Newsletter Issue #3 July 2023
Special Issue: Civil Commitment does more harm than good
Civil commitment facilities actually foster the traumatic and violent conditions that they are supposed to prevent.
As if serving a prison sentence wasn’t punishment enough, 20 states and the federal Bureau of Prisons detain over 6,000 people who have been convicted of sex offenses in prison-like “civil commitment” facilities beyond the terms of their criminal sentence. Twenty states and the federal government passed “Sexually Violent Persons” legislation that keep people locked up even after they served a criminal sentence. In some states, people are transferred directly from prison to a civil commitment facility at the end of their sentence. In others, people who had already come home from prison were rounded up and relocated to civil commitment facilities without prior notice. In 2017 the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a Minnesota a federal judge’s ruling that this practice is unconstitutional.
Advocates call civil commitment facilities “shadow prisons.” In Illinois, for example, the Rushville Treatment and Detention Facility is not subject to independent oversight because it is part of the Department of Human Services and is not technically classified as a prison. This is true in many states, and horrific medical neglect and abuse proliferate in these facilities. A New Jersey civil commitment facility was one of the deadliest facilities during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Similarly, Rushville is not held to the same reporting requirements as DOC facilities, so gathering data about people’s movement in and out of the facility is only possible by filing an open records request. Currently it’s only possible to get aggregated counts of how many people are civilly committed — not the individual-level information prison systems are expected to provide in the service of transparency and accountability. This is true across the U.S., as civil commitment facilities are housed under different agencies from state to state, which makes it exceedingly difficult to measure the full scope of these systems on a national level. As a result, estimates about how many people are currently civilly committed vary from 5,000 to over 10,000 people. Increased accounta-bility and oversight must be chief among efforts to address this broken policy trend.
Iowa’s Civil Commitment Program – a firsthand account
From the NARSOL website | Edited for this newsletter
“Sex offender” civil commitment is one of the cruelest practices among laws targeting men with sexual crime convictions. NARSOL opposes the use of civil commitment as it is now practiced with those having sexual crime convictions, as a means to extend the incarceration period beyond the original sentence.
NARSOL has been part of campaigns against the civil commitment programs in a variety of states, but we had not had our attention brought to the facility in Iowa until a man incarcerated in a state institution there wrote to us and enclosed a piece he has written about the Iowa’s CCUSO – Civil Commitment Unit for Sex Offenders. Written as a letter addressed “Dear potential CCUSO prisoners” and signed “Possible Future CCUSO Prisoner,” he paints a stark and terrifying picture.
Regular prison SO treatment programs last three to six months. Community treatment programs can safely rehabilitate an offender in about a year. That is far shorter than the failing CCUSO’s five-year plan. Very few ever leave the program and get discharged from CCUSO. In the first ten years of CCUSO’s existence, only one person discharged even though CCUSO uses the same treatment workbooks the community and state prison use. Something is seriously wrong here.
CCUSO has been known to give out false or questionable disciplinary reports in order to “prove” unfitness to return to society during annual review. CCUSO also uses mandatory polygraphs during treatment.
CCUSO will also use the long time controversial penile plethysmograph test although it is banned from the prison and community programs. What makes CCUSO exempt to this highly invasive testing?
NARSOL is adding the Iowa CCUSO program to its official protest list of state civil commitment programs. These programs create in those they are supposed to be helping a feeling of total helplessness and hopelessness.
If someone with a sexual crime conviction is nearing his discharge date and is still in need of treatment, he should be treated in the mental health system, not an extension of the prison system.
ACSOL Conference coming Oct 14-15 - in person and virtual
Mark your calendars: October 2023
The Association for Constitutional Sex Offender Laws (ACSOL) is one of the nation’s largest organizations fighting the injustices of S.O. registries. The annual ACSOL conference offers educational workshops, expert speakers, and inspiring stories from the front lines of our fight for justice.
ACSOL is based in California so it’s no surprise this conference will be in Los Angeles – far from Iowa. However it will also be available virtually, so you can attend from the comfort of your own home. To learn more and register for the conference go to https://all4consolaws.org/
Iowa’s 2023 nursing home bill
A new Iowa law requires offers a higher Medicaid reimbursement rate for nursing homes that establish a separate “secure unit” for sex offenders.
“This is a growing need in our state,” Representative Joel Fry, a Republican from Osceola, said during House debate of the plan. Hundreds of the nearly 6,600 people on the state’s sex offender registry need skilled nursing care.
Iowa Unafraid has not taken a position on this new law. Nursing homes in Iowa have been refusing to accept registered citizens in need of nursing and end-of-life care, but some of us worry that a nursing home “secure unit” sounds too much like end-of-life civil commitment.