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220 Confined in State-Run Facilities for Sex Offenders

By By���� Schenectady Gazette�� May 13, 2012��

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Inmate Alan Horowitz shifted the focus of the examiner’s interview from his first admitted child sexual victim to a broader topic.

Horowitz, the convicted child rapist from Schenectady – called by one prosecutor the prime example of an offender who should be put away under the state’s civil confinement law – moved the conversation to a “rights” issue.

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“Certainly people exploit women, but no one bans sex,” Horowitz reasoned.

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The conversation was between Horowitz and a psychiatric examiner for the state Department of Mental Health at the maximum security Clinton Correctional Facility.

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Horowitz’s line of thinking, along with other evidence from his long history, led the examiner to conclude the 65-year-old inmate has the “mental abnormality” required to be confined under the 2007 Sex Offender Management and Treatment Act.

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The finding puts Horowitz on the path to becoming the latest of the “worst of the worst” sex offenders to be confined under the state’s five-year-old statute aimed at keeping certain sex offenders out of society, putting them in secure treatment facilities after their release from prison.

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As of March 31, a total of 220 individuals were in state-run secure treatment facilities for sex offenders, according to the state Department of Criminal Justice Services.

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Of those, 19 were originally convicted in the Capital Region: 11 from Albany County, two each from Schenectady and Rensselaer counties and one each from Saratoga, Fulton, Montgomery and Schoharie counties, according to DCJS.

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Another 61 statewide were in “strict and intensive supervision and treatment” in communities. The supervision program imposes strict rules on offenders aimed at early intervention before offenders commit crimes again. Eighteen people have been released from confinement into the strict community supervision.

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In each of the cases, those confined and under strict supervision stayed in the programs beyond their original prison terms.

Horowitz, with a sex offense history that dates back 40 years and spans four states and three continents, was exactly the type of offender lawmakers had in mind when they passed the statute, Schenectady County District Attorney Robert Carney said.

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“I think that he should be institutionalized for the rest of his life to protect children from him,” Carney said last week. Carney’s office prosecuted Horowitz in 1992.

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“I think he is the clearest example of why there is the need for civil confinement of anyone I’ve ever dealt with,” Carney said. “He knows that society deems what he does a crime. He doesn’t care.”

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Professionally, Horowitz was a Harvard-educated child psychologist who later became a rabbi.

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Legal questions

The act was passed in 2007 in an effort to protect the public from repeat sex offenders.

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Some opponents have questioned the legitimacy of holding offenders past their original sentences and suggested the confinement would be never-ending.

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According to the state Office of Mental Health, each offender confined civilly costs the state $175,000 annually. That means the 220 offenders confined as of March 31 would cost the state $38.5 million a year to hold.

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Al O’Connor, an attorney with the ���������� State Defenders Association, questioned the treatment aspect of the program, arguing if offenders were really getting treatment, more would have been released.

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“They’re just off there, forgotten,” O’Connor said, “which is sort of the design of the thing. Lock them up forever because we fear them.”

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Another problem, according to the Defenders Association, is that who is confined is generally not public knowledge – judicial findings are often sealed because of the mental health nature of the cases. The petitions and trials themselves can also be sealed, depending on the case. Horowitz’ case remains open.

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To get to full, court-ordered confinement is a long road in itself, and just 4.3 percent of referrals from November 2009 to October 2010 resulted in recommendations of civil management, according to an Office of Mental Health report. Figures from DCJS over a longer term say it’s even lower: 2.8 percent.

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From Nov. 1, 2009, to Oct. 31, 2010, 1,644 offenders were sent for review, according to the OMH. Of those, 144 were sent on for further review and 70 were finally recommended for civil management. Those cases are then sent to state Supreme Court where a jury ultimately decides if the required mental abnormality exists for confinement. Offenders also have the opportunity to skip the trial and accept confinement.

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According to the Office of Mental Health report, 40 percent of those recommended for confinement skip the trial and accept confinement. One offender died while in confinement and another under the strict community supervision, according to DCJS. Details of those cases were unavailable.

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Treatment options

Christine Deyss, executive director of Prevent Child Abuse ����������, said she believes there is agreement that confining certain types of sex offenders is generally a good idea. The overall confinement numbers offered by the state, she said, appear reasonable for the goals of the program.

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She said she wants to see more study on how much difference the confinement program makes in the long run, along with the other sex offender programs such as registration.

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Prevent Child Abuse ���������� advocates a community approach geared toward prevention. Among its offerings is helping people find parenting courses, support groups, medical and legal aid and abuse treatment, according to its website.

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“The tendency when they make legislation is to hand it to the public and say here’s something that takes care of the problem,” Deyss said. “They’re just the tip of the iceberg.”

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The state-prescribed treatment program has four phases, according to the Office of Mental Health: “orientation and treatment readiness”; “acquisition and practice”; “skills application”; and “community reentry and planning skills.”

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Moving beyond the first step of the treatment program requires offenders to acknowledge having committed a sexual offense. As of October 2010 none had reached the final phase of the treatment program.

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Those held prior to their civil confinement trial accounted for nearly 40 percent of those in the treatment facilities from November 2009 to October 2010, according to the OMH report, and civil confinement trials can take up to a year to take place.

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Those awaiting trial largely don’t participate in the treatment program, advised by their attorneys not to do so and not to disclose their sex offense histories, the report reads.

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Horowitz term

Horowitz is finishing a 10- to 20-year prison sentence after his 1992 guilty plea to first-degree sodomy. His official release date is June 5, but a state Supreme Court justice in Clinton County last month found probable cause to hold Horowitz pending his civil confinement trial. No trial date has been set, but it is expected to take place in state Supreme Court in Schenectady County.

Horowitz also won’t be participating in the treatment program, according to a filing in his case. He has consented to remain in prison custody until then, rather than go to the secure treatment facility.

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For Horowitz, there is likely to be ample evidence presented at trial that he is a dangerous sex offender.

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In the 1992 case that sent him to prison, he admitted then to raping a 9-year-old boy. His plea then covered 40 other charges alleging that Horowitz sodomized three boys and sexually abused a girl locally between December 1990 and May 1991.

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Horowitz’s history of sexual offenses against children, however, began long before that, in North Carolina in 1971. Over the years he was accused of sexual crimes against children in North Carolina, Georgia, Maryland and Israel.

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He arrived in Schenectady in December 1990, where he was ultimately accused of molesting five children, admitting to one. To a probation officer prior to his sentence, Horowitz called himself a “normal pedophile.”

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Released to parole in 2004 – three years before the civil confinement law was passed – Horowitz stayed in good standing until June 2006. That’s when his parole officer received a defiant letter postmarked from Israel. Horowitz said he had left the country and vowed never to come back.

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A worldwide manhunt followed with Horowitz taken back into custody in May 2007 – in India. There, it was clear to investigators that Horowitz had resumed sexually abusing children and was networking with others who would do the same.

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Federal sexual tourism charges were considered, but not brought because of the difficulty of getting the victims to the U.S. to testify, according to the psychiatric examiner’s report.

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Instead, Horowitz was sent back to prison in ���������� to finish out his original sentence.

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Carney’s office – and local district attorney’s offices in general – aren’t involved in the prosecution of the civil confinement cases. That job falls to the state Attorney General’s Office. The attorney general’s prosecutor has contacted Carney’s office to review the files from the criminal prosecution, Carney said.

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The offenders have their own attorneys but if they don’t they’re appointed one from the state Mental Hygiene Legal Service. An attorney representing Horowitz did not return a call for comment.

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For Horowitz, though, it was his return to prison that made him eligible for the civil confinement law in the first place. He would not have been subject to the confinement proceedings if he had managed to stay on parole in good standing after his 2004 release.

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