Freedom to destroy?

Over the past few weeks, I've watched news stories about two young women whose lives were destroyed by rapists. Jaycee Lee Dugard was kidnapped and kept in captivity for almost 20 years: Brooke Wilberger was raped and murdered. One got home alive, and one will be buried soon.

They have these things in common:
They were snatched by strangers.
They were raped.
The men who committed the crimes were repeat offenders.

Those men, Phillip Garrido and Joel Patrick Courtney, had already served time for sex crimes. They were known to have committed particularly ugly crimes, noted for their lack of empathy. People around them knew they were dangerous.

One study on the Department of Justice website (link) included these findings:

Within 3 years following their release, 5.3% of sex offenders (men who had committed rape or sexual assault) were rearrested for another sex crime.

On average the 9,691 sex offenders served 3 1/2 years of their 8-year sentence.

Compared to non-sex offenders released from State prisons, released sex offenders were 4 times more likely to be rearrested for a sex crime.

The 9,691 released sex offenders included 4,295 men who were in prison for child molesting.

These numbers are even more chilling when we recall that most sex crimes go unreported, and not all reported crimes end in arrests. For more information on that, check this link.

The same article lists the factors that point to higher recidivism rates:

In the 1998 Hanson and Bussiere study, these characteristics were grouped into demographics, criminal lifestyle, sexual criminal history, sexual deviancy, and various clinical characteristics. Regarding demographics, being young and single were consistently found to be related, albeit weakly, to subsequent sexual offending. With regard to sex offense history, sex offenders were more likely to recidivate if they had prior sex offenses, male victims, victimized strangers or extra-familial victims, begun sexually offending at an early age, and/or engaged in diverse sex crimes.

The factors that were found through this analysis to have the strongest relationship with sexual offense recidivism were those in the sexual deviance category: sexual interest in children, deviant sexual preferences, and sexual interest in boys. Failure to complete treatment was also found to be a moderate predictor of sexual recidivism. Having general psychological problems was not related to sexual offense recidivism, but having a personality disorder was related. Being sexually abused as a child was not related to repeat sexual offending.

Again, this is from the Department of Justice website.

According to Dianna Rodgers, LCSW, adjunct professor at the University of Oregon, "Rarely is an offender caught the first time he offends. Chances are, he had quite a juvenile record of assaultive behavior with some sexual component to it." Another Rodgers quote: "Typically, violent offenders require escalating violence to satiate their escalating needs. Respites between episodes get shorter, the offenders take greater risks, and unfortunately, it is not uncommon for a sadistic rapist to eventually murder."

The facts are out there. Courtney's first arrest was for an assault that chilled the investigators because it was without empathy. The charges were reduced; he served more time for violating parole than for the actual crime.

As a society, we seem to believe that these crimes can't be predicted and these men can't be stopped--yet we know what the signs are, we know the profile of their actions, and we continue, individually and as a society, not to report them, not to look at their patterns of behavior, not to read the signs, not to keep them imprisoned. They go free. Their victims are dead or traumatized.

Why do we value the lives of girls and women so little?