Resolve on sex offenders will create forensic panel

AUGUSTA – The Department of Corrections would be allowed to keep sex offenders in jail even after they have completed their sentences under a legislative resolve to deal with repeat offenders.

“This will allow a new way to look at sex offenders,” said state Sen. Bill Diamond, D-Windham.

Diamond is co-chair of the Legislature’s Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee that crafted the bill. “We know we have some very, very dangerous people in jail that we don’t want back out in society.”

Lawmakers passed the resolve without debate, and Gov. John Baldacci signed it into law earlier this month. The Department of Corrections is directed to report to the Legislature by the end of the year on how the forensic board would be constituted.

Corrections Commissioner Martin Magnusson said he envisions a board made up of psychiatric experts in the field of sex offenders that would use the latest assessment tools to determine the danger a person may pose to the community.

“The way I see this working is that the person would be sentenced say to 10 years to life,” he said. “At the end of the 10 years, this board would assess whether the person is a high risk of reoffending. If he is, he could be kept in a facility until an assessment is made that he is safe to let out.”

Magnusson acknowledged that the process also would be used to assess female sex offenders, although he said there are “very few” in Maine’s correctional system.

He said there are inmates now in state custody who have indicated to prison officials they will offend again as soon as they are released. Magnusson said that while the overall number of sex offenders in the system has decreased in recent years, the number of repeat offenders has increased.

“When you know you have a high-risk serial rapist or pedophile, I think we should be putting them away,” he said, “I think, for the rest of their lives.”

The Department of Corrections researched the way other states are handling dangerous, repeat sex offenders and found 16 states have some variation of a civil commitment process that locks up the offenders in a secure psychiatric center. Several states are looking at using indeterminate sentencing for repeat sex offenders during their current legislative sessions.

Walter McKee is an Augusta defense lawyer who attended committee deliberations for the Maine Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. He said his organization certainly will participate in the process DOC will set up, even though its members do not think it is needed.

“This is an answer in search of a problem,” he said. “Why we need this new forensic board is beyond me. We have tough laws on the books now; a person can get a life sentence now, they can get 30 years now, and they can get probation for life.”

McKee said if the state does set up the forensic board review process, it is likely to be expensive. He said the state does not now have a psychiatric hospital with a secure unit for dangerous offenders. He said the option of creating an adequate and secure mental health treatment unit within an existing prison also would be expensive.

“This is a very disturbing situation,” he said, “If this is established, we will have people who have completed their sentences being kept locked up and locked up forever.”

But members of the committee believe that sort of fundamental change is needed to protect the public, and children, from violent predators who will harm new victims if they are released from prison.

“Every corrections guard can tell you, down in the prison, they know these ticking time bombs, and they know they should not be released to prey on the innocent again,” said Rep. Pat Blanchette, D-Bangor, co-chair of the committee. “That’s why we need this.”

Sen. Dean Clukey, R-Houlton, also a member of the committee, agreed. He said studies have indicated that there is a relatively small group in prison for rape or other sexual assaults who fall under the category of violent offenders and are likely to commit another crime. He said the forensic board will allow a mechanism to protect the public without locking away all sex offenders for indeterminate sentences.

“This is being done in some states and has been upheld by the Supreme Court,” he said. “They have taken the position that states have the right to protect their children.”

Clukey said the concern that locking up repeat sex offenders would be expensive is probably accurate. But he said he has no doubt Maine voters would approve a bond issue for a facility to house offenders and pay the cost of keeping them locked away.

“I have no doubt about that, no doubt at all,” he said.