sex

the bureau of justice statistics has released a large-scale study of self-reported sexual victimization in local jails. i made the quick figure above to show the estimated prevalence of such victimization for different inmate groups: about 5% of females and 3% of males reported sexual victimization and rates were disproportionately high for inmates of color, youth, and more educated inmates. prior victimization and (self-identified) sexual orientation are most strongly correlated with victimization, however, with about one in 10 bisexual inmates and almost one in five homosexual inmates reporting sexual victimization.

one hopes that such data can help provide a road map for reducing sexual assaults in correctional facilities — and protecting those most subject to victimization. courageously, the bjs report also identifies the specific jails with especially high or low rates of sexual victimization:

The Torrance County Detention Facility (New Mexico) had the highest rate — 10.1% when sexual victimization excluded willing activity with staff and 8.9% when victimization excluded abusive sexual contacts (allegations of touching only). The Southeastern Ohio Regional Jail and the Bernalillo County Metropolitan Detention Center (New Mexico) were also among the top five facilities on each of these more serious measures of sexual victimization.

we’re celebrating a new ph.d. in the department, after heather hlavka’s successful defense of her dissertation, the trouble with telling: children’s constructions of sexual abuse.

dr. hlavka analyzed ten years of case files and videotaped forensic interviews with children seen for suspected cases of sexual abuse. the diss is powerful stuff, rendered with great care, sensitivity, and sophistication. she shows how the meaning of sexual abuse is negotiated in interaction with adults, but keeps the children’s voices front-and-center throughout. a systematic research design yields clear (and disturbing) generalizations about social power and barriers to disclosure. in short, she’s got me questioning just about everything we (think we) know about the age, race, class, and gender distribution of child sexual abuse.

dr. hlavka will be professin’ at marquette university this fall, where she will join darren wheelock, a fellow minnversity sociologist.

larry oakes of the strib offers a well-researched look at sex offender civil commitment in minnesota. a few bullets:

• 19 states and the federal government now detain former prison inmates for indefinite involuntary treatment.
• the state now has the highest rate of sex offender civil commitments, locking up 544 men and 1 woman.
• minnesota numbers have spiked dramatically since a heinous 2003 case.
• it costs $134,000 per inmate per year in the minnesota sex offender program, relative to $45,000 per inmate per year in state prison, $15,000 per year for outpatient treatment, $10,000 per year for gps monitoring, and $4,000 per year for electronic home monitoring.
• recidivism has dropped dramatically. as a 2007 state department of corrections report concludes: “due to the dramatic decrease in sexual recidivism since the early 1990s, recent sexual reoffense rates have been very low, thus significantly limiting the extent to which sexual reoffending can be further reduced.”

here’s the lead:

In the 14 years since Minnesota’s Sexually Dangerous Persons Act cleared the way for the state to detain hundreds of paroled sex offenders in prison-like treatment centers, just 24 men have met what has proved to be the only acceptable standard for release.

They died.

“We would say, ‘Another one completed treatment,'” said Andrew Babcock, a former guard and counselor in the Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP).

criminologists typically adopt a supply-side approach, rather than viewing crime as a problem of demand for illegal goods and services. demand reduction strategies have long been practiced with regard to substance use. if effective, however, the idea might be productively extended to problem landlords and myriad other areas. for prostitution, at least, there’s some evidence that simple interventions with consumers might slow demand.

nij and the san francisco chronicle report that the first offender prostitution program (or “john school”) might be effective in reducing the demand for prostitution. i say “might” because the clever multi-method analysis (details here) by abt associates isn’t really set up to make strong causal claims.

i’m not going to argue that convicted sex offenders should be the first in line for student financial aid*, but i’d like to offer a few snarky comments on today’s associated press story on college aid for sex predators.

c’mon the story practically writes itself: take a stigmatized deviant group, document some group members deriving a benefit from a government program, record the sanctimonious outrage of an obscure legislator, and start those fingers a-waggin’.

MADISON, Wis. – James Sturtz is not your ordinary college student struggling to pay tuition. The 48-year-old rapist is one of Iowa’s most dangerous sex offenders, locked up in a state-run treatment center for fear he will attack again if released.

intriguing lead, but it glosses over the whole civil commitment issue. see, mr. sturtz was sent to prison and completed his sentence. he remains locked up for fear he will attack again, but he’s supposed to be a patient in a treatment center rather than an inmate in a prison. are readers so accustomed to sweeping punishments that treament centers have become synonymous with prisons?

Yet he has received thousands of dollars in federal aid to take college courses through the mail. Across the nation, dozens of sexual predators have been taking higher education classes at taxpayer expense while confined by the courts to treatment centers. Critics say they are exploiting a loophole to receive Pell Grants, the nation’s premier financial aid program for low-income students.

somebody seems to be exploiting a loophole in this case, but i’m not sure the guys in the treatment center are the ones to blame. had they been released after fulfilling the obligations of their criminal sentences, they’d be eligible for pell assistance, but they were involuntarily committed to an indefinite spell of treatment. and just how many cases of pell-abusin’ sex offenders are we talking about here? dozens implies something more than twelve, but there is little evidence to suggest great expenditure or abuse.

Prison inmates are ineligible for Pell Grants under a 1994 law. Students convicted of certain drug offenses are also ineligible. But sexual predators qualify once they are transferred from prison to treatment centers.

this is a “last shall be first” passage, implying that sex offenders are the least deserving among the undeserving. the article doesn’t ask whether prisoners should be eligible for student aid, or whether students should continue to lose assistance because they have been convicted of misdemeanor marijuana possession.

“This is the most insane waste of taxpayer money that I have seen in my eight years in Congress,” said Rep. Ric Keller, R-Fla., who is pushing to stop the practice… Keller’s plan would affect 20 states that allow authorities to hold violent sex offenders indefinitely after they have served their prison sentences. He predicted the measure would save taxpayers millions.

i won’t quibble with representative keller’s math, but i’m not convinced that cutting off such aid would save millions. let’s say three dozen inmates have received pell grants. the average award would have to be about $56,000 for us to save $2,000,000. since the maximum pell award is $4,310, however, we’d need at least 464 recipients to get near two million.

the bigger issue here is that 20 states hold people indefinitely after they have served their prison sentences. the representative is justifiably concerned about money, but he might also want to take a close look at the per diems on these treatment centers. many more millions could be saved by the judicious release of a small number of these people after they have done their time.

…At the Sand Ridge Secure Treatment Center in Mauston, Wis., six patients are getting Pell Grants, and others did so in the past. Some patients used their grants for living expenses that were already being covered by the state’s taxpayers, according to administrators.

“I think that the current practice — which results in large checks being sent to the patients for living expenses — is pretty much indefensible,” director Steve Watters wrote in an e-mail to an aide last year.

In Iowa, 14 offenders in the Cherokee Mental Health Institute have received Pell Grants in recent years, said administrator Jason Smith. He said nine of them dropped courses after receiving money.

i’d agree that the current practice is indefensible, since administrators should be able to determine whether the money is being spent on educational expenses. on the other hand, it is not unprecedented for students to drop courses after receiving financial aid, especially in the absence of academic advising or support.

So far, none of the 72 predators in the Iowa center has been released since it opened in 1999. Sturtz admitted he is not ready for freedom anytime soon.

“It wasn’t about the money for me, man. It was about the education,” he said. “God knows I’m going to need all the help to get a job.”

now we’re getting somewhere. although these sex offenders are purportedly in treatment, we know that they will never be released. i’ve got no sympathy for those convicted again and again for horrible crimes. nevertheless, when mr. sturtz talks about getting a job on the outside, i can’t help but think, “the poor sap still believes he might actually get out.”

right now, sex offenders are stuck in a creepy constitutional no-man’s land between legal punishment and medical-treatment-without-parole. there may be no easy answer that would preserve both public safety and individual rights, but i’d suggest the following: give ’em lengthy but indeterminate sentences, with the range determined by a legislature and/or sentencing commission, in-prison treatment, and — if treatment goes well and a qualified board so rules — a realistic hope of discretionary parole.

*seriously, mr. o’reilly. i’m not going to argue this position, so your producers can just stop calling about it.

via nij: the national institute of Justice is hosting an online discussion forum this week on research bearing on the prison rape elimination act. even basic questions about the prevalence of prison sexual assault are fiercely contested, so i’d expect a lively discussion.

Sexual Victimization in Prisons: Moving Toward Elimination

February 7, 2008: 2pm–4pm ESTFree online event. Registration required.
One of every 22 men and women sentenced to imprisonment in the United States reported that they were assaulted sexually while incarcerated.

Sexual victimization in prisons is the issue, elimination is the goal. Join a group of experts to discuss the state of Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) research—what data is available and what’s yet to come. The experts will examine ways to move from better understanding to reliable prevention and eventual elimination. View a detailed description of the event and register today.

saturday’s pi-press reported on two local robberies involving a chatline. in each case, dudes traveled to a minneapolis apartment to visit a woman they’d met on livelinks.

insomniacs are likely familiar with late-night television ads for livelinks. these typically feature attractive semi-clothed college-age women writhing flirtatiously while chatting on the phone.

when the local men arrived to meet the woman with whom they’d been speaking, they were greeted by a bat-wielding boyfriend and quickly relieved of their wallets and credit cards. according to the affidavit,

the woman told the man to bring DVDs, vodka and Swisher Sweets cigars. “Once he arrived, the female met him at the door,” the affidavit says. “She asked him for 20 dollars, which he gave her, then a male appeared from another room.” Dude came with a gun in one hand, a bat in the other,” the victim told the Pioneer Press.

fortunately, nobody was seriously hurt. this is a good scam because it is easy to attract men to a female stranger’s apartment, especially when they have visions of late-night commercials dancing in their heads. this is a terrible and short-lived scam, however, because the men are not so complicit that they would be reluctant to contact the police. and, of course, they could provide the police with very good directions to the address.

do you think the cigars were for the sweet talker or for the gun/bat-wielding boyfriend?