How to Handle Sex Criminals

Forgive me if you've heard of this from me in the past, but the policy I will propose will at first get your dander up -- until you'll agree, I hope, that it makes sense and is critical to the safety of our women and children.

Here's the headline from last Tuesday's Vancouver Province: "High Risk Violent Oliver Sex Offender Released on Bail." Sadly, similar stories abound across Canada. We talk of sex offender registries for sex offenders we have released from prison so that they can molest, rape and kill again. When these sickos are released, we all go into an understandable panic at the danger posed to our communities. The trouble is, it's our fault!

How can violent sex crime become "our fault"?

Easy -- because we handle the problem as if we're talking about crime, and we put the offender into jail and thus into the justice system. Once that happens, the offender is entitled to whatever benefits accrue to "good behaviour," including parole and early release. When he's in jail, he receives little if any medical help. In short, what our society does is send someone to jail for pedophilia, then let him out still a pedophile! How the devil can that make any sense?

Sicko?

There is a solution, one that's already available to other serious offenders who are found "not guilty by reason of diminished responsibility." We're talking murderers, people who burn down houses full of people, go on rampages and so on. We know they're sick and we treat them as sick, never letting them out until they are well.

When we learn of a sexual assault on a child, what do we all say in chorus? "The guy must be sick!" And in truth, he is.

Nobody decides one day that he will molest and kill little children, or rape women, or both. He has a mental condition that gives him an irresistible urge, something that isn't cured and more likely is aggravated by jail. This means that when he is released, he still has the same irresistible urge and it's only a matter of a little time before he's found more victims.

The natural feeling is that we should keep the bastard behind bars for life. For a lot of reasons, that isn't an acceptable "solution." The question we must ask ourselves is this: isn't there a better way to make our communities safer? And the answer is yes, and the methodology uncomplicated.

Never released?

When a man is convicted of a serious sex crime, the judge must make a finding: is this man a psychopathic sexual marauder, a pedophile, a perpetual sexual marauder? If the answer is yes -- and here's the hard part -- he should be found not guilty by reason of his mental illness and -- here is the vital part -- he's committed to a mental institution and detained at the Queen's pleasure. This means he will never be released until it is demonstrated that he is well. This means that the offender is not allowed parole, early or otherwise, and is in custody perhaps for his entire life.

Why not just have him declared a dangerous offender?

Mostly because the law requires such a high test that for most offenders the designation isn't even considered.

But won't this mean that any time some shrink says he's OK that he'll get out?

No, it does not. For five years, I sat on the cabinet committee that hears the petitions for release by those detained at the Queen's pleasure and I can assure you that all cases are subject to a most rigorous standard indeed, and even after release they must regularly report to the authorities. My colleagues Alan Williams and Garde Gardom and I heard a dozen or more cases where we approved a release of perpetrators of some ghastly crime. We knew that if there was a failure, we were the ones who permitted it to happen, and we took our duties very seriously indeed. We often called the psychiatrist involved for further assurance. We had no case of recidivism.

Isn't this mollycoddling?

Of course not. Quite the opposite. We are sending these people not into the justice system, but into a medical system where they cannot be released unless certified, under the strictest and rigorous of standards, to be as unlikely to offend as anyone else. Moreover this method brings one enormous blessing to the community -- no sexual offender will be on the loose again just because he qualifies, based upon time served and "good behaviour," for release.

'A hard pill to swallow'

This, I know, is a very hard pill for society to swallow. But it has one great benefit -- it will work. Because it will work, our children don't have to face pedophiles who have spent a couple of years in jail from which they are granted parole, leave, and that sort of thing. Until we have the ability to think this problem through logically and sensibly, and stop letting our quite natural demand for revenge overrule our good sense, we will be jailing sick people and releasing them without any regard to the state of their mental health -- and we'll continue to have more headlines like the one in the Province, while police forces will have to use up valuable police time keeping an eye on sick men.

It's putting offenders in prison that is mollycoddling -- putting them away, getting treatment until they are demonstrably cured, which might never happen, is tough medicine that protects us all.

To keep our neighbourhoods safe, we must all give our heads a shake, and bring in policy that will do just that.

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