Treatment Ordered for Sex Crimes

Repeat sex offenders who have completed their prison terms must be treated as patients rather than prisoners and be given mental health treatment while they remain in jail, a Los Angeles judge ruled Tuesday.

The order requiring the state to provide treatment applies to 203 convicts who are awaiting hearings to determine if they will be sent to state mental hospitals under California’s Sexually Violent Predator Act.

Lawyers for the sex offenders filed legal motions contending that the state has acted unconstitutionally by housing the men in jails rather than hospitals and by denying them treatment during the wait, which sometimes takes years.

California Department of Mental Health spokeswoman Nora Romero said department officials disagree with Superior Court Judge David S. Wesley’s ruling and are consulting with the state attorney general’s office about an appeal.

The department does not believe that it has the responsibility to treat the inmates when they are in county jails and has no immediate plans to implement the order, Romero said.

“This could conceivably mean setting up treatment programs in 58 counties and that was never the intent of the legislation,” she said.

The California Supreme Court ruled in 1999 that the sexual predators law, enacted three years earlier, is constitutional but should not be punitive and should not treat offenders as criminals. Wesley, however, said in his ruling that the law has been applied punitively in Los Angeles County.

“The majority of the detainees in the county of Los Angeles are housed in jails, for a period of several years, without treatment,” Wesley wrote in the 13-page ruling. “As the conditions of confinement are similar to those of penal inmates, the SVPA, in its application, is transformed into a penal law, due to the lengthy detention without treatment.”

Wesley also directed the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to keep those repeat sex offenders segregated from the general jail population and to provide them with to those of inmates at Atascadero State Hospital.

Attorneys filed motions in Superior Court earlier this year on behalf of about a dozen inmates, but Wesley directed his order to apply to all men who are involuntarily committed locally under the sex predator law.

The order directly affects only offenders in Los Angeles County, but lawyers said it could prompt motions on behalf of men throughout the state.

“This is the best thing that has happened to the SVP community in a long, long time,” said attorney Todd Melnik, who represents several repeat sex offenders in Los Angeles County. “What Judge Wesley has done is ensure that people detained under the Sexually Violent Predator Act and housed in County Jail are patients, not inmates.”

Melnik originally had asked that his clients be placed in hospitals rather than jails pending their hearings, but he said Tuesday that he was very pleased with the order.

Deputy Public Defender Mike Suzuki, who filed a motion on behalf of a county jail inmate who had not received treatment since December 1998, said the ruling is just the first step.

“We’ll have to see if the County Jail can implement the judge’s ruling, and if they can’t, where we would go from there,” Suzuki said.

Assistant County Counsel Kevin Brazile, who represents the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, said the county is considering whether to challenge the order.

Officials have to determine what impact the state mental health treatment could have on jail operations, Brazile said.

“The jail is not a state hospital,” he said. “It’s a jail, so there are going to be safety and security concerns.”

Brazile added that repeat sex offenders already are segregated.

Under state law, repeat sex offenders are housed in County Jail until a hearing to determine whether there is probable cause to believe that they may commit more sexually violent crimes. If probable cause is found, the inmate is sent to Atascadero State Hospital until his trial, which will determine whether he should be committed to the state hospital for two years. For that to happen, at least two state mental health experts must have found that the inmate presents a “substantial danger” to society because he is likely to attack again.

The treatment program that repeat sex offenders receive at Atascadero is intensive and long-term, and includes group and individual therapy sessions, Mental Health Department spokeswoman Romero said.

“It’s not just a psychiatrist or a psychologist that could go to the jail for an hour once or twice a week,” she said.

According to Wesley, 76 Los Angeles County Jail inmates are awaiting probable cause hearings. Most are not being treated and are subject to the same restrictions and conditions imposed on penal inmates; a few have been waiting since 1998.

The judge wrote that they may continue to be housed in County Jail before their probable cause hearings, provided they get proper mental health treatment.

Wesley wrote that the Department of Mental Health must “implement and enforce treatment to all persons detained with SVP status.”

Whether the offenders are in County Jail or anywhere else, Wesley said, “treatment is the essential component of such commitment, regardless of the stage of the civil process.”