Was state wise to cut prison-based sex offender treatment?

MAT-SU -- A program to help convicted sex offenders avoid similar behavior in the future is one of the casualties of budget-cutting under Gov. Frank Murkowski's administration.

The Alaska Department of Corrections used to offer treatment for inmates at Hiland Mountain Correctional Center in Eagle River. However, the program that has operated in various forms since 1982 was abolished in July 2003.

Department of Corrections spokeswoman Portia Parker says treatment was expensive and few who began the program completed it. Also, some sex offenders simply cannot benefit from counseling, she added.

"It's not rehabilitation," Parker said. "That's not possible. Treatment tries to contain and recognize factors leading to relapse -- to prevent the risk of relapse. That's all you can do."

But some are wondering if curtailing the program was short-sighted, and whether there will be bigger costs in the long run. Attorney Robin Koutchak of Palmer, who has offices in the Valley and Anchorage, is one of those asking the question. She's well acquainted with the issue because she represents many sex offenders.

"I'm finding that most of my clients want help, but without a program offered by the department there's not a big incentive to plead out," Koutchak said. "They will get no help. To just go ahead and do time is not that appealing to them."

DOC's Parker illustrated the program's cost and scope by pointing to its results during one period of four years and 10 months. During that time, 415 of 2,735 Alaska inmates serving time for sex crimes applied for the program, Parker said. Of those 415, only 199 were considered amenable to the program, and just 38 completed treatment.

"That's 1 percent of the sex offender population," Parker said.

The program's total cost during the period was $2.1 million, or $421,000 per year, she said.

Given the cost and the relatively low success rate, Parker said, the department has shifted its emphasis to conducting in-depth risk assessments of inmates before their release.

That will give probation officers information they need to best monitor parolees in their charge, said Rose Munafo, criminal justice planner for DOC. It also determines how intensive the post-release treatment should be, she said.

Munafo was director of the Hiland sex offender treatment program, and has mixed feelings about its curtailment. She believes it could have been more effective if every participant had received the in-depth assessments now being given to those on the verge of parole.

"I would have rather seen us try to find a way to do this better rather than just axing it," Munafo said. "But there was a lot of budget cutting going on, and this was a target."

She was one of four people who conducted a 1996 study by the Department of Corrections and the University of Alaska Anchorage Justice Center. They found that the Hiland Mountain program did work for some offenders and that treatment at any level had benefits.

The study of Hiland Mountain inmates from 1987 to 1995 concluded that prisoners who received treatment lasted longer in the community before they re-offended than did offenders in any other comparison groups. The positive effect of treatment was "clearly demonstrated," the study's summary said.

"Those who completed all stages of treatment through the advanced stage had a zero sexual re-offense rate," according to the study. "This included sexual assault offenders (rapists), who generally tend to re-offend more quickly and at a higher frequency."

Parker, though, pointed out that inmates who asked for and received treatment were those least likely to re-offend even before entering the programs. Treatment is aimed at dealing with denial and the most hardened sex offenders are "secretive, manipulative," she said.

"When offenders weren't being participatory they were kicked out of treatment," Parker said.

The study found that rapists did as well as those convicted of sexual abuse of a minor, both in terms of how long they stayed in treatment and how far they advanced in the program.

"This is an unusually positive outcome that has not been typically reported by other programs," the study's summary said.

Hiland housed 85 sex offenders when the study was released. Their treatment consisted of initial screening for assessment, orientation, education and "challenge of offense denial." Later treatment encouraged offenders to give and receive feedback, use social skills, and to take responsibility for their crime and its impact on victims.

The study's summary noted that treatment took anywhere from 20 months to three years. How long a prisoner stayed in treatment depended on their "individual resources, problem areas, skills, motivation and length of sentence," the study said.

"The sex offender population is diverse, therefore there are different levels of outcome. The [program] is not designed with the expectation that every sex offender will complete all stages of treatment. Some offenders may leave the program without completing all stages.

"These offenders may lack the ability or the sentence length to go further in the program, but will have still gained some benefit from treatment when they leave the program. Regardless of which stage is reached, offenders are eligible for follow-up in community programs."

The study concluded that treatment "can and does work" for some offenders, either by reducing the number of re-offenses or by prolonging the time until another offense occurs. "Either of these results reduces the number of victims in the community," investigators said.

The study found that Alaska Natives tended to leave treatment earlier than other offenders. Researchers said the reasons were unclear.

The team concluded that there are many reasons to fund effective sex offender treatment, including some practical reasons.

"Several studies have demonstrated how effective sex offender treatment saves taxpayer dollars," the summary said, citing three separate studies from 1990 to 1995. "These studies appear to demonstrate that treating sex offenders is more cost effective than incarceration without treatment."

Koutchak agrees.

"At least if there are 38 people who finish the program, that's 38 more people who were helped than if the program were not available," she said.

Koutchak says the issue represents different philosophies regarding the goal of corrections.

"Our society has changed from the classical school of criminality when the goal of prisons was the belief that people were hedonistic and the only way to stop this behavior was to punish them swiftly and severely," she said. "Now, in the positivist school, we have started talking about rehabilitation and why people commit these crimes. Starting with the [President Ronald] Reagan years, we swung the pendulum back to not caring how they got there but just wanting to lock them up."

The Murkowski administration and others under Republican control tend toward the lock-them-up school, Koutchak said, while Democrats are more inclined to seek rehabilitation.

"It seems to go down party lines," she said.