In 1973, Richard Ausley kidnapped 13-year-old Martin Andrews, raped and beat him for days and left him to die in a wooden box. Fortunately, Andrews was found by a passing group of hunters, but in 2002 he found out that his attacker was going to be released after 29 years in jail. Andrews fought Ausley’s release and lobbied lawmakers, and Ausley stayed in custody. Why? The civil commitment law.
The civil commitment law allows inmates who are considered sexually dangerous to be institutionalized at high-security treatment facilities even after they’ve completed their federal prison terms. Next week the Supreme Court will decide if the national civil commitment law will be upheld. Based on what several U.S. Supreme Court justices suggested during arguments recently heard in Washington, it’s likely that it will be.
Under the civil commitment law, more than 100 people have been held, and twenty states have such laws in place. The civil commitment law has strong public support, but is opposed by many psychiatrists, defense lawyers and civil libertarians. Critics claim that the understaffed and overcrowded rehabilitation facilities used for offenders are only detention centres for people the state doesn’t want on the streets.
The civil commitment law isn’t perfect. But there is only one way to keep a child sex offender from abusing kids: remove them from having contact with children – period. If we must lock sex offenders up in prison or let them sit in a hospital for the rest of their lives to ensure that kids will be safe – then we must do it.
Read the CNN article.
