The Sexually Violent Predator Law is based on an idea no one questions—protecting society from repeat sex offenders.
Most people probably think that’s all they need to know about it. But now, when the state budget has been slashed to the bone, it might be time to take a closer look at a program that’s never been cut and has cost over half a billion dollars in the last seven years.
A program that critics call perverted justice.
Jeri Elster’s attacker was a convicted rapist with a long criminal record. In fact, when authorities finally tracked him down, he was already in prison, doing time for another rape. That’s why Jeri hopes he won’t be released when his sentence is up in 2007.
Instead, she hopes he will be sent to Atascadero State Hospital, under California’s Sexually Violent Predator (SVP) Law.
The SVP Law is designed to protect society by keeping these convicted sex offenders locked up until they can be safely released. Most people would probably think that’s a good idea. But critics say it only sounds that way.
There are approximately 400 men locked up under the SVP Law. According to Department of Justice statistics there are over 80,000 high risk and serious registered sex offenders living in California’s cities and towns. A recent study found that over 30,000 of California’s registered sex offender were missing, and law enforcement has no money to even try and find them.
Unlike the movies, there’s no legal way to put people in prison because they might commit future crimes. Nor is it legal to keep them in prison after they’ve served their time. But, it is legal, according to the U.S. Supreme Court, to lock them up in a mental hospital, so long as it’s for treatment of a mental illness.
Since 1996 when the SVP Law was passed, over 4500 violent high risk sex offenders have been released from prison but only 400 have been committed to Atascadero as SVP’S, according to Russ Heimerich from the Department of Corrections. The other 4,100 were simply released into the community, part the over 80,000 serious and high risk registered sex offenders currently living in California.
Men like Mackenzie Crawford. Crawford was sent to prison for felony rape in 1991 and again in 1995 for a lewd act with a child. In 1999 he was convicted of molesting a child. And now he’s back in jail charged with multiple counts of kidnapping and rape. Yet he’s not considered an SVP.
So why are we spending so much on a program that only keeps 400 sex offenders locked up?
According to Dr. Theodore Donaldson, a psychologist who has conducted dozens of evaluations of sex offenders for the state, the answer is simple politics.
“People are really upset about sex offenders,” asserts Dr. Donaldson, “so it makes a politician very, very popular when it looks like he’s really doing something about it.”