State officials seek civil commitment of sex offender

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6-15-17 Washington:

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — The Washington state Attorney General's Office is seeking to keep a convicted sex offender from being released back into the community by way of civil commitment.

The Columbian reported Wednesday that 39-year-old Michael Canty was convicted in 2001 of indecent liberties with forcible compulsion and first-degree burglary with sexual motivation. Officials are hoping to keep him in a post-sentence institutional detention center, citing he might have intentions of committing further offenses.

Canty was scheduled to be released in August 2016, but is being held at the Special Commitment Center awaiting trial, which began earlier this week in Clark County Superior Court.

In 1990, Washington became the first state to pass a law permitting the involuntary civil commitment of sex offenders after they serve their criminal sentences. ..Source..

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Should repeat SC child molester be freed? Jury makes the call

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6-15-17 South Carolina:

YORK A twice-convicted child sex offender will not be released from prison after a York County jury took less than half an hour to rule that he is a sexually violent predator and a threat to society.

Franklin Mosier, 35, had finished a 10-year prison sentence for assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature against a 10-year-old child victim, after a 2011 guilty plea.

But he will instead be committed to the S.C. Department of Mental Health, according to court records and testimony from a trial this week in York. Mosier also has a conviction of sexually assaulting a a different 10-year-old child in 1998, court records and testimony show.

State prosecutors from the S.C. Attorney General’s Office, using a law known as South Carolina’s sexually violent predator act, filed a lawsuit against Mosier before he got out of prison, saying he is a threat to re-offend if he is released.

Civil commitment law keeps hundreds of sex offenders confined after their sentences are completed

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6-10-17 New York:

I'm Frank Scandale, editor of investigations for The Journal News/lohud.com.

Each week, the investigations unit of The Journal News/lohud.com goes behind the scenes on a particular story. Using documents, sources and boots-on-the-ground shoe-leather tactics, we often reveal what some would rather us not.

Recent investigations into the political dysfunction of Mount Vernon's city hall and the reason why the number of high school sports referees and officials is shrinking have resulted in calls for reform.

Today, follow us as we go behind the walls at the Central New York Psychiatric Center to track a little-known law called civil commitment and the people caught up in it. Health care watchdog reporter David Robinson, who conducted the first media interview there, is joined by colleagues Jonathan Bandler and Avram Billig.

Established about 10 years ago, the law allows for New York prosecutors to hold sex offenders beyond their sentences.

Matthew T. Mangino: The enormous cost of civil commitments

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6-9-17 National:

Earlier this year, The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit upheld a Minnesota law that provided for the indefinite detention of sex offenders after completion of their prison sentences.
U.S. District Court Judge Donovan Frank wrote that the Minnesota Sex Offender Program violated the due process rights of the people it involuntarily detained in prison. The Eighth Circuit disagreed.

Pennsylvania currently has eight men locked-up who have served their complete sentence for a crime committed years ago. These men are sex offenders. They are sexually violent predators, as determined by a civil court, and are being detained indefinitely. Pennsylvania is one of 20 states that provide for the civil commitment of sexually dangerous offenders. There are more than 3,600 men, and some women, committed or detained across the country.

There are 231 sex offenders currently being held indefinitely in New York, who have also completed their criminal sentences. Civil commitment is not new. The procedure has been used for decades with regard to the mentally ill and those with highly contagious diseases. More recently it has been applied to sex offenders with a diagnosable mental abnormality with likelihood to re-offend.

‘Civil commitment’ policy is too secretive: Editorial

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6-8-17 New York:

The issue is, indeed, as perplexing as they come: What should happen to convicted sex offenders who have served their time but are still considered a danger to society?

In New York and many other states, the answer has been “civil commitment.” That is, the offenders are evaluated by mental health officials, and if it’s determined their abnormality makes them likely to re-commit sex crimes, the state can prosecute the offenders. The state almost always wins these cases and gets to keep the offenders confined longer. More than 300 men, including two from Dutchess County, are kept this way at the Central New York Psychiatric Center in Marcy or another site in Ogdensburg near the Canadian border.

A recent investigation by The Journal News in Westchester opened a window into what has been transpiring since the law was enacted about a decade ago. But it’s abundantly clear the state should be providing far more details so the public can better ascertain how the system is working — and whether, as it appears, modifications are necessary.

The investigation found it costs an astonishing $65 million per year to civilly confine 322 offenders, or $175,000 each. There also are legitimate questions of racial basis, since one-third of those confined are black. And there are questions why, while the program was touted as way to deal with repeat offenders, two thirds of those confined had no prior convictions requiring sex-offender registration.

Sex offender and mental health law on trial

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6-6-17 New York:

Mirna Laguerre sat alone in court and cried while a prosecutor described her son as a dangerous sexual offender deemed unfit for society. Then 28-year-old Raul, who has spent almost half his life locked up, pleaded for freedom.

The Orange County courtroom scene has all but defined the mother and son separated by a horrific crime and controversial mental-health law.

They have both described spending guilt-ridden years striving for justice and forgiveness since Raul Laguerre Jr. brutalized a woman in 2003, bludgeoning her into unconsciousness before sodomizing her.

Those details and more will likely reemerge when Laguerre's trial kicks off Monday for his potential release from civil commitment, the little known law that allows for locking up sex offenders beyond their criminal sentences.

Exclusive: Inside one heavily guarded psych ward

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6-1-17 New York:

In the first media interview behind the walls of Central New York Psychiatric Center, Raul Laguerre Jr. described being locked up for the past 13 years and the prospect of never being free again.

“I grew up literally in prison and had to survive in prison,” he said, referring to his life behind bars since committing a vicious sexual assault in Orange County at 15 years old.

Laguerre, now 28, detailed being abused at the Brookwood Secure Center, the juvenile detention facility in Hudson at the heart of a statewide scandal after videos of graphic fights there leaked in 2011.

“I’ll tell you I don’t recommend that place for any of the youth,” Laguerre said. “Just picture a good five years of being tormented upon.”

Targeted as a sex offender, Laguerre said inmates urinated on his clothes and assaulted him. The alleged abuse also came at the hands of guards, he said, including at the Mid-State Correctional Facility and CNY psych center in Marcy, where he is civilly confined under a controversial mental-health law that offers little chance of release.