A Stitch in Haste

I've blogged previously in opposition to the practice of allowing politicians and penal system bureaucrats excessive discretion in committing sex offenders to mental institutions after their prison sentences end. A sex offender (or any other criminal for that matter) is either dangerously deranged or he isn't. If so, then he doesn't belong in prison in the first place; if not, then he doesn't belong in an insane asylum merely to "protect society" (i.e., allow a hack politician an opportunity to grandstand and pander to his unreasonably panicked constituents).

The latest debate is in Rhode Island, where the doctors running the mental institutions are pushing back against the politicians' and bureaucrats' warm-fuzzy-feeling maneuvering:

When a repeat sex offender neared parole after serving 16 years for raping a boy, Rhode Island's governor directed state officials to put the man in a different institution: the state mental hospital.

Dr. Brandon Krupp, who ran the hospital's psychiatric services, opposed the decision, saying it would not protect the public and could put other patients at risk. Other doctors backed him up, arguing the plan would be expensive and likely ineffective.

When Krupp's protest went unheeded, he quit.

"Doctors aren't jailers," Krupp said in an interview shortly after leaving last month. "Hospitals aren't prisons."

Indeed.

The article also cites a Department of Justice statistic that the three-year recidivism rate for sex offenders (I presume meaning both rapists of adults and molesters of children) is about 5%. I'm not a criminology expert, but I find that number shockingly low considering all the histrionics about "repeat offenders." And it's certainly too low to justify summarily committing all post-incarcertation offenders to mental wards.

Ex-convicts do not shed all their rights at the prison gate, especially after their sentences are up. There is a well-established legal framework for committing the mentally ill against their will. The politicians and criminology bureaucrats should respect it.