Illinois seeks to confine sex offender indefinitely after parole
Illinois Seeks to Commit Sex Offender
A Catholic priest who was scheduled for parole Tuesday after serving two years in prison for molesting boys will instead be sent to a state treatment center for sexually violent criminals, where he could be committed indefinitely.State officials petitioned the court to involuntarily commit the Rev. Frederick Lenczycki on the grounds that he likely would molest again.
A judge on Monday ordered the 61-year-old priest held at the state facility in Joliet until a hearing can be held to determine if he should remain there indefinitely.
The case is the first in which the state has attempted to hold a priest under Illinois’ Sexually Violent Persons Commitment Act, a 1998 law that allows for the involuntary commitment of convicted sex offenders to mental institutions until they are determined to no longer be threats to society, said DuPage County State’s Attorney Joseph Birkett.
These laws should give any freedom-lover pause. What Lenczycki did was horrible, but he did serve the sentence provided in the law for the crime for which he was convicted. Illinois could not constitutionally extend his prison sentence for another 20 years while he was behind bars, so why should they be able to imprison him indefinitely based on a claim that he “likely would molest again”? Studies have repeatedly shown that sex offenders actually have lower rates of recidivism than other offenders.
Even with the offenders who are pedophiles, treatment can help change behavior even if it does not change sexual attraction patterns. In a 1998 evaluation of 61 research studies on sexual offender recidivism (known as a meta-analysis), sexual offense recidivism was very low (13.4% of more than 23,000 offenders). The sexual offense recidivism of child molesters was slightly lower — 12.7% for 9,603 abusers. In another study, one in five of the extrafamilial child molesters recidivated. The Bureau of Justice Statistics of the U.S. Department of Justice reports that 5.3% of sex offenders were rearrested for a sexual crime within three years of release. Another study found that child molesters with female victims had a 10 to 29% recidivism rate while child molesters with male victims ranged between 13 and 40%, but this study included non-sexual offenses in its data. Other criminals had higher rates of recidivism – for example, 38% of those convicted of a violent crime had another offense, as did one third of those with a property offense.
So if the rate of recidivism for other offenders is three times higher, why is it only sex offenders we seek to confine indefinitely? If prosecutors and legislators think pedophiles should be confined for life, then seek to amend the statute to provide life sentences. Don’t allow parole and then use a back-door, ripe-for-abuse civil commitment.
