One Size Incarcerates All

One Size Incarcerates All
Senate Bill 435
Sen. Steve Ogden (R-Bryan)
http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=2468
When criminal justice policy advocates talk about the need for parole reform, this legislation is not what they have in mind. Not only is the Senate Finance Committee chair pushing the construction of three more prisons (hmmm, wonder if one will be going into his district); Steve Ogden, a Bryan Republican, is also doing his part to help fill them up. He proposes in SB 435 that Texas eliminate parole for all registered sex offenders.

There is some precedent: Plenty of prisoners are already ineligible for parole: death-row inmates, for example, and anyone whose sentence is life without parole. But with a looming prison bed shortage, a broken parole system, and a budget that’s busted the constitutional spending cap, Ogden has ditched any pretense of fiscal conservatism. Instead, he proposes to keep the prison system’s 25,000 sex offenders locked up for as long as possible, without regard for the severity of their crime. Whether repeat offenders, violent offenders, or first-timers incarcerated for public lewdness, Ogden wants them all treated the same.

It may just be one in a sea of proposals to tighten up the system for handling sex offenders, but SB 435 is a particularly costly one. The bill has yet to be scheduled for a hearing in the Criminal Justice Committee, and Ogden refuses to speculate on a price tag before seeing the as-yet-unreleased estimate from the Legislative Budget Board. Still, critics of the bill are guessing the cost will be considerable.

“It’s going to be massive,” says Benny Hernandez of the ACLU of Texas. He points out that current law requires sex offenders to serve half their sentences before petitioning the state Board of Pardons and Paroles, which has shown itself notoriously unwilling to move on parole-ready inmate applications. Ogden’s bill would double the time an inmate spends in prison, costing the state an average of $44 a day, according to the parole board’s Sunset Commission report. Multiply that by 25,000, and you begin to get the idea.

Eliminating the carrot of parole for inmates will make it harder on the people who run the prisons. “It will influence an offender’s behavior, knowing they’ll never be eligible,” Hernandez says. Without any reason to earn brownie points for good behavior, they’ll be tougher to manage, he says.

The worst sex offenders are already serving full sentences; the most dangerous offenders in Texas are even sent to civil commitment facilities—high-security rehab centers—after their release. The ones who’ll really be affected are inmates at the other end of the spectrum, those who a parole board might otherwise say are ready to be released.
http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=2468

Consider that peeing in an alley after you stagger out of a bar can be considered a sex offense, this law doesn't fit much of anybody. I can see something like this only for cases of serial, violent offenders.

Offenders should be registered, but that registry should be available only to the police. Kids are more in danger from family members and those who have chosen careers that give them access to children but who haven't yet been caught than they are by some guy down the block who may have learned enough of a lesson to stick to porn and wanking. Same goes for rapists.

Publicising the registry of sex offenders only does two things: makes it less likely offenders will register and gives people who don't have on in the neighborhood a false sense of security. Neither is good.

It's clear that the body of laws that cover sex offenses needs to be reassessed. Misdemeanors should be separated from felonies. Released offenders need to be monitored, but by police and not vigilantes.

I can't wait until we start catching Thugs who have sex in their own net.

It doesn't need to make sense and, indeed, the majority of the laws surrounding sex offenses do not make any sense whatsoever. For instance, laws requiring offenders to register do not take into account whether an individual is a threat or not, provide a false sense of security and an inflated sense of fear for communities as the vast majority of all sex abuse cases are perpetrated by family members, and are punitive in nature to the offender - restricting residential and occupational opportunities, public shaming, and exposing the offender to vigilante activity.

This bill is partciularly non-sensical, given the current overcrowding situation in our country and that recidivism rates among sex offenders demonstrate that they are less likely than any other offender to commit a new crime over a five-year period. Plus, I had always thought that the punishment should fit the crime. This treat anyone who is a sex offender as the worst kind, regardless of the things that they have done.