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Experts say therapy for predators needs to begin in prison, long before men
are considered for the state's civil commitment law, for several reasons:
• Unlike civil commitment programs, men in prison can be ordered to undergo
counseling as a condition for early release.
• States have a better chance of selecting offenders who best qualify for
civil commitment if they have already been treated and tested in prison.
• Prison treatment ensures that even those who aren't selected for civil commitment
receive some type of therapy before their release. Numerous studies show that
even some counseling lowers offenders' risks of carrying out new sex crimes.
• It's cheaper to treat men already in prison -- insteading of paying for
additional years of confinement after their sentences end.
Most of the 16 states with civil commitment programs currently offer extensive
prison treatment programs, including California, Washington, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
But in Florida, the more than 520 men now held at the state treatment center
collectively spent more than 3,000 years in prison with little or no treatment
before they entered the center.
"It's insane," said Ted Shaw, the psychologist who ran Florida's Mentally
Disordered Sex Offender program before it was shut down. "They are already [in
prison]. Treatment costs just a little bit more than what it does to simply warehouse
these guys."
CRAVINGS
PUNISHMENT DOESN'T HELP
With no therapy available in prison, civil commitment becomes the only place
the state can treat sexual offenders while they're confined.
While lawmakers focus on ratcheting up punishment -- including living restrictions
and stiffer prison sentences -- there's no evidence that punitive measures actually
deter sex offenders from raping and molesting.
That's because the most dangerous sexual offenders suffer from mental abnormalities
called paraphilias, which create powerful cravings that are difficult to control
without treatment, say experts.
"People who are attracted to children don't decide they want to be attracted
to children," said Fred Berlin, an associate professor of psychiatry at Johns
Hopkins University and founder of the National Institute for the Study, Prevention
and Treatment of Sexual Trauma in Baltimore.
"That doesn't mean you give them a pass when they break the law. But in the
interest of protecting the public, we also make sure to treat these people as
a public health problem."
The tools used by clinicians: therapy sessions with names such as Arousal Management
and Victim Empathy, polygraph exams, instruments that measure blood flow to offenders'
sex organs and medications that sap their libido.
All of the methods and drugs make sexual offenders less likely to strike again,
according to dozens of psychological studies and interviews with clinicians.
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