Sexually Violent Predator Legislation Introduced by Assemblymember Pedro Nava

Ed: But what do we do about the "worst-of-the-worst" politicians?

California State Assembly member Pedro Nava announces the introduction of legislation to protect victims and our communities from sexually violent predators.

"We need to make sure that the worst of the worst offenders do not inflict more harm on our neighborhoods," said Nava. "This measure provides vital protections to victims, their families and communities from sexually violent predators."

Harriet Salarno, Chair of Crime Victims United of California, said, "Crime Victims United of California commends Assemblyman Nava for his persistence in addressing issues of concern related to juveniles and sexually violent predators. The nature of sex crimes committed by juveniles provides good insight into the individual´s potential sexual and violent tendencies as an adult. Research seems to show that many sex offenders began their sexually abusive behavior as juveniles. AB 168 would provide the appropriate agencies charged with assessment of offenders with more information about SVP candidates to assist in more accurately assessing the threat they pose to the public."

Said, Jim Provenza, Special Assistant to Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley, "AB 168 will permit sealed juvenile records of violent sex criminals to be reviewed by mental health professionals to help determine if the offender should be confined for mental health treatment at the end of his or her prison term. Without this law prosecutors will be unable to prevent the release of some sexually violent predators into our communities."

AB 168 - Sex Crime Disclosure Act

The Sex Crime Disclosure Act permits the courts access to the full history of sex crimes committed by the most violent sex offenders when prosecutors are trying to civilly commit them after their prison sentence has been completed. Records of these offenses contain sociological and psychological reports that are valuable tools for inspection and use in a Sexual Violent Predator (SVP) proceeding. By having this information available during an SVP proceeding, it will enable those who have committed the most egregious acts to be civilly committed and prevented from inflicting more harm on our communities.

AB 61 ? The Sex Crime Loophole Closure Act

Last week Assemblymember Nava announced the introduction of AB 61, The Sex Crime Loophole Closure Act, which will prohibit authorities from granting "deferred entry of judgment" to juveniles who have committed sex offenses. Deferred judgment can be used to "launder" or expunge egregious sex crimes from a juvenile´s record. This measure will stop the practice of sending juveniles straight to probation if they have committed egregious sex crimes.

Assemblymember Nava, Crime Victims United and the public safety community believe that these measures are necessary to provide more tools to keep the most violent predators off our streets.

"Advocates": Imprison sex offenders; keep psychiatric services

ALBANY - Mental-health advocates are asking that officials look first at trimming the state's expensive sex-offender treatment program to help during New York's fiscal crisis rather than reducing services for people with mental illness.

State law provides that sex offenders who have completed their prison or parole terms but are considered too dangerous to live in society be placed in psychiatric institutions and receive treatment. Advocates for people with psychiatric disabilities have argued that the sex offenders should be housed in prisons or with intensive supervision in the community.

"We've always maintained that it was bad public policy, that it was costly and that it was an inappropriate setting," said Glenn Liebman, CEO of the Mental Health Association of New York State.

Now, as the state's financial problems become more acute and additional cuts for mental-health care more likely, groups like the Mental Health Association want the governor and lawmakers to take a second look at how much is spent on sex offenders. There are fewer than 200 sex offenders housed in psychiatric hospitals as part of the state's $50-million-a-year sex-offender program when people whose cases are still being adjudicated are subtracted, Liebman said. That means the real cost is about $400,000 per person, with a large price tag for treatment and security staff, he said.

"If they were in a correctional setting, absolutely you wouldn't need such staffing," Liebman said.

He noted that the need for mental-health services goes up when the economy is poor.

The sex-offender program costs $48 million a year, and the annual cost per bed is $225,000, said Jeffrey Gordon, a spokesman for Gov. David Paterson's Division of Budget.

The Budget Division will look at the recommendation, Gordon said. The governor is scheduled to present his 2009-10 budget proposal Dec. 16, and the administration is not commenting or speculating on what it will include, Gordon said.

"Of course we're going to be looking at the cost of reducing the program along with every other program the state administers," he said.

The number of sex offenders in mental-health facilities was 177 as of Nov. 13, with many of those in the middle of the civil commitment process, said Jill Daniels, a state Office of Mental Health spokeswoman. Of the 177, 122 were in Central New York Psychiatric Center in Marcy, Oneida County, and 44 were in St. Lawrence Psychiatric Center in Ogdensburg, St. Lawrence County. The rest were at Manhattan Psychiatric Center, she said. Most trials are in New York City, so some stay at Manhattan Psychiatric during those times.

State spending to treat sex offenders will only grow over time since many people placed in civil confinement are there for the long term, said Harvey Rosenthal, head of the New York Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services. It would cost the same amount of money to build a new psychiatric center every few years, he said.

"We understand that this is a time when we're looking to make economies, and accordingly we think reconfiguring how we house and treat the sex-offender group would be a way to make economies that both protects the public but doesn't unravel the mental-health system," he said.

When the state passed civil-confinement legislation for sex offenders in 2007, there was an agreement that paying for it would not take money away from mental-health services, Rosenthal said. Advocates believe that has started happening "and is on schedule to do that at an alarming rate," he said.

A number of sex offenders in the mental-health system predate the state's civil-confinement law. New York began civil commitment for sex offenders three years ago under then-Gov. George Pataki. The state's highest court found that the Pataki administration had improperly used mental-hygiene law to confine the offenders after the end of their prison terms.

Sex offenders likely don't need hospital-level care in many instances, Rosenthal said, but an intensive "community incarceration" kind of program with mandated supervision, anklets and other conditions. That kind of treatment would be cheaper and would prevent the loss of mental-health funds for people with psychiatric disabilities, he said.

Services for children and adults that are known collectively as a mental-health safety net received two rounds of cuts this year. One was 2 percent, which was included in the budget lawmakers passed in April. The second, in the summer, was a 6 percent across-the-board reduction to areas like day centers, case management, peer-support and other programs that are critical to helping people stay safe and in treatment and out of hospitals, prisons and homeless centers, Rosenthal said. The combined financial impact was an estimated $40 million to $50 million, he said. [Ed: Unmentioned in this discussion amongst "advocates" is that the policy of further imprisoning those who have fully completed their sentences is fundamentally wrong and, despite S.C.O.T.U.S. majority opinion, manifestly unconstitutional!]

No exit: sex offenders jailed for all time

New South Wales, Australia

In the past years, 10 men have been kept in NSW prisons months after they finished doing their time. Their sentences have expired but the Government brands them "high-risk, hard-core" offenders, and the courts have ordered further detention.

All are serious sex offenders - men with a long history of raping or sexually assaulting women, girls or boys in abhorrent crimes.

It has been a year since the introduction of the Serious Sex Offender legislation, which allows the detention or close supervision of serious sex offenders past their release date "for the safety and protection of the community". The legislation is designed to encourage them to undertake treatment, which is believed to reduce the chance they will reoffend.

The new law has caused a debate over the best way to deal with sex offenders - whether they should be freed at the end of their sentence, locked up forever or released only after successful treatment.

The Government defends its tough stance but others are unconvinced about the law's effectiveness. The real test will come after those men who have agreed to treatment seek release.

Already the Government has applied to keep two of the men, who have enrolled in the recommended treatment program, in jail for up to five more years when their detention ends.
When it was introduced, the Government said the scheme was designed for "a handful" of serious offenders who had not tried to rehabilitate in prison. The intent was to allow them to be placed under long-term supervision, or "in only the worst cases, kept in custody".

Only one of the 10 men kept in prison since the law was introduced - Neville Francis Hadson - is living in the community under strict supervision, after four extra months in prison.

Another, Raymond Barry Cornwall, was released on supervision last December but removed his electronic anklet within an hour of being freed and is serving a sentence for this breach.

The first of the men subjected to the new law, Kenneth Davidson Tillman, was kept under surveillance by private investigators from 6am to 6.30pm for 12 days when released, before he was returned to detention after an appeal.

Those who have been detained are expected to finish approved treatment programs, available only in custody, to reduce their likelihood of reoffending before they are considered for release.
But Tillman's case has reportedly been taken up by the UN Human Rights Committee. The legislation has strong opposition from the civil rights lobby.

The public has "charged emotional views" about sex offenders, says Cameron Murphy, president of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties. "Many of the measures sound good, make people feel good, but I'm struggling to see how they in effect assist the community," he says.

Detention is additional punishment which undermines the criminal justice system, Murphy says, and it is the human right of prisoners to know their maximum prison term at the time of sentence. In effect, people are being incarcerated not for something they have done, but something they might do in the future.

Not so, says Howard Brown from the victims support group VOCAL. They are not being punished for possible future offences but for their failure to seek treatment in the past. In a democracy "the needs of the greater [community] sometimes supersede the needs of the individual", he says.
Murphy counters that, if we want sex offenders detained for life, we should debate this publicly, but the full punishment should be known at the time of sentence.

It is not the first time the NSW Government has detained people past their sentence. However, the legislation to detain the killer Gregory Wayne Kable in 1994 was later ruled unconstitutional.
Legislation to detain serious offenders in Western Australia withstood a High Court appeal in 2004, against the dissenting opinion of Justice Michael Kirby. He invoked the spectre of 1930s Germany, before saying: "In Australia, such punishment … is not available for crimes that are feared, anticipated or predicted to occur in the future, on evidence that is notoriously unreliable and otherwise would be inadmissible, and by people who do not have the gift of prophesy."
Queensland and Victoria also have legislation allowing for the detention of serious offenders.
NSW's deputy senior public defender, Andrew Haesler, SC, says Victoria leads the way with its program of preparing offenders for release, with planned and funded supervision and psychiatric treatment.

Some states in the US provide for mandatory "chemical castration" - medication that reduces testosterone levels, hence suppressing sex drive. Others have followed New Jersey in adopting "Megan's law", which allows for the public to be notified about the location of released sex offenders.

In Britain, sex offenders are sometimes kept under strict surveillance. Canada and New Zealand have similar schemes.

The NSW law has been criticised as an example of the Government wanting to be seen as tough on crime, but not spending the money to support it or offering alternative approaches.
Sex offenders are being targeted, suggests Dr Stephen Allnutt, a psychiatrist and conjoined senior lecturer at the University of NSW, because the public find their offences "quite abhorrent". But statistics show they actually reoffend less often than other criminals.

Among those classified in the worst category of sex offenders, 45 per cent will reoffend within 10 years. But within only two years 47 per cent of other offenders will have returned to prison, the Supreme Court was told in one of the cases.

Probably those most likely to commit further crimes when they come out of prison are untreated drug offenders, says Haesler, who has represented serious sex offenders fighting detention orders.
"I don't condone what my clients do, just because I am a defence lawyer. But we've got it wrong in locking them up for ever and ever."

The Government stands by its decision to target sex offenders only. "High-risk sex offenders who have not made any attempt to rehabilitate whilst in prison pose a very real threat to the public," says a spokesman for the Attorney-General, John Hatzistergos.

While many factors turn someone into a sex offender, the profiles of the 10 men detained under the new law have similarities: alcohol abuse, relationship problems, broken homes, intimacy issues and - often - being the victim of sexual abuse.

Statistically, someone might fall into the group of high-risk offenders, sharing many of the risk factors, but there is no way of telling whether they will reoffend, says Linda Valenta, president of the Australian & New Zealand Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abuse.

Asked if she would mind living next to a known sex offender, Valenta says abuse is close to home for many people. "A lot of people probably already do live next door to people who are abusing."
But treatment is proven to reduce recidivism rates by between 15 and 30 per cent, she says.
Brown is less optimistic, comparing sex offenders to alcoholics, who are never cured but can sometimes abstain.

Some psychologists believe treatment doesn't work, and argue that more treated than untreated offenders reoffend because they lie when they realise they can "graduate" only if they parrot the lines fed to them by therapists.

But even those pressured into treatment often change their attitude and receive real benefits from it, Valenta says.

Research shows recidivism is high for treatment dropouts. Interrupted treatment may make offenders worse by introducing them to bad role models and a range of new, sexually deviant behaviours and fantasies.

However, another study found those who deny their offences and accept no treatment reoffend less than others who seek treatment.

Allnutt warns about the reliability of such studies because for ethical reasons there are no control groups that receive "placebo" treatment.

The Custody-based Intensive Treatment program runs in the prison system for offenders deemed to present the highest risk of reoffending. They do no chores and do not socialise; their sole focus is the program.

David Bright, a research fellow at the University of NSW, helped set up the program in 1999 and led changes to it in 2005. He says the course aims to change prisoners' risk factors.
"Men who offend against children, for example, will often have attitudes that allow them to reoffend - that children enjoy sexual contact with adults, or that children or teenagers are allowing them or consenting to sexual activity," he says.

"We can look at changing their attitudes towards women or towards children and sex."
Most men who agree to treatment are not doing it because they are dissatisfied with their lives or remorseful. They seek parole or better conditions. Even so, many of them have to wait for a vacancy: the program only has 40 places.

" The program has gained momentum and gained credibility, particularly with the new legislation, which I think that has motivated (in inverted commas) a lot more men to seek the program or at least to agree to it," Bright says.

A study of 104 offenders who completed the program and were released found they reoffended #at less than the rate expected, given their risk factors.

A Government spokesman claims research has shown the program reduces sexual offending by 75 per cent. Some of the 10 men targeted by the legislation had previously refused to enrol in the program. Others had started it, but then dropped out.
[Ed: The English-speaking world continues to lead the pack of sex hysterics worldwide!]

Kan. lawmakers reject audit of sex offender treatment program

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) - Some legislators say the state program that indefinitely holds sexual offenders doesn't seem to be effective, while others say the treatment is working.

Lawmakers last week rejected an effort to require an audit of the program at Larned State Hospital.

Opponents said the move would threaten public safety and the jobs of the program's employees.

But Representative Bob Bethell, a Republican from Alden, says that since the program started in 1994 only two people have finish the various phases of treatment and been released. [Ed: Oh, but don't you see, Bob? That's the SUCCESS part! These laws were enacted as a "work-around" to the Constitution, enabling government to imprison these guys (and they are almost always "guys") for the rest of their lives or, at least, until they are so old and infirm that they become too expensive for the State to keep. The whole IDEA is to EMPHASIZE TREATMENT as a way of justifying "civil" incarceration while laughing at those so gullible as to believe that treatment is their real aim!]

Under Kansas law, sex offenders who have finished their prison sentences can be kept in the program at Larned State Hospital if they are determined to be a continuing threat to the community.

But costs of the program have increased. The proposed budget for the sexual predator treatment program for this year is $13.4 million to treat 171 patients.

Civil Commitment Upheld, Allegedly Stared at Young Boys

Bismarck Tribune

North Dakota’s Supreme Court upheld a Grand Forks man's commitment to the state mental hospital for treatment as a sexual predator.

The court's decision Thursday was split. Justice Carol Ronning Kapsner says there isn’t enough evidence to conclude Christopher Midgett was a predator.

When psychologists decided to put Midgett into the hospital, they cited two instances where Midgett allegedly stared at young boys. Kapsner says that isn’t enough evidence to lock someone up indefinitely for treatment.

Midgett was confined as a juvenile in Texas for molesting a 5-year-old girl and an 8-year-old boy. Court records say he was 13 when he was confined. He’s now 25 years old.

Midgett’s attorney says he should have been allowed to question the witnesses who accused him of staring at boys. The Supreme Court’s justices agree that Midgett’s right to confront his accusers doesn’t apply during civil commitment proceedings. [Ed: This is reminiscent of the so-called "rape stare" allegation Atascadero (CA) female staff employ to sabotage patient's records. The scary thing is, there is nothing surprising or out of the ordinary in a man being civilly committed for life on the basis of "staring" in our country today. Indeed, it is now commonplace. The other important point here is that, despite the fact that the defendant is in the process of losing his freedom completely, civil commitment procedures accord the defendant far fewer rights than they would have in a criminal proceeding. This is all predicated on the conceit that he is "not being punished" by being civilly confined but rather he is "undergoing treatment" and "society is being safeguarded". Please, dear Lord, save us from our protectors!]

As Frank Valado Lay Dying...

Mike St. Martin reports on the death of Frank Valado at Coalinga State Hospital. His account recounts Valado's final moments and t Mike St. Martin reports on the death of Frank Valado at Coalinga State Hospital. His report recounts Valado's final moments and the seeming indifference with which his life was regarded by California Department of Mental Health staff. Listen To Report

Committing sex offenders is costly, not very effective

By The Daily News

Douglas Allen Alsteen, a repeat sex offender, has done his time. Now he's back in a Cowlitz County courtroom, facing the possibility of indefinite confinement at Washington's Special Commitment Center on McNeil Island.

The violent sexual predator law state prosecutors are hoping will keep Alsteen locked away continues to stir controversy 17 years after its enactment. Critics say the law smacks of double jeopardy and fails to accomplish its expressed purpose, which is to treat violent sex offenders until they no longer pose a threat to society.

According to a recent New York Times report on costs at McNeil Island and civil-commitment facilities at the 18 other states that enacted laws modeled on Washington's, this state pays an average of $127,632 anually for each person committed under the law. That compares to $29,055 annually for each prison inmate. Washington's civil commitment program now has 266 residents. It's budget for fiscal 2007 totals $45 million. Full Story

Judge strikes sex offense commitment law

By Mike Baker, Associated Press Writer

RALEIGH, N.C. — The U.S. government cannot keep sex offenders in custody beyond the end of their prison sentences, a federal judge has ruled, striking down a law aimed at holding some in mental hospitals. full story

Shades of the Gulag - civil detention of sexual predators punishes acts suspected to occur in the future

Humanist Jan-Feb, 1998
by Barbara Dority

On June 23, 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Kansas v. Hendricks that the state may brand sex offenders as "violent sexual predators" and commit them indefinitely after they have served their full prison sentences, based on speculation about what they might do in the future.

In a majority opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas, the Court also declared that indefinite civil confinement is not punishment, that the new definitions stated above do not violate due process rights, and that a yearly review of a person's confinement need not be conducted by an impartial court but can be facilitated by a special committee set up by the state and accountable to no one. read full article

The Guide Magazine: Uprising at California Sex Gulag

By French Wall

Civil detainees at California's Coalinga State Hospital are in their second month of a strike, protesting the conditions at the understaffed facility and "treatment" protocols that make it all-but impossible for them to gain their freedom. Coalinga houses more than 600 men who have completed prison sentences for sex crimes, but who remain incarcerated under California's civil-commitment law.

According to organizers, about three-quarters of those incarcerated in the Coalinga facility are participating in some way with the strike, which began August 6. Strikers are refusing to take part in the facility's activities and treatment programs, and are displaying "protest tags" carrying slogans such as "When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty." On September 2, over a dozen Coalinga detainees ratcheted up the protest by undertaking a hunger strike, vowing to refuse food until conditions are improved. read full story

The American Psikhushka (excerpt)

Ever since the US Supreme Court’s 1997 Kansas v. Hendricks decision, 14 more states have passed laws instituting civil commitment procedures for sex offenders (for a total of 20 states). These laws allow committal due to “mental abnormality”, which is a far lower standard than for any other mental disability and are quite clearly intended as further punishment for a despised group (subsequent court decisions allowed continued incarceration even when no “therapy” was offered.) As a society we once roundly condemned such psychiatric abuse – now we routinely practice it.

Psikhushka (Russian: психушка) is a Russian colloquialism for psychiatric hospital. In the Soviet Union, psychiatric hospitals were often used by the authorities as prisons in order to isolate political prisoners from the rest of society, discredit their ideas, and break them physically and mentally; as such they were considered a form of torture. The official explanation was that "no sane person would declaim against Soviet government and communism".

Psikhuskas had already been in use since the late 1940s (for example, Alexander Esenin-Volpin was imprisoned in 1949 for “anti-Soviet poetry”) and this increased during the Khrushchev era in the 1960s. (One of the first psikhuskas was the Psychiatric Prison Hospital in the city of Kazan. Beria transferred it to the NKVD in 1939. In 1969 the head of KGB, Yuri Andropov, submitted to the Central Committee of CPSU a plan for creating a whole network of psikhushkas.)

Soviet psychiatry created and then abused the diagnosis of sluggishly progressing schizophrenia (вялотекущая шизофрения) – a special form of the illness that supposedly affects only the person's social behavior, with no trace of other traits: "most frequently, ideas about a struggle for truth and justice are formed by personalities with a paranoid structure," according to the Moscow Serbsky Institute professors. Some of them had high rank in the MVD (the Ministry of Internal Affairs), such as the infamous Danil Luntz, who was characterized by Viktor Nekipelov1 as "no better than the criminal doctors who performed inhuman experiments on the prisoners in Nazi concentration camps" .

Psychiatrists described a “sufferer” of sluggishly progressing schizophrenia as a person appearing quite normal most of the time but who would break out with a severe case of "inflexibility of convictions," or "nervous exhaustion brought on by his or her search for justice," or "a tendency to litigation" or "reformist delusions." The treatment involved intravenous injections of psychotropic drugs that were so painfully administered patients became unconscious.

“Criminal lunacy” became part of the Criminal Code in 1961 and described a person who was unable to “realize his actions or to control them.” Such actions included, “dissemination of patently false statements defaming Soviet political and social system,” “abuse of a national emblem or flag” or “active participation in group acts that break public peace.”

Russian historian and archivist Anatoli Prokopenko said, “By certifying people who were undesirable for the State as insane, it was possible to isolate them in psychiatric hospitals without court actions or public, internal or international upset.”

The sane individuals who were diagnosed as mentally ill were sent either to a regular psychiatric hospitals or, those deemed particularly dangerous, to special ones, run directly by the MVD. The treatment included various forms of restraint, electric shocks, a range of drugs (such as narcotics, tranquilizers, and insulin) that cause long lasting side effects, and sometimes involved beatings. Nekipelov describes inhuman uses of medical procedures such as lumbar punctures.

At least 365 sane people were treated for "politically defined madness" in the Soviet Union, and "there were surely hundreds more"1.

Lest you think this was an abuse peculiar to the Soviet Union, another example is drawn from the work of a prominent Chinese forensic psychiatrist, who discussed crimes committed by persons with schizophrenia: "Among the cases under discussion ... the person would often display absolutely no sense or instinct of self-preservation, for example by openly mailing out reactionary letters or pasting up reactionary slogan-banners in public places—and even, in some cases, signing his or her real name to the documents ... ".2 By these criteria, political dissenters who openly attempt to build a democratic structure in China, rather than conspiratorially trying to undermine the communist state, are especially susceptible to being called mentally ill.

American psychiatrists are certainly not immune to bending science to the service of the state. Remember how not so very long ago they claimed homosexuality was a mental disorder and inflicted medieval tortures on people trying to “cure” their gayness?

Remember when “drapetomania” was a treatable psychiatric disorder? The term derives from the Greek δραπετης (drapetes, "a runaway [slave]") + μανια (mania, "madness, frenzy"). This was a diagnosis proposed in 1851 by physician Samuel A. Cartwright, of the Louisiana Medical Association, to explain the tendency of black slaves to flee captivity. In the case of slaves "sulky and dissatisfied without cause" – a warning sign of imminent flight – Cartwright proposed "whipping the devil out of them" as a "preventative measure."

We laugh at the obvious pseudo-science behind such nonsense, but you can bet the victims of those diagnoses weren’t laughing. The same holds true for the present day victims of civil commitment. Unless and until objective and independently verifiable criteria can be established, the civil commitment of sex offenders cannot be seen as anything other than a rank abuse of psychiatry and a failure of the law to protect the human rights of a despised minority. For a country that continually pats itself on the back for being a shining beacon of liberty, this is nothing less than a shameful shortfall from our professed ideals.

Notes:
0 This article excerpted from various Wikipedia entries and other web sides.
1Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History, Doubleday, April, 2003, ISBN 0-7679-0056-1
2 Munro R: Judicial psychiatry in China and its political abuses. Columbia Journal of Asian Law 14:1-125, 2000

Video: Compulsory Psychiatric Medication in the US

Excerpt from documentary film "One Nation, Under Siege". Statement by Dr. Rima Laibow drawing parallels between use of psychiatric medications and techniques by Soviets to incapacitate political dissidents and the current U.S. practice of using those same techniques for identical purposes.

September 29, 2007 Coalinga Update:

Despite Administration assertions to the contrary, Civil Detainees in California's $388 Million Coalinga State Hospital remain on strike in the second month of a non-violent action.

They charge that the Hospital's new Director, Norman Kramer, has also reneged on his recent promises to:

• Meet with Representatives of the Detainee Provisional government by Friday of last week.
• Transcribe tape recorded minutes of their prevous meeting with him and to make these available to Detainees and the media.
• Remove Clinical Director Rocky Spurgeon, the primary Defendant in a Detainee lawsuit recently reconfirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals, 9^th Circuit Court and sent back to the Federal District Court for trial¹.

Reportedly lacking professional qualifications for his position, Spurgeon remains in a position of authority at the Hospital where he is referred to by staff and Detainees alike as “Rocky the
Roadblock” for his reputation of deliberately frustrating attempts by Detainees to exercise the few rights they enjoy.

The Administration's repeated denial to media that a Detainee strike is underway at C.S.P. is seen by strike organizers as a means to circumvent adverse press coverage and establish a sense of normality which they hope will prevail by the time of the U.S. Department of Justice's visit there later this month. The scope of the D.O.J. inspection is quite broad and seeks to determine the conditions of confinement and treatment of Detainees in the dramatically understaffed facility. A drastic reshuffling of Administration staff since the strike began including one senior staff member escorted off the premises by police escort gives little credibility to the Administration's assertion that a strike is neither underway nor having an effect on the Hospital's operations.

Detainees plan further, as yet unspecified, strike actions in the coming weeks.

¹ Hydrick, et al. v. Schwarzenegger, et al. http://vlex.com/vid/20630509

August 27, 2007 Coalinga Update:

Now in the third week of a non-violent strike, Civil Detainees in California's $388 Million Coalinga State Hospital point to a staff shakeup and a facility-wide shutdown as evidence of the strike's effectiveness and the administration's desperation in containing the revolt. Detainees, refusing to participate in most programs during the strike, have effectively shut down all Sex Offender Treatment.

More than 600 Former Department of Corrections prisoners, now being held as Civil Detainees by D.M.H. (Dept. of Mental Health) under California's stringent sex offender laws at Coalinga State Hospital, have been on strike since August 6 to demand the restoration of their civil rights. Having previously served their entire sentences in prison, they insist conditions under which they are being held are unconstitutional and inhumane and go far beyond the narrow constraints under which the laws were enacted. The U.S. Supreme Court, while having upheld the constitutionality of laws detaining sex offenders beyond their prison terms to protect society and treat offenders, requires that further detention not have the effect of punishing offenders twice for the same crime. However, the Hospital's Director, Clinical Administrator, Chief Medical Officer, and Police Lieutenant have all recently informed Detainees "you have no civil rights."

August 23, 2007 Coalinga Update:

Acting Director Rocky Spurgeon and Program Clinical Administrator, Gary Renzaglia resigned but may remain in D.M.H. Nighttime surprise searches, including strip-searches, rousted Detainees from bed-many of them elderly, infirm, or in wheelchairs- and herded them into an inner courtyard outdoors while staff conducted searches.

August 22, 2007 Coalinga Update:

Detainee James Allen Hydrick, 48, was assaulted by Police Staff for refusing to relinquish a protest leaflet. After a tug-of-war for the leaflet, Hydrick was placed in a choke-hold and nearly passed out. Another inmate's medical emergency was ignored by staff who instead insisted that he remove a "protest tag" from his clothing.

August 21, 2007 Coalinga Update:

An unsigned directive to Hospital Police stated "...effective immediately, patients are not to gather in the halls... Patient I.D . tags are to be cleared of any attachments. ...Patients have "no right to assembly" at this time. "Sit-downs" are not allowed."" [NOTE: Many Detainees have been wearing "protest tags" asserting their civil rights since the strike began].

Treatment for rapists, molesters under fire. Cost, legality and effectiveness at issue in extended program

Treatment for rapists, molesters under fire. Cost, legality and effectiveness at issue in extended program
Jim Doyle, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, July 11, 2004

California, in a program whose effectiveness is being questioned, spends more than $75 million a year to lock up hundreds of child molesters and rapists in a maximum-security hospital here after their prison terms have ended.

The cost -- about $400 a day per person -- pays for housing, health care, administrative and court-related costs of 535 ex-convicts who are incarcerated at Atascadero State Hospital in the Sexually Violent Predator Program. The price tag is about five times the daily cost of keeping an inmate in state prison. In a federal court in Los Angeles, a class-action lawsuit is attacking California's implementation of the predator law on the grounds, among other things, that it illegally extends the offenders' incarceration.

Because of court backlogs and extensive litigation surrounding individual cases, about 70 men have been hospitalized at Atascadero for three years or longer without being given a trial before a judge or jury to test whether their extended incarceration was valid. Three men have been held there for eight years without trial.

The population of convicted sex offenders in California is huge: More than 17,000 are in state prisons, and more than 67,000 have served their time and live in communities outside prison walls. But California is one of few states whose prisons offer no significant sex offender treatment programs.

California's handling of its sexually violent predators is facing a challenge by a major Los Angeles law firm, Latham & Watkins, which argues in its lawsuit that sex offenders' constitutional rights are being violated in part by subjecting them to conditions that are often worse than state prison.
Franklin Zimring, a criminal law professor at the UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall, said the issues involved in the incarceration of sexually violent offenders are central to how the society defines itself.

"The true measure of the quality of the justice system is how those who are most detested are treated," said Zimring, adding that the system's failure to provide offenders with a prompt trial "seems to me to be a scandal. But it's the kind of scandal that has very few political costs. No one is going to be successful running for office in this state about the rights of sex offenders."

California focuses on only "a tiny point of the pyramid of sex offenders at an enormous cost," said Eric Janus, a professor at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minn., and a national expert on sexual predator laws. "We delude ourselves if we think we are locking up all the recidivists. ... (We're) going to miss most of the people who are going to commit more sex crimes."

Attorneys for sex offenders say the predator law was an act of political vengeance against those imprisoned before California's "get-tough" sentencing laws of the mid-1990s. "The intent is to lock these guys up. It's pure and simple," said Sacramento attorney Michael Aye, who has represented sex offenders in the predator program.

Aye insists that many offenders committed their sex crimes decades ago and pose little risk of re-offending. Other defense attorneys say many child molesters committed acts such as touching a child rather than violently attacking them.

"A lot of these guys have been (incarcerated) for 10 to 20 years, and they have changed," Aye said. "The rapists were driven by social and biological factors that are no longer in existence." Aye argues that, at much less cost, the state should provide community supervision and outpatient treatment programs for them.

Ted Donaldson, a psychologist in Morro Bay (San Luis Obispo County) who often testifies for the defense in sexual predator cases, said the program "has more politics and more bad psychology than any other program we've ever had. Most of the people being committed don't have a sexual mental disorder" as required under the law.

Marita Mayer, a Contra Costa County deputy public defender, compares the predator law to the 2002 film "Minority Report," in which people were imprisoned for future crimes envisioned by women with a gift for prophecy.

"I don't think anybody can predict the future. It's all kind of voodoo to me," Mayer said. "It's a pre-emptive strike against the sex offenders: to lock up these people before they do it again. We have lowered the standard so much that we are locking up people who probably won't recommit because a few of them might."

Definition: A sexually violent predator is defined by law as "a person who has been convicted of a sexually violent offense against two or more victims and who has a diagnosed mental disorder that makes the person a danger to the health and safety of others in that it is likely that he or she will engage in sexually violent criminal behavior." The law defines "substantial sexual conduct" with a child younger than 14 as a violent crime. full story

August 17, 2007 update:

Memos issued today from administration state that, effective August 20, those detainees participating in the strike for a total of three days will be dropped from the Sex Offender Treatment Program. Detainees will also lose work assignments for participating in the strike. Since the strike began Detainee spokesperson Niles Carr has reported that the Administration has imposed further restrictions on movement and increased punishment, including loss of work assignment, for many participating in the strike. They have also announced that they will disband RPAC (Resident Policy Advisory Council, elected by Detainees). In response, Detainees Wednesday voted overwhelmingly to retain RPAC and its representatives and to stage two days of "non-movement/non-cooperation" scheduled for Monday and Tuesday, August 20-21.

Aug. 16, 2007 Coalinga Update:

Sex offender Civil Detainees in California's Coalinga State Hospital strike to demand civil rights

Former prisoners now being held as Civil Detainees under California's stringent sex offender laws at Coalinga State Hospital have been on strike since August 6 to demand the restoration of rights denied them since their transfer to that facility. Now classified as "Civil Detainees", having served their entire sentences in the Department of Corrections and placed into the custody of the Department of Mental Health (DMH), they insist that conditions under which they are being held are flagrantly unconstitutional and inhumane. They argue that restrictions and privations imposed upon them go far beyond the narrow constraints under which the laws were enacted. The U.S. Supreme Court, while having upheld the constitutionality of state laws detaining sex offenders beyond their prison terms to protect society and treat offenders, insist that such further detention not have the effect of punishing offenders twice for the same crime.

Despite a $400 million price tag, Coalinga State Hospital is now widely viewed as an ill-conceived failure. The strike, its organizers assert, had become necessary in the face of an administration unaccountable to the rule of law or its mandate from voters. Strike participants seek to expose medical and mental health abuses in excess of those in California prisons, tax funding fraudulently misspent and a mission subverted to the career interests of officials.

Staff who express concern with the facility's management and "counter-therapeutic" treatment programs are seen by residents to leave the institution quickly and this, at a time when DMH acknowledges staff shortage as a major factor in its failure. The decision to build in Coalinga has been criticized by State officials due to difficulty in attracting qualified professionals to the area. Staffing is less than half of that required so half of the Hospital's units remain unopened while the other half is overcrowded, an exigency due to severe understaffing. As in State prisons, recreational areas are converted into makeshift dorms while more recent detainees languish in other DMH facilities or county jails awaiting a bed space in Coalinga.

Detainees allege they have been lured into treatment programs with the false hope that they may one day reenter society, saying that in the eleven years since civil commitment laws were enacted, only two castrated Detainees have won their freedom while several others have been placed in residential treatment programs. All of those released were through court order.

Key issues leading to the strike:

• Clinical assessments are rarely performed on individual Detainees. State evaluators whose recommendations are critical in civil commitment trials spend little or no time with detainees before issuing their reports, relying instead on aging court or police records. Lacking current information, test results, or objectivity, their reports are routinely skewed against Detainees, who see them as merely tools for the prosecution.
• Abysmal medical care. Life-threatening conditions are often ignored or inadequately treated. Medical staff recommendations for Detainee health are routinely overruled by non-medical staff.
• Many program staff have quit. Detainees say that, amongst those few clinicians genuinely interested in providing effective patient treatment, many have left due to encroachment by administration and police staff into the management of treatment.
• Conflict of interest. Acting Hospital Director, Rocky Spurgeon (the third Director in a little more than a month), is a defendant in ongoing Detainee lawsuits dating to before his current appointment. Clearly, Detainees seeking legal redress continue to be under the authority of those very individuals from whom they seek relief.
• Lack of independent and professional oversight by outside organizations. The Hospital falls short in standards of care and management set by federal guidelines and even by those of California 's Department of Corrections, an agency now under court order to address gross deficiencies in health care, overcrowding, and humane treatment. Coalinga has been left largely unmonitored by either state or federal oversight or by professional organizations, such as the American Psychiatric or Psychological Associations.
• Many custody police are compelled to enforce punitive restrictions imposed by administrative officials. Mandatory searches of each detainee's property are conducted weekly without probable cause. One police complained that, having previously worked in California's prisons before coming to DMH, he found the conditions in DMH to be far more restrictive than those imposed on inmates in state prison, despite the emphasis received in his training that "this is a hospital, not a prison".
• Nutritional deficiency and dreadful food quality. Coalinga meals are widely regarded as much worse than state prison food, itself known for poor quality. Staff discard extra food but deny seconds to hungry Detainees, despite ever smaller portion sizes. Nutritious food purchased by family and friends on the outside to send in monthly packages are forbidden but junk food-chips, cookies, candy, and ramen-are allowed.
• Communication with the outside world. Letters and communications, even those with attorneys, are subject to staff scrutiny. Many believe that staff listen in on phone calls. Staff arbitrarily refuse mail, including treatment and college materials, without notification.
• Absence of Detainee rules for conduct and rights under an appeals process. There is nothing equivalent to CDC's Title 15 delineating rules to which inmates must adhere or rights which they possess. Nor are there precedents that actions contravening Detainee rights will result in discipline for staff or Detainee remedy. Instead, rules are issued arbitrarily by individual staff as directives, many of which are mutually contradictory and have no legal basis. Rules from one housing unit to the next differ widely, with Unit Supervisors making abrupt policy decisions without accountability to the law or administration. Property room staff, while allowing one detainee an item, will deny another an identical item, even when on an "approved" list. This, combined with the capricious enforcement of rules as a form of harassment, has created an atmosphere of constant uncertainty and turmoil for Detainees.
• Inmate library consists largely of children's books and juvenile-level materials. Titles featuring "Cinderella" are well represented in the library's collection and Detainees who desire more intellectual reading challenges find no support from staff. Beyond the library, censorship to absurd levels is imposed on all books, periodicals, and other media which the Detainee wishes to buy with his own money. Also, all items purchased by inmates must be ordered through a handful of institutionally approved vendors, a selection process without transparency and one which effectively imposes trade restraints on legitimate vendors.
• Inmate financial resources, earned as a result of work performed in the prison (averaging about $1.25 a day) are controlled by staff who must approve any expenditure in excess of $100, even if it is cash to be sent to family, and can refuse without explanation. Detainees do not receive interest accrued from their funds.
• Complete lack of privacy. Detainees have no privacy in any aspect of their daily lives, save for stall doors in restroom toilets, and they are in continuous view of staff and other Detainees. As Justice Louis Brandeis, in his now-famous dissent in the 1928 Supreme Court decision of Olmstead v. United States articulated: "the right to be let alone is the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men." . How is it then that "Civil Detainees", not being held for the purpose of additional punishment, are shorn of this fundamental right of human dignity?
• Inmates are prevented from experiencing the outdoors or seeing beyond the institution walls. The largest accessible "outdoor" area is a tiny inner courtyard referred to by prisoners as "the terrarium".
• Despite its stated purpose as a forensic investigatory hospital, DMH has published nothing of their sex offender treatment research in peer-reviewed journals.
• Detainee family support. Visitors must be approved by administration and can be denied for any reason. There are very few telephones for use by hundreds of Detainees.
• Bingo, conga drumming, mural painting, and popcorn snacking are often shown in reports to be "treatment" in the continuous challenge staff face in justifying the hospital's existence as a treatment facility. While many suspect outright fraud in these "treatment" expenditures, they have received no scrutiny by State regulators or the Legislature.
• CDC prisoners , not Civil Detainees, have recently been dumped in Coalinga State Hospital alongside Civil Detainees who, after all, are not there for punishment.
• On the use of the term "Sexually Violent Predator " (S.V.P.) to describe Civil Detainees. The term "S.V.P." has a meaning under California law quite distinct from that of any reasonable person. As it is now defined, neither actual violence nor coercion is needed for a crime to meet the statutory definition of "sexually violent". The age of the victim, non-familial victims or past convictions are some criteria useful in branding someone " S.V.P." That this definitional shift has occurred during a period of mass hysteria over sex offenders cannot be seen as coincidental. California prisons and state hospitals have been launched on a wave of distorted public opinion.
• Recidivism rates are no higher for Civil Detainees than for other offenders not detained; between four and six percent. If the state is unable to demonstrate a difference in recidivism rates, then the very existence of the Civil Commitment program is called into question. Public safety would be truly served were funds reallocated to programs demonstrating actual success.

Since the strike began Detainee spokesperson Niles Carr has reported that the Administration has imposed further restrictions on movement and increased punishment, including loss of work assignment, for many participating in the strike. They have also announced that they will disband RPAC (Resident Policy Advisory Council, elected by Detainees). In response, Detainees Wednesday voted overwhelmingly to retain RPAC and its representatives and to stage two days of "non-movement/non-cooperation" scheduled for Monday and Tuesday, August 20-21.

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