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| Alaska looks at new treatment program for sex offenders |
| By Fairbanks Daily News-Miner |
| Published: 03/21/2005 |
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The Alaska Department of Corrections, which stopped offering its prison-based sex offender treatment program in July 2003, plans to a launch a new pilot program this summer that relies heavily on polygraph testing to gather information about offenders and keep them out of situations when they're likely to offend. Department officials hope to apply the "containment model" approach in Anchorage on about 30 to 60 newly released sex offenders in Anchorage, Corrections Commissioner Marc Antrim told members of the Senate Finance Committee last Tuesday. In a presentation that was partly a pitch for money, the corrections department brought in Colorado officials to explain to the Senate panel how the treatment approach is used in that state and other jurisdictions. The containment model relies on regular polygraph testing to uncover information about offenders, which can be used to closely monitor someone and reduce the chances that someone will re-offend, said Kim English, research director for the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice. "You want to learn about their patterns of behavior and correct the matter before (they re-offend)," English said. If the approach shows promise on a pilot basis in Anchorage this summer, the corrections department could take the model statewide, Antrim said. He told the Senate Finance Committee that he hopes to collect another $500,000 in funding for the department in the next fiscal year to help launch the program. The department ended a treatment program in 2003 for inmates and has not been providing any prison-based sex offender treatment since. Many offenders, however, are required to complete treatment once released as part of their probation or parole. They pay for the services, as offenders would do under the containment model proposed for Alaska. Antrim said the old prison-based program offered by the DOC was based on an ineffective model that resulted in all but about 1 percent of offenders being classified as unamenable to treatment. Of that 1 percent who did receive treatment, half re-offended, he said. The department plans to implement the "community containment" model in Alaska in increments and closely monitor how it is working, he said. "We want to make sure we do it correctly as opposed to trying to take on too big of a load," Antrim said. Unlike the department's old program, which was offered to people in jail, the new model would be offered to people as they are released. |
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