for Spitzer, who since taking office in January has
worked to resolve issues that had been deadlocked for years under former
Gov. George Pataki.

On Tuesday, Spitzer announced that he brought together business and
labor leaders to fix the state's troubled workers compensation system.
Earlier this year, he and lawmakers agreed to make the annual
budget-building process more transparent. They also forged an agreement
on ethics rules changes.

Last December, Pataki called a special session to deal with civil
confinement, but an agreement fell apart, with the former governor and
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver exchanging recriminations.

Volker said Spitzer was instrumental in bringing the sides together,
especially since the new governor wasn't engaged in an ongoing feud with
Silver. "I think where he played a role was in convincing the Assembly,"
Volker said.

Spitzer had battled the Assembly last month over the Legislature's
selection of state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli. But that fight appears to
have subsided.

Critics of civil confinement question whether it's the best way to
prevent sex abuse, since statistics show that most cases are among
family members or people who know each other and those incidents
frequently go unreported.

"It's fear-driven," JoAnn Page, CEO of The Fortune Society, which
advocates for prisoners and ex-prisoners.

Aubry added a civil confinement law, which will likely be overseen by a
new Office of Sex Offender Management, would be costly.

"The cost is extraordinary," he said.

Volker agreed it would be expensive, since he envisions making the
mental health facilities that hold sex offenders as secure as prisons.
Camp Pharsalia, a minimum-security prison in Chenango County that Pataki
wanted to convert for a civil confinement center, is still under
discussion, he said. The cost to convert the facility was estimated at
$130 million.

Special parole officers also would have to be hired to closely supervise
offenders who are out of prison.

"I'm not going to kid you," Volker said. "This is an expensive bill."

But, he added, "this is going to be the most comprehensive civil
confinement in the nation." 

Karlin can be reached at 454-5758 or by e-mail at
rkarlin at timesunion.com.

With Associated Press 

http://timesunion.com/AspStories/storyprint.asp?StoryID=567663 

------------

GOV DEAL ON JAILED PERVS

By FREDRIC U. DICKER   New York Post

March 1, 2007 -- Gov. Spitzer and the leaders of the Legislature will
announce agreement today on a controversial "civil confinement" measure
designed to make it easier to keep dangerous sexual offenders behind
bars after their prison terms expire, sources said last night. 

The measure is expected to satisfy objections from Assembly Democrats by
allowing special hearings for offenders in their home counties, not in
the counties where they are imprisoned. 

Courts ruled against former Gov. George Pataki's efforts to keep
convicted sex criminals behind bars even if a panel of psychiatrists
finds them to be a continuing danger to society. 

Projections are that the new legislation will allow 200 sexually violent
offenders to be confined past their prison terms each year. 

http://www.nypost.com/seven/03012007/news/regionalnews/gov_deal_on_jaile
d_pervs_regionalnews_fredric_u__dicker.htm 

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