Sexual Offenders Treatment in the State of California

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Main body
Conclusion
Works Cited

Introduction

The aim of this paper is to examine community placement trends and laws governing the treatment of sexual offenders in the state of California. The study will look at placement trends and what they involve and all the people responsible. The study will also examine policies and practices used to manage sexual offenders in California, relating them to the practices and policies used elsewhere in the country. The paper will also look at the innovations made to improve treatment of sexual offender and how their supervision is managed.

Main body

Sexual offences instill fear in the collective conscience of a society especially if the victims of sexual offences are children. Sexual offence seems to be a growing category of crime and the number of sexual offenders grows by seven percent every year. In the state of California, nearly one out of every people incarcerated is a sexual offender and this highlights the gravity of the crime in the state. It is estimated that the state of California has by far the number of sexual offenders in the United States of America. There are more than 15, 000 convicted sexual offenders under the jurisdiction of correction agencies in the state of California while more than seven thousand are under community supervision. According to statistics from California state attorney general’s office, there are more than one hundred thousand registered sexual offenders in the state. The state of California requires that all the sexual offenders on parole to be registered with the agencies that enforce law in their locality. The state is also designing new systems and mechanisms that will be used to manage sexual offenders and these include individual and group therapy. Other techniques include parole caseloads and life time supervisions for the sexual offenders in the state. This program may however be affected by limited funds available.

In the state of California, most paroled sex offenders with some sorts of illnesses or disabilities do not receive the same level of supervision as other ordinary offenders because it is very unfeasible to have special personnel to supervise this segment of sexual offenders. In this state, many paroled sexual offenders do not get special treatment as part of their supervision unlike some of the states especially in the east and south of the United States of America. There are also other measures that the state is taking to ensure that sexual offenders are properly managed and supervised once they are out of correction systems. One of the measures is the requirement that all sexual offenders participate in formal medical treatment programs and this is one of the conditions that the sexual offenders are given before they are released from incarceration. However, more serious sexual offenders are categorized as sexual predators and these offenders remain incarcerated for indeterminate periods because they are a threat to the society, but they are some times taken to secured treatment facilities for special treatment. The state has enacted laws that have authorized indeterminate periods of incarceration for sexual predators in secure settings and the

Californian law is unique because it requires sexual predators two spend at least two years in a secured mental health setting with a possibility for an extension of this time limit. Sexual predators are sexual offenders who target strangers and they sometimes have more than one victim. These offenders violent crimes that are sexual in nature and there are some features of laws that have been enacted by the state of California to deal with sexual offenders especially those whose crimes are violent in nature. To start with, the civil commitment of a sexual predator is preceded by a criminal sentence and the criminal law specifically sexual offenders who have been repeatedly involved in sexual crimes. For those who have been involved in sexual offences for the first time, civil statutes are used instead of the criminal law. The law also recommends that persons implicated in sexual offences be confined is a safe facility until they are deemed safe enough for release. They can be released into a less restrictive environment or into the community they used to live in depending on the recommendations of correction agencies. Those individuals reported to be poor candidates for specialized treatment and never made any significant progress after admission could be taken back to the court for sentencing using the criminal laws.

In the state of California, as is the practice in most of the states of America, the standards used are beyond reasonable doubt so that the criminal proceedings may have enough burdens of proof because lower standards without vivid and solid evidence would hamper commitment (Marshall, 56). California is one of the few states that require juvenile sexual offenders to be civilly committed because most states allow commitment of people above the age of eighteen. This law followed the examples of Illinois, Wisconsin and Washington. Californian law on sexual offenses is the only state law that allows a two year confinement period for sexual offenders before they can be given a hearing. Most other states that have sexual offenders law require indeterminate confinement for sexual offenders. Civil commitment process for sexual offenders in the state of California follows some definite steps. If a person has been convicted of one or more sexual offenses and is about o be released from a state correction agency, the person is usually assessed by the department of corrections or department of mental health to ascertain whether they fit the definition of a sexual predator. The attorney general then decides whether there is a sufficient evidence to file the case and the court goes ahead to determine whether there is enough evidence to prove that the suspect is a sexual offender, and after thirty to sixty days of the determination of the probable cause, trail is held and if the court determines that the person is a sexual offender, the person is therefore committed to a state facility for supervision, care and treatment.

In California, the department of criminal justice helped by the department of mental health determines whether an incarcerated sexual offender, about to be released from prison or a mental health facility should be subjected to a civil commitment. A large panel of experts drawn from the two aforementioned departments and the department of public safety make reviews for the requests to determine whether a sexual offender should be tried for civil commitment and for the offender to be committed, they must have a behavioral constraint that would make them highly likely to engage sexual offences. However, if the panel determines that the sexual offender is a violent sexual predator, that offender is therefore subject to civil commitment and can therefore be released without being referred to a mental health facility and is taken to the custody of a case manager.

The person is then monitored using global positioning devices and they are also subjected to penile polygraph tests to assess their ability to control their sexual urges (Rea 193). They are also required to attend outpatient sessions for individual and group therapy and if they fail to comply can force the law enforcement authorities to take the sexual predator back to prison. When taken back to prison, the sexual offender remains in civil commitment for an indeterminate period of time and can only be released into the community if their behavior has changed to an extent that the sexual offender is less likely to engage in sexual offences. The sexual offender is also subject two a review after every two years and this review is presented to a judge by the responsible case manager to determine if the behavioral abnormality of the sexual offender has changed. If there is a change in behavior, then a hearing is set and the sexual offender can therefore be released form incarceration.

Conclusion

In conclusion, sexual offence laws in California have kept on changing to accommodate the changing nature of sexual crimes in the city and though the laws have become tougher than ever, they have not managed to bring down the rates of sexual crimes in the state. However, the state leads in the treatment and managed supervision of sexual offenders ensuring that instances of repeated sexual crimes from the same offender are minimal

Works Cited

Marshall, Wallace. Treatment of sex offenders. NY: Sage. 2001.

Rea, James. Covert Sensitization. The Behavior Analyst Today, 4 (2) 2002, 192-201.

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Sexual Offenders Treatment in the State of California

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