They Served Their Time for Sex Crimes. The State Won't Let Them Go.

New York Times

3 days ago

Russell Tinsley had a long history of committing serious crimes, including rape and assault with a deadly weapon, in other states by the time he was imprisoned for car theft in New Jersey in 2008.
After each of the prior convictions, in California and Pennsylvania, Mr. Tinsley had followed the conventional path through the American criminal justice system, serving his time and then going free.
But when his two-year sentence was up in New Jersey, officials in the state attorney general's office petitioned to have him confined for more time under a state law that allows for the civil commitment of dangerous sex offenders — even though he had never been convicted of a sex crime in that state. That was in 2010.
Two doctors who never interviewed him concluded that he lacked skills to function safely in the community and that he should be locked in the state's Special Treatment Unit until he was rehabilitated.
Over the next 15 years, Mr. Tinsley's treatment was overseen by doctors who repeatedly failed to show that he had an uncontrollable 'mental abnormality,' as required by law, and his care proceeded at a glacial pace, advancing him no closer to freedom, a judge would eventually rule. Still he remains in the unit today, having turned 70 in March.
'I think they want to keep me here until I die,' he said in a recent interview.
Operated in 20 states, programs like the one that has held Mr. Tinsley occupy a fraught and contentious corner of the nation's criminal justice system, allowing for some sex offenders to be civilly committed to secure facilities even after they have served their full criminal sentences.
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