In an effort to stop paroled sex offenders from repeating their crimes by providing more supervision, a House committee Thursday advanced a bill that would allow the state to impose special rules on them.
The bill, approved 13-0 by the Judiciary Criminal Law Committee, would allow the imposition of rules such as bans on contacting children and entering stores that sell pornography, to be tailored individually for each sex offender on parole.
All of the restrictions defined in the bill can currently be applied to parolees, but Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan, who testified before the committee, said it was important to get these guidelines on the books. The measure would encourage the Prisoner Review Board to make specific parole recommendations based on the type of sex crime, she said.
“Our parole system has continued to be a one-size-fits-all program,” Madigan said. “This bill will break that mold.”
Ultimately, Madigan and other supporters of the bill want to establish a system of lifetime supervision for a large percentage of sexual offenders. Such supervision is needed because state and federal studies have found that nearly half of all sexual offenders commit new crimes once they are released from prison, said state Rep. Eileen Lyons (R-Western Springs.). In Cook County, of the 61 people charged in January with felony sex crimes, 30 were registered sex offenders and only one was on parole, according to the attorney general’s office.
“Sex offenders are a unique kind of criminal because their recidivism rate is so high. It’s a sickness that is not easily understood or cured, so it makes sense that we have a better accountability of that criminal element” with lifetime supervision, Lyons said.
And the state’s registry of sexual offenders, a database available to the public that lists where sexual offenders live, does not do enough to help the state monitor the felons, Madigan said. There have been at least two cases in the Chicago area in the last year in which men have committed new sex crimes after their 10 years on the registry were up.
“Registration is only as good as the supervision that comes with it,” she said.
But defense attorneys are critical of the idea of lifetime supervision. They fear that putting sex offenders under lifetime supervision would unfairly extend the scarlet letter that many sex offenders wear when they are on the registry.
“Lifetime supervision could get in the way of their starting a new life,” said Amy Campanelli of the Cook County public defender’s office.
Madigan and Lyons said lifetime supervision will be individually tailored to a specific offender and might include having a parole officer keep tabs on a sex offender’s job choices and cooperation with treatment programs.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois had originally been concerned that the legislation establishing more supervision of sex offenders could endanger the felons’ civil rights, but it has withdrawn its opposition because the supervision will be tailored to each individual case, said Ed Yohnka, ACLU spokesman.
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But Campanelli worries the push to establish lifetime supervision could set a bad precedent.
“If we’re going to have lifetime supervision for sex offenders, why not do this for people brought in on drug charges? They’ve also got high recidivism,” Campanelli said.