MANAGING SEX OFFENDERS

A complex and costly problem

Only those who believe the best way to deal with a paedophile is to give him a fair trial, take him out and shoot him, can see a simple solution to the problems child sex offenders pose, writes the Dominion Post in an editorial. To everyone else, it is a complex, disturbing and difficult field in which to work. The Dominion Post this week reported on documents revealing that 24-hour-a-day supervision for child rapist Lloyd McIntosh was cut from two staff to one on January 1. It has been suggested cost cuts are a reason for the reduced supervision, but this is strongly denied by the Government, which says a downgrade from two carers to one was always part of McIntosh's supervision plan. Last year, he was given the maximum period of supervision — 10 years – after being freed from prison for a sexual offence committed when he was already under supervision; in that case, after serving a 10-year jail term for raping an infant. The sentence of preventive detention seems to have been created for people like McIntosh — recidivist offenders who commit repulsive crimes, sometimes without remorse, that can shatter the lives of their victims and families. But McIntosh has never been sentenced to preventive detention and, as Justice Minister Phil Goff points out, can't be sentenced to it retrospectively. The only other option is what is occurring — a jail term and, on freeing, a period of supervision. That is an enormously costly exercise, but the cost is something taxpayers simply have to bear for the community to be safe. However, taxpayers, while prepared to foot the bill, deserve to be assured they are getting what they pay for: namely, protection from a recidivist sex offender.

McIntosh has a sufficiently low IQ to be considered retarded. In the absence of a sentence of preventive detention, he falls into the same category of some other offenders, some with mental health problems, who have done the crime and time, but those who know them wait in fear for news they have reoffended. It is an unsatisfactory situation, one that the sentence of supervision is designed to ameliorate, at least for as long as the supervision lasts. The public has made clear it wants harsher sentences, and the Government has responded. The public has also made clear it considers the rights of innocent members of the community, especially children, to come ahead of those of convicted criminals. In a trade-off between society's protection from sexual predators and the rights of those who have been convicted of crime, the public mood is very much in favour of community protection, and rightly so. With that, however, will have to be an acceptance of high rates of incarceration, with the concomitant financial costs. Already New Zealand's prison population has grown by about 17 per cent in the past two and a half years. McIntosh is not considered dangerous in the sense that he may overpower his solitary guard, but he is dangerous in that, if given the opportunity to offend, he is considered likely to take it. His supervision must be sufficiently comprehensive to prevent that occurring. The Corrections Department has put on paper its belief that his supervision is adequate. It had better be. If, after all the warnings about him, he reoffends while on supervision, it won't be only his victim who pays the price.

14 January 2005
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3156593a6220,00.html
 

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