By Sandy . . . Follow the money trail. How often has this advice been given, and how often has the heeding of it led to the unraveling of an enigma or a crime.

The sex offender industry is both an enigma and a crime, and following the money trail reveals what lies at the heart and continues to drive this occasionally well-meaning but more often self-serving and punitive complexity of businesses, individuals, and motivations that comprise the billion-dollar “sex offender” industry.

The industry is well diversified. It has three well-developed branches and a fourth smaller but highly important one.

The first, and certainly the lynch pin that holds it all together, is the appeal to the public for security and protection, especially for the need to protect children. This branch encompasses, first and foremost, the public sex offender registries; it includes varied screening, monitoring, and alert products, from systems in schools and libraries to cell phone and email alerts that notify instantly if someone on the registry enters the building or moves into the neighborhood.

The second, and even larger, branch of this industry is the management of those on the registry. Many of these are applicable to registered offenders living in the community, especially when they are on parole or probation. These include the sex offender treatment industry, GPS monitoring, and the polygraph (often used with treatment programs).  The demand for the polygraph creates a need for them  and of course for those who operate them; also, they must be manufactured and marketed. Additionally, many states found the day to day management of their sex offender databases, aka registries, too onerous and demanding for them to keep up with, and a new industry was born–the sex offender database management companies, who, for a fee, take care of all the day to day work of keeping the state online registry updated.

Law enforcement has benefited as their budgets were increased to allow the hiring of new personnel to do parole compliance checks, take care of the constantly ongoing registration process, do home visits, and check on compliance with residence restrictions. In some cases, entire sex offender task forces were created, aided by the U.S. Marshals Service. Their image and public approval are enhanced with every “sex offender” they report violated for a parole infraction or arrested for failure to register.

The management of sex offenders not yet released has spawned another group of businesses–civil commitment “hospitals.” They are extremely controversial, yet they flourish in the 20 states that have them. Among the most protested are the ones in Texas and Minnesota.

The third major branch of the sex offender industry is the role the federal government plays. Under the Adam Walsh Act, the Federal Marshals are empowered to track and capture “absconded” registrants, and they receive large grants each year with which to accomplish their work. Additionally, most investigation of electronic/computer sex crime, such as online solicitation, teen-age “sexting,” and viewing illegal images falls under federal jurisdiction. Federally financed sting operations are infamous. Some federal prisons are filled almost exclusively with those convicted of sexually related crimes.

Finally, comprising the fourth of the components of the sex offender industry are individuals who have and continue to benefit from their participation in the industry. Most notable, perhaps, is John Walsh. Certainly his involvement was thrust upon him in a way no one would ever choose, but it cannot be denied that he built a career that has spanned several decades using his son’s murder. Other parents and some victims have to lesser degrees stayed in the limelight with activism, victim advocacy organizations, and endorsement of harsher and harsher laws dealing with registrants.  One could not possibly count the number of those seeking political office or campaigning to be reelected who used some variation of, “I promise to crack down on those who sexually abuse our children.” Another type of individual who has found a way to earn a living from the sex offender industry is the “scamser.” For close to two decades, across the nation in almost every state, telephone scams targeting persons on the registry have abounded. Registrants are especially vulnerable as they often live in terror of overlooking something they should have done and being rearrested.

The offenses that require public registration run the gamut from the ridiculous to the heinous. Proper management of such a vast range of behaviors requires moving away from our “one size fits all” model and actually reading the research and listening to the experts in the field. Even more essential is focusing on the very real problem of child sexual abuse and those who really do sexually abuse children and developing appropriate programs of education and prevention. But first we need to dismantle the sex offender industry; we need to remove the financial and personal incentives from which so very many benefit.

The post The sex offender industry: follow the money first appeared on NARSOL.

By Sandy . . . They were married in a Texas county jail with a bulletproof pane of glass between them. The paths that took them to that point were twisted and tortuous, and the paths leading from it are even more so.

He was convicted of two sexual offenses many years ago and served two prison terms for them with the Texas Department of Corrections. In 2009 he was transferred to a halfway house and put in the Texas Civil Commitment program, which at that time was an out-patient program. In 2015, the Texas Civil Commitment Center (TCCC) in Littlefield, Texas, opened, a facility—and a program—with a history and performance inspiring anything but confidence and success. He was taken there, grabbed up in a sweep

across Texas by the state D.O.C. that could have been inspired by the pogroms in Nazi Germany that rounded up and removed Jews to concentration camps.

His wife Mandi sounds very matter-of-fact as she speaks about that time. She has told this story often. Mandi was employed from 2018 to 2021 at the Texas Civil Commitment Center—often simply called Littlefield— with a security company that contracted to TCCC. There they met, talked, and eventually the feelings of illicit friendship deepened into romantic ones. Mandi knew that they were breaking the rules, and she was terminated in 2021 on that charge.

New charges were brought against him for possession of contraband—a cell phone— and for failure to report internet identifiers, and he was returned to prison on the contraband conviction. Mandi visited him often there as well as having telephone conversations, and the relationship grew into love. It was while he was being held in a county jail awaiting transfer yet again back to prison for the internet charges that they married in April of 2022.

That was the last time Mandi saw her husband, and the few telephone calls she has been allowed with him since have been with a Littlefield employee on the line and precipitated by her having a serious medical condition.

Detainees at Littlefield—they are not allowed to be called prisoners—are permitted contacts through a laborious and potentially arbitrary process. The detainee initiates the procedure with a request and fills out a form; the next step is an interview with the requested person. The treatment team reviews the request and the recorded interview, and then the head of the treatment team decides the level of contact that will be allowed—mail, phone, or/and in-person visits.

Mandi’s application was stalled at the interview stage. She was not—and still has never been—granted an interview. Instead, her application was denied on the basis of her not being a “pro-social collateral contact” due to her willingness to break the “no fraternization” rule while she was working at Littlefield and her failure to report his illicit cell phone.

She was told in a telephone meeting with Littlefield employees that she would first need to take classes

from an approved, licensed, sex offender treatment provider. So she did, twelve different times, at her own expense. She still was not approved.In an interesting sidenote, information about the requirements of an approved sex offender treatment provider in Texas appears to be swathed in secrecy.

She was then told she had to take approved chaperone classes. She has. Twice. She was still denied.

Then she was told she needed to prepare and submit a “treatment plan.” She has. Several. Every one has been rejected, and she was denied any assistance in what to include or what she was doing wrong. In a telephone meeting early in December of 2023, Mandi was berated and belittled to the extent that she gave up and stopped trying. She later filed suit against the Texas Civil Commitment Office, its executive director, the head of its treatment program, and her husband’s case manager.

Before the end of 2023, Mandi was told by her doctor that tests showed she had a cluster of malignant cervical cells.

She was granted a very short, monitored telephone conversation with her husband to inform him of her diagnosis and the medical procedures she would be undergoing. None of those surgical procedures were successful in eradicating her cancer, and she was told she would need a total hysterectomy.

The request for a telephone call to inform her husband of her impending major surgery was initially denied—the lawsuit had now been served—and then was reluctantly granted, but only because she is her husband’s legal power of attorney. Permission for the call came with a litany of demands:

• Only legal matters could be discussed, nothing medical, nothing about her upcoming surgery.
• The call would, as the previous few calls about her surgical procedures had done, include a Littlefield employee.
• The call could be “absolutely” no longer than five minutes.
• They were forbidden to include any personal references or to say, “I love you,” to each other.
• They were forbidden to pray.

Mandi’s surgery is now behind her, and she has fully recovered. There still has been no contact whatsoever allowed with her husband. Her voice is restrained yet firm and articulate as she speaks. She readily agreed to this interview; she is eager to tell her story to anyone willing to listen.

I asked if she believed the refusal to approve her as a contact for her husband was a result of her fraternization with him when she worked at Littlefield. “At first, yes,” she replied. “I believe that now it’s because of my advocacy.” Her voice was still matter-or-facet while she spoke about  the facility itself, its top administrative staff, and the level of care and treatment it provides.

She spoke of food shortages. “I have been told by the wives and mothers of other men that they are fighting for scraps left on trays and are digging in the trash cans.”

Other issues she answered not only by what she has been told but also from what she knows from when she worked there. “Medical care?” I asked. Inadequate; neglectful; medicines not given. During Covid it was horrible.

“Special needs?” After a pause, her voice was, this time, washed over with emotion. “No. One gentleman, Mr. [name withheld] is almost blind; no accommodations are made for him; he gets no help from any employees at all. Wheelchairs are broken and not replaced. Many of the men are elderly. More bottom bunks are needed for those who are unable to climb up; more handicapped pods are needed.”

Forced civil commitment for persons who have completed court-ordered punishment for a criminal conviction is applicable to no classification of crime other than sexual. Currently twenty states have such provisions.

Littlefield staff and administration insist that the men in their facility be called patients or residents, not

prisoners or inmates, but they are involuntarily confined, locked in cells behind high walls topped with razor wire, unable to make a telephone call or receive a letter until the person calling or writing has been put through the full contact vetting process and gained the approval of the head of their specific treatment team.

The focus of such confinement is supposed to be therapeutic, but little evidence exists that Littlefield offers an acceptable level of therapy or treatment. According to the Just Future project, at Littlefield “. . . thirteen people have been fully released from civil commitment from 2016 to present,” and they were released by the courts, not by completing the program.

Complaints against the facility and TCCC are longstanding and have been made by former employees as well as family member of those incarcerated there.

Mandi’s suit, filed pro se, moves slowly through the system. She gave a presentation at NARSOL’s 2023 conference in Houston. She is a past member of TACC, Texas Against Civil Commitment. She helped in starting a current petition calling for an investigation into TCCC.

Now she waits. No visits. No phone calls. No letters. No one helping her.

She waits.

The post A prison by any other name is still a prison first appeared on NARSOL.