Should a sexual predator be sentenced to prison for life? That question comes up for 258 patients who are committed indefinitely to a violent sexual predator program in central Kansas. Their release is contingent upon their improvement.
Sexual Predator Treatment Program
The Sexual Predator Treatment Program (SPTP) at the Larned State Hospital was designed for,
?Those who have completed their prison sentences and have been determined by the courts to be violent sexual offenders in need of involuntary inpatient treatment.?
Who Is In These Programs?
Over?70% of the program’s population is made up of pedophiles with a notorious rate of recidivism or relapse. And the program was designed not only to treat the sexual predators but also to keep other Kansans safe.
Carlos Lively (30) was committed to the Sexual Predator Treatment Program nine years ago for a crime he committed when he was 18. His crime was ?exposing himself to two younger family members.?
And when he was 14, he was sentenced to juvenile court for molesting younger children, but that record is sealed. So we do not know how he injured them.
Lively spoke to the Associated Press (AP),
?To the state, I am still the person I was when I was 14, and probably always will be.?
Lively’s Attorney Fred Zimmerman of Kansas City, Kan. represented him in his 2005 civil commitment. He said,
?At some point I told a prosecutor, ?You’d be doing them a better service if you just told them that they are getting a life sentence rather than let them dangle there hoping.? ?
Mental Health Inpatient Treatment Centers
The state mental health inpatient treatment centers fall under?Secretary of Aging and Disability Services Kari Bruffet. She?testified at a hearing on the state audit report and said that the standard the people must meet for release is ?virtually no risk? of reoffending.
Only three men have been released from the program since it began in 1994. This speaks more toward the incorrigibility of these criminals than toward the effectiveness of the program. Although it is open to both men and women, only men are involved in it.
Angela de Rocha, spokeswoman for the Department for Aging and Disability Services, which runs the program, said that
?Few residents have been released from the program because they have all been convicted of multiple offenses and have been determined by a court to have severe mental abnormalities.?
The only other option to loosening pedophiles and other sexual predators upon the public is to keep them in mental health inpatient centers. If that means a lifetime of trying to improve enough to stop the cycle of abuse, why not?
Pedophiles often assault as many as 60 or more children in their lifetime. And beside the physical and emotional damage, pedophiles can kill children’s souls.
I say life imprisonment may not be long enough.
