Michigan has re-arrested 62 sex offenders mistakenly released from
prison, after a scheme to treat them like medical patients went awry.
The Detroit News reports that the inmates "were among 200 sex offenders for whom psychologists, evaluating the prisoners under contract with the department failed to recommend treatment. The psychologists have three treatment choices recognized by the department: continued treatment in detention, release to inpatient treatment or parole with outpatient treatment. But the released prisoners were classified a fourth, unapproved way."
The Michigan fiasco is just the latest example of states attempting to medicalize sexual predators. PROTECT has opposed California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's attempts to ration scarce parole resources by giving predators psychological tests to predict "risk." In Washington State, decades-old policies that treat child sexual predators like mental health consumers have led to court rulings that released offenders, like people with mental illness, must be housed in the least restrictive environment possible, creating a network of transitional "sex offender housing."
Russ Marlin, a spokesman for the Michigan corrections department, defends the new psychological assessments. In the past, parole officials "were making the most part of their decision on sex offenders off emotion, the original crime" claims Marlin. "There's a stigma that goes with sex offenders. What we wanted them to use was true data."
