OR: Parolee accused of attempted murder, sexual assault

[seamusTX]

This news story is sickening. Literally sickening.

In Portland, Oregon, Sunday, a parolee was arrested and charged with attempted murder, sexual assault of a child, and other offenses.

The 49-year-old white man allegedly forced a 10-year-old boy into the bathroom of a fast-food restaurant, locked the door, and attempted to sexually assault him. The boy fought back and resisted the assault. The suspect then stabbed the boy multiple times.

The boy's father tried to break down the door, which a manager unlocked with a key. The suspect then shoved the victim out of the bathroom and locked himself in. He claimed to have a firearm. After several hours of negotiation with police, he surrendered without further incident.

He was charged with attempted murder, first-degree sexual abuse, first-degree kidnapping, first-degree arson, coercion, furnishing false information to a police officer and four counts of first-degree assault.

The boy required treatment at a hospital for life-threatening injuries.

The suspect was convicted in 1993 of "sodomy and recklessly endangering another" after allegedly raping nine children. Thirty-nine other charges, including attempted murder, were dismissed in a plea bargain. The attempted murder charges were based on the fact that the offender was HIV positive and could have infected his victims.

He was sentenced to 16 years in prison and served 11. He was paroled in 2004.

Apparently he had disobeyed the conditions of parole. He had arrested for drug possession, burglary, and other offenses. He also had landed in a hospital during manic or psychotic episodes.

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- Jim

[Jumping Frog]

I'll say it again: I am a big fan returning to public hangings in the local Courthouse Square . . . .

[seamusTX]

I personally don't care whether this guy was executed, locked up in prison for the rest of his life, or locked up in the looney bin. He should not have been out on the streets.

I can see the value of probation and parole (which a lot of people disagree about). However, someone who violates his probation or parole should be back in the slammer for the duration of his sentence.

Way too many serious crimes are committed by people who have been convicted of multiple felonies and are on parole and out on bail for another crime.

Also note that everyone talks about how badly child molesters are treated in prison, but his creep survived 11 years. I don't know if he was in a medical unit or what.

- Jim

[jocat54]

I'll say it again: I am a big fan returning to public hangings in the local Courthouse Square . . . .

I agree, there are just some people who aren't worth saving for parole.

[RHenriksen]

Good point

Also note that everyone talks about how badly child molesters are treated in prison, but his creep survived 11 years. I don't know if he was in a medical unit or what.

- Jim

[ELB]

Pretty clear that this guy has some serious psychiatric issues, aside from his criminality, and for that alone should not be running around loose. So I am going to use this as a jumping off point for touting Clayton Cramer's new book.

I highly recommend to all of you that you read Clayton Cramer's most recent book: My Brother Ron: A Personal and Social History of the Deinstitutionalization of the Mentally Ill

You may recall that Clayton Cramer is an amateur (in the best sense of the word) historian who has written a number of books and papers on the history of gun rights. Some of his work was cited in the Heller decision, and he is the one of the main guys who blew the whistle on the academic, or "professional" historian Bellisles, who tried to peddle a book claiming that guns were rare in early America, that there was no "gun culture" until after the Civil War by fabricating and misreporting historical sources (and he won the Bancroft prize for this travesty). Cramer took him apart.

As to the book itself: Cramer uses his brother Ron as a personal example of the dismantling of the American system for dealing with the seriously and chronically mentally ill, most particularly those who are psychotic (have breaks with reality).

Prior to the mid 60s, people who had serious mental problems that prevented them from functioning normally in society were cared for by State (as in State of Texas, State of New YorK) funded and operated institutions. Up to then, it was a less formal, more doctor-centered process to have such people committed to an institution for treatment, or at least to house them and keep them from causing and getting into trouble in society. While there no doubt were abuses, when Cramer set out to find documented examples of widespread abuse, he came up with...nothing. Even the advocates of shutting down the big institutions who lobbied the federal and state legislatures did not present much in the way of documented abuse, and in some cases admitted this was not really a wide spread problem.

However, several factors, including changes in the theories of treating mental illness, state budgetary crises, the expanding role of the federal government in life (!), and a warping of the concept of individual rights vs the state converged to lead to the shutting down of state institutions in favor of community mental health centers. However, one of the many things that went wrong was that while the state institutions dealt with the psychotically ill, the federally funded community centers largely focused on a different set of illnesses, like depression, which had a different subset of patients. Also, many of the community mental health centers, being staffed and funded by Great Society left-wing types, decided that mental illness was really caused by poverty, social injustice, and the like, and moved into those areas. The chronically psychotic or otherwise severely ill mental patients more or less ended up having to fend for themselves, and became a substantial portion of the population subset we know as "the homeless."

Even when they did get hospitalized for their conditions, the legal commitment process had been changed to keep them incarcerated for the minimum amount of time -- maybe just long enough for their meds to start taking effect. Then it was back out the door, the patient stops taking his meds because there is no one to supervise, and the cycle starts again. Added to this were changes in law that made medical people personally liable for committing someone who should not be committed -- but of course no liability for NOT committing someone who should be committed, This would tend to bias the psychiatrists decision making just a bit, I would think.

Not every mentally ill person on the streets commits horrific crimes, but a fair number do get into lesser problems like drug and alcohol abuses, petty crimes to support those habits, trespassing and the like.

Cramer alludes to the fact that It has been common in the last few years for some to tout that America incarcerates more people than ever, but the reality is a bit different. Cramer doesnt really go into it, but other researchers have found that the rate of incarceration in the first half of the 20th century was pretty much the same as the last part, with a little dip corresponding to the late 60s and 70s. The difference between the two eras was where people were being incarcerated. In the earlier part of the century, there were a fair number of people incarcerated in mental institutions. Some of them were simply victims of dementia or mental retardation (as opposed to illness), but a great number of them were mentally ill. In the latter part, almost all of the incarceration is in prisons. The fact that there is this dip in the rate in 70s and then it climbs back up again strongly suggests that the mentally ill are once again being incarcerated...its just that they are now in prison, having gotten into trouble on the street. Certainly there is a large portion of the prison population that is mentally ill, and I am pretty sure the guy in the story above is one of them.

I really encourage everyone to read Cramer's book, it is only $1.49 in Kindle format (available for the Nook as well) and there is a paperback version available on Amazon as well.

[seamusTX]

Nearly everyone involved in the criminal justice system thinks a large number of offenders are mentally ill or have severe problems like alcoholism, drug abuse, congenital mental retardation, or brain injuries. Texas spends tens of millions a year treating these people as prisoners.

Unfortunately, the only way to get them into custody is for them to commit a violent offense, like the subject of this thread. The total cost to society is huge. Sometimes they kill dozens of people or leave victims with injuries that are never fully healed.

Also unfortunately, the entire process is politicized. No one in any state has been able to come up with an ideal solution that satisfies all the competing interest groups.

I have to add that state hospitals or asylums pre-1970 were not benign places. People with problems like Down syndrome or autism were often treated like animals. This is a separate problem from psychotic violent offenders.

- Jim

[Oldgringo]

I personally don't care whether this guy was executed, locked up in prison for the rest of his life, or locked up in the looney bin. He should not have been out on the streets.

That says it all. As fas I'm concerned, he should have been publicly hanged on the courthouse lawn...at noon on a Saturday.

[Glock 23]

My brother did time for a felony, non violent, and did 2 years...paroled the last 5.

He said its really sad how older guys, many black, are still in person doing mandatory long sentences for crack charges in the 80's. They don't know anything else.

BUT, he also saw violent, habitual, and sexual offenses paroled again and again for a few years served. Seems way backwards to me.

[chasfm11]

My brother did time for a felony, non violent, and did 2 years...paroled the last 5.

He said its really sad how older guys, many black, are still in person doing mandatory long sentences for crack charges in the 80's. They don't know anything else.

BUT, he also saw violent, habitual, and sexual offenses paroled again and again for a few years served. Seems way backwards to me.

It would be interesting to study what percentage of the prison population is there for a "victimless" crime. Don't get me wrong, I'm not in favor of legalizing drugs because of studies of like this one
http://www.casacolumbia.org/articlefile ... 0Haven.pdf. OTOH, I'd prefer to see those like Whitney Houston who tragically couldn't stay away from drugs not put behind bars and take up the jail space that should be reserved for creeps like the one in the OP. It may be just me but it seems like Liberal judges have a really soft spot in their hearts for those who abuse kids. To me, that is about one of most heinous crimes there is.

While articles like this one
http://www.csom.org/pubs/mythsfacts.html say that the recidivism rate on child sexual assault is comparatively low, the stories like the OP suggest otherwise. I do understand that many feel as I do about repeat offenders and that the media seizes upon that feeling to sell their stories.

[seamusTX]

Statistics can be a quagmire.

There are many ill-considered drug laws with long mandatory sentences for simple possession. This fact, combined with limited budgets, results in violent criminals being released early so that junkies who have been clean for years can sit in the pen.

You also have to look at what defendants pled to or were convicted of, versus what they actually did. The person in the OP was originally accused of raping nine children and was convicted of four charges.

The typical child molester probably had many victims who did not report the crime, or the report could not be developed into criminal charges.

Also please keep in mind that recidivism is a four-syllable word that flattens out some important distinctions. A recidivist thief steals stuff. While that kind crime is a burden on the victims and the economy as a whole, it does not cause painful injuries. A recidivist child molester or rapist causes injuries that can destroy a life. Some victims never get over it.

I think it's important for sentencing and parole to be handled on a case-by-case basis, not generalities. There is no question that the offender in the OP should never have been released. The judge said so at his original sentencing, but the offender has survived with HIV longer than expected.

- Jim