CONNECTICUT News

Lawmakers and law enforcers throughout the nation have tried to corral sex offenders by tracking their movements, limiting where they can live and spotlighting their profiles in public registries.

In Connecticut, however, legislators have found a big blind spot in the surveillance net: the period immediately after release from prison when offenders, who are often homeless, are most likely to relapse.

A law passed in 2008 ordered the state Department of Correction and the Judicial Branch to establish a 24-bed sex offender treatment facility. Now, the state is prepared to open its first halfway house specifically for sex offenders in January on the grounds of the Corrigan-Radgowski Correctional Center In Montville. The staff will evaluate and counsel inmates and help them find jobs.

"It's not just treatment; it's keeping an eye on them," said state Rep. Mike Lawlor, judiciary committee leader and a former state prosecutor. "It's a way you can avoid just giving the guy a pair of jeans and a bus ticket and saying, 'Good luck.'"

At the same time, however, Montville officials say they are alarmed by the imminent placement of rapists and child molesters in their community. The town council recently passed an ordinance prohibiting sex offenders from stepping foot on any town-owned or -leased land, including parks, playgrounds, sports fields and public school grounds.

The new ordinance and the soon-to-open treatment facility have made this small town in eastern Connecticut a testing ground for the competing goals of red-zoning sex felons and reintegrating them into society.

Town council member Ellen Hillman said local officials are leery of the contract the state signed with the facility's operator. Council members passed the ordinance, which levies a fine of $99 for violators, to provide an extra layer of protection as the town braces for the sex criminals' arrival. Bristol, Danbury and Ridgefield are among communities that have similar rules.

"If this ordinance makes a child safe for the two hours they're playing ball or cheerleading, then it's worth every word written on a piece of paper," Hillman said.

Council Chairwoman Donna Jacobson said the planned facility was "a knee-jerk reaction to an incident in Southbury."

"Thus, the inevitable conclusion was and is failure, for the legislature enacted a law which had no firm guidelines to provide concurrently for the treatment of offenders or the safety of the community," Jacobson said.

She was referring to the case of David Pollitt, a serial rapist who served 24 years in prison. Upon his release, Pollitt was strapped with an electronic monitoring bracelet and went to live — over neighbors' strenuous objections — with his sister in Southbury. The monitoring system indicated that Pollitt left the property for 15 minutes on Sept. 3, 2008, but authorities later learned that the GPS signal was faulty.

When Pollitt was released in 2007, Gov. M. Jodi Rell asked state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal to seek a court order preventing Pollitt from moving to the Southbury neighborhood, but that was unsuccessful. Southbury's first selectman also tried and failed to get support from other selectmen to have Pollitt removed from his sister's home and committed to a mental institution.

"Where is the support from my state government for me for doing this for David?" Pollitt's sister, Janice Rosengren, asked a reporter that year. "Why isn't everyone saying, 'Hey, if she didn't take him in, he'd be on the streets?'"

The Pollitt case and the Petit family murders in Cheshire in July 2007 revealed wide gaps in the state's supervision of former inmates, Lawlor said. Convicted killer Steven Hayes and his alleged accomplice, Joshua Komisarjevsky, were both career criminals who had been paroled only months before the triple murder.

Focusing on sex offenders, Lawlor said he and other legislators found that most states have transitional programs for released inmates. That Connecticut lacked such a facility, he said, was "kind of crazy and reckless" because many studies have shown that convicts are most apt to commit more crimes in the months immediately following release.

According to the state's 2010 Annual Recidivism Report, "offenders that were discharged after completing community supervision programs, like parole or transitional supervision, had the lowest recidivism rates among all groups of offenders."

Asked about the criminal profiles of inmates who will be housed in the Montville facility, Lawlor said, "You start with the guys you're most concerned with — the guys you definitely don't want to let out on the streets with no supervision."

All facility residents will be supervised at all times, correction department spokesman Brian Garnett said.

"This is a secured facility on the grounds of a correctional facility," Garnett said.

Facility residents — a combination of inmates finishing their sentences and those on probation — will be escorted whenever they go off-grounds for job interviews or other activities, Garnett said. Also, any job-seeking activities will be limited to the inmates' home towns, he said.

The department's goal, Garnett said, is to prepare convicted sex offenders to be law-abiding citizens while also protecting the public. Some sex offenders get treatment in prison, but not all, Garnett said. Many times, both he and Lawlor said, released inmates end up in homeless shelters with no supervision.

"We don't want someone with these issues to be held until the very last day of their sentence and then just show them the door and hope they don't come back," Garnett said.

The facility is to be run by The Connection, a Middletown-based nonprofit human services agency with programs that include the Center for the Treatment of Problem Sexual Behavior. The state contract to run the sex offender facility ends on June 30, 2012, and is capped at a total of $4.5 million.

An inmate's typical stay will be six months. Treatment is to include group and individual counseling sessions, substance abuse monitoring, lie detector tests, and in some cases, "medication to control problematic arousal," according to the contract. A list of the program's core curriculum includes "self management," "empathy and victim awareness," "intimacy, relationships and social functioning" and "strategies for controlling deviant sexual fantasy and arousal."

Hillman, the Montville town council member, said the contract is vague about who will supervise inmates when they go off-grounds. Heide Erb, a spokeswoman for The Connection, said employees of that agency will most likely accompany residents off-grounds.

Hillman said she also worries that inmates may get acclimated to Montville and that nothing can stop them from settling in town once their treatment ends. Erb said the program's goal is to find residents employment and housing in their home towns.

Finally, Hillman said, she has deep doubts about the success of a six-month treatment program for serious sex offenders.

"These people are not people that can be rehabilitated overnight," she said.

HARTFORD, Conn. -- Lawmakers want to expand the state's Amber Alert system to include runaway teenagers.Everytime
the Amber Alert system has been used in Connecticut, a child has been
found safely. Because the program has been successful, some lawmakers
say it should be used to help more children.Connecticut was one of the first states to start using highway road signs to alert people that a child was missing.It’s been used 11 times, and every time a child has been found.To
use the Amber Alert, a missing child must be in danger or harm, or must
be younger than 16 years old and police need to have a good
description.State lawmakers are proposing changes that would help
make runaways a higher priority and also help more missing 16 and
17-year-olds.State police Lt. Paul Vance said the state has also
started a Silver Alert system, the intent of that was to help older
people with medical problems.

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