Inside the Endless Nightmare of Indefinite Detention Under “Civil Commitment” – After serving their criminal sentence, these men discover their punishment may never be over.

Once prob­a­ble cause is deter­mined, that per­son is sent to Rushville where they wait for their SVP tri­al — some­thing that is sup­posed to hap­pen quick­ly but can often take years. While await­ing tri­al, indi­vid­u­als are giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to receive treat­ment, but accord­ing to schol­ars and lawyers inter­viewed by In These Times, the things peo­ple say in treat­ment are not con­sid­ered con­fi­den­tial and can be used in their SVP trial.

Arring­ton says he does not know who rec­om­mend­ed him for com­mit­ment, and his efforts to find out have been fruit­less. Held in Rushville since June 21, 2019, he has not had an SVP tri­al, nor does he have a tri­al date, and he said his motions to dis­miss civ­il com­mit­ment, filed with­out legal coun­sel, have been dis­missed. As he awaits tri­al, he says, he spends most of his time ​“in my cell, on the wing, in this so-called yard they have, which is more of a patio.” He explains, ​“I’m not receiv­ing any treat­ment while await­ing tri­al. I don’t go to any of the groups. I’m just stuck here.” Accord­ing to Arring­ton, his entire unit is in quar­an­tine due to the coro­n­avirus pandemic.

“This is pun­ish­ment after the pun­ish­ment,” says Arring­ton, adding: ​“It’s worse than prison, because you don’t have an out-date and don’t have a sentence.”

Arrington’s odds of get­ting out may not improve much once he has an SVP tri­al. The state of Illi­nois must prove ​“beyond a rea­son­able doubt that the offend­er has a men­tal abnor­mal­i­ty that pre­dis­pos­es him to sex­u­al vio­lence, and that he is sub­stan­tial­ly prob­a­ble to recom­mit a sex crime if released from deten­tion,” Vogler explains.

Schol­ars and lawyers describe an envi­ron­ment that is stacked against the defen­dant, in which it is almost impos­si­ble to win one’s free­dom. Sara Gar­ber, a lawyer with expe­ri­ence lit­i­gat­ing SVP cas­es in Illi­nois, tells In These Times, ​“The sys­tem is designed so that near­ly every­one who is eval­u­at­ed is found by the state’s experts to be SVP, and it is rare that one pre­vails at tri­al before a judge or jury, unless the state’s experts deem the per­son to not be SVP.”

Gar­ber adds, ​“The entire SVP process is based on the false premise that we can pre­dict some­one’s propen­si­ty for future crim­i­nal con­duct based on their alleged past behav­ior and, even worse, that we as a soci­ety are com­fort­able pun­ish­ing some­one for a future crime they have not and may nev­er commit.”

If that indi­vid­ual is found to be an SVP, which, accord­ing to Vogler, is ​“the usu­al out­come,” then they will be held in Rushville until they are deemed less of a risk. But ​“they don’t receive any mean­ing­ful treat­ment,” says Vogler, which is why many spend decades — or even life — in the facility.

Trevor Hoppe is an assis­tant pro­fes­sor of soci­ol­o­gy at Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na — Greens­boro and author of Pun­ish­ing Dis­ease: HIV and the Crim­i­nal­iza­tion of Sick­ness who is work­ing on a new book exam­in­ing sex offend­er civ­il com­mit­ment statutes in the Unit­ed States. He says, ​“The idea is to put these peo­ple away and nev­er let them out. That’s how many pro­po­nents of these laws will talk about them. There are due process mech­a­nisms to try to get release, but once you are com­mit­ted, it’s real­ly hard to get out.”

And, indeed, ear­ly pro­po­nents of the Act in Illi­nois described it as a mech­a­nism to lock peo­ple away from soci­ety. In 1997, for­mer Gov. Jim Edgar said at a news con­fer­ence before sign­ing the bill, ​“Sex­u­al preda­tors are among the most dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals and this leg­is­la­tion will help pro­tect the com­mu­ni­ty from these tick­ing time bombs.”

Under the U.S. legal sys­tem, peo­ple are not sup­posed to be pros­e­cut­ed twice for the same crime — what’s referred to as ​“dou­ble jeop­ardy.” How­ev­er, accord­ing to Vogler, this stan­dard is vio­lat­ed when it comes to civ­il com­mit­ment. ​“After the indi­vid­ual serves a sen­tence, he is tried again essen­tial­ly for the same crime,” Vogler explains. ​“The Supreme Court has decid­ed that’s okay because they’re not being tried crim­i­nal­ly twice, but they’re being tried in a civ­il set­ting. This is despite the fact much high­er con­se­quences are attached to this civ­il suit than a nor­mal civ­il suit. Usu­al­ly, when we’re talk­ing about civ­il law, we’re talk­ing about suing some­one for dam­ages. Usu­al­ly those aren’t life impris­on­ment decisions.”

Accu­sa­tions of neg­li­gent treatment

Once civil­ly com­mit­ted to Rushville, indi­vid­u­als must progress through a treat­ment pro­gram, over­seen by the pri­vate Lib­er­ty Health­care Cor­po­ra­tion, in order to be released. In a 2019 – 2020intern­ship brochure for the Rushville facil­i­ty, the cor­po­ra­tion says its mis­sion is to pro­vide ​“state of the art, sex offend­er spe­cif­ic treat­ment in a safe, struc­tured res­i­den­tial envi­ron­ment. We focus on the indi­vid­u­al­ized needs of the res­i­dents and treat each res­i­dent respect­ful­ly, pro­fes­sion­al­ly and with dig­ni­ty. We believe that all res­i­dents can change. We strive to reduce risk to soci­ety by facil­i­tat­ing life-long behav­ioral change in residents.”

Yet, schol­ars and res­i­dents paint a very dif­fer­ent pic­ture. ​“Most of what hap­pens in Rushville is group ther­a­py,” says Vogler. ​“There are dif­fer­ent phas­es of treat­ment, and to advance to phas­es, you have to par­tic­i­pate in cer­tain groups. They get lit­tle indi­vid­ual atten­tion. You can’t do effec­tive treat­ment for some­one the state has found severe­ly ill by only doing group AA-type treatment.”

“As part of those treat­ments,” Vogler con­tin­ues, ​“they have to talk about their sex lives in extreme detail, from how many sex part­ners they’ve been with to what types of sex­u­al acts they’ve done to what fan­tasies they mas­tur­bate to to how fre­quent­ly they masturbate.”

Arring­ton says he thinks such a treat­ment pro­gram would be active­ly harm­ful for him. ​“They have res­i­dents run­ning the group,” he says. ​“I can’t do the group treat­ment. I have PTSD from my time in prison. I can’t deal with that. You’re deal­ing with guys talk­ing about all the things they’ve done… I can’t deal with hear­ing that stuff.”

It’s not that Arring­ton is unwill­ing to talk about the harm he has caused. He told In These Times that he wants to be open about the rape he com­mit­ted in 1989. ​“I would­n’t want to try to sug­ar coat it or noth­ing,” he says. ​“I broke into my neigh­bor’s house and assault­ed her.” But accord­ing to Arring­ton, group ther­a­py in a prison-like set­ting, in which any­thing he dis­cuss­es can be used against him in a tri­al, is not going to bring account­abil­i­ty or heal­ing for any­one. ​“I can under­stand want­i­ng some kind of atone­ment,” he says. ​“But we served our time.”

Oth­er peo­ple held in Rushville seem to share sim­i­lar con­cerns about treat­ment. In the spring of 2019, the civ­il com­mit­ment work­ing group of Black and Pink: Chica­go, a prison abo­li­tion­ist orga­ni­za­tion, sent a sur­vey to 569 peo­ple being held in Rushville — which the orga­ni­za­tion says was rough­ly the full pop­u­la­tion at the time. The group received 204 respons­es, which it began ana­lyz­ing that sum­mer. While the orga­ni­za­tion plans to release a for­mal report in the com­ing months, it shared a one-page sum­ma­ry of pre­lim­i­nary find­ings with In These Times. The con­clu­sions are dire.

Res­i­dents com­plained about ​“unqual­i­fied ther­a­pists,” some of them stu­dents, as well as a high turnover prob­lem, and the gen­er­al lack of a ​“trust­ing ther­a­peu­tic rela­tion­ship” this engen­ders. They also com­plained about a cli­mate of favoritism, in which res­i­dents are ​“incen­tivized to kiss ass.” Res­i­dents say, ​“Civ­il com­mit­ment is a life sen­tence, a death sen­tence; they were sent there to die, believe they will die here.” Respon­dents expressed con­cern about ​“homo­pho­bia of staff and vio­la­tion of rights of gay and trans­gen­der peo­ple.” They described an ​“unfair tier sys­tem: no con­sis­ten­cy or trans­paren­cy in appli­ca­tion of tier or behav­ior sta­tus sys­tems; dif­fi­cult to progress, unclear stan­dards for pro­gres­sive, arbi­trary, used for pun­ish­ment rather than treat­ment.” It’s a ​“scam,” ​“farce,” ​“indef­i­nite,” ​“end­less,” is not about treat­ment or pub­lic safe­ty, and is ​“only open for polit­i­cal or finan­cial rea­sons,” the doc­u­ment states.

Alle­ga­tions of pro­found neg­li­gence and mis­treat­ment have also been aired in law­suits. In May 2015, five men detained at the Rushville facil­i­ty waged a law­suit charg­ing that ​“men­tal­ly ill res­i­dents” of Rushville are gross­ly neglect­ed, mis­treat­ed, mocked, abused and unfair­ly cat­e­go­rized as ​“unco­op­er­a­tive malin­ger­ers.” The suit also claims that these indi­vid­u­als are retal­i­at­ed against for fil­ing griev­ances or help­ing oth­ers file griev­ances, and that they can­not get the ​“sex offend­er treat­ment” that they seek.

The law­suit, which names sev­er­al defen­dants, includ­ing Lib­er­ty Health­care Cor­po­ra­tion and the facility’s direc­tor, pro­vides gris­ly anec­dotes. ​“If they try to com­mit sui­cide by hang­ing them­selves with a sheet from their beds, they will be writ­ten up for destruc­tion of state prop­er­ty,” the law­suit states. It con­tin­ues, ​“What lim­it­ed and errat­ic care there is, is pro­vid­ed chiefly by med­ica­tion. A res­i­dent with para­noid schiz­o­phre­nia may see a psy­chi­a­trist once a month, to ​‘re-up’ his med­ica­tion, and a social work­er once a month.” The law­suit charges,“Residents on sui­cide watch are neglect­ed, abused or both. They can be stripped naked, placed in a cell with no mat­tress or blankets.”

These con­di­tions vio­late the con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­hi­bi­tion of cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment, alleges the law­suit, which was even­tu­al­ly dismissed.

Eri­ca Mein­ers, pro­fes­sor of women’s and gen­der stud­ies at North­east­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty and co-author of the book, The Fem­i­nist and The Sex Offend­er, says such com­plaints are com­mon among peo­ple held in civ­il com­mit­ment across the coun­try. ​“Invari­ably, the peo­ple who work at these places, are usu­al­ly sort of interns. They get practicum stu­dents who are try­ing to get hours toward their psy­chother­a­py degree. They don’t stay long — they stay a year or so. In most of these states, the treat­ment mod­el is a stage mod­el. You have to pass a poly­graph test to move from stage to stage. Then they have to start from square one again, because the psy­chother­a­pist left after a year because they got a bet­ter job. And then they’re in there for anoth­er year.”

“A lot of the peo­ple in these insti­tu­tions have been insti­tu­tion­al­ized for decades and have endured incred­i­ble harm and done harm. These are intense and com­plex cas­es,” says Mein­ers. ​“If we’re say­ing we’re doing treat­ment, we need the real thing here, not a wide range of prac­tices that are not nec­es­sar­i­ly proven to be effective.”

In 1999, a task force of the Amer­i­can Psy­chi­atric Asso­ci­a­tion strong­ly crit­i­cized civ­il com­mit­ment in its pub­li­ca­tion, ​“Dan­ger­ous Sex Offend­ers.” It states, ​“In the opin­ion of the Task Force, sex­u­al preda­tor com­mit­ment laws rep­re­sent a seri­ous assault on the integri­ty of psy­chi­a­try, par­tic­u­lar­ly with regard to defin­ing men­tal ill­ness and the clin­i­cal con­di­tions for com­pul­so­ry treat­ment. More­over, by bend­ing civ­il com­mit­ment to serve essen­tial­ly non-med­ical pur­pos­es, sex­u­al preda­tor com­mit­ment stat­ues threat­en to under­mine the legit­i­ma­cy of the med­ical mod­el of commitment.”

The APA con­cludes, ​“In the opin­ion of the Task Force, psy­chi­a­try must vig­or­ous­ly oppose these statutes in order to pre­serve the moral author­i­ty of the pro­fes­sion and to ensure con­tin­u­ing soci­etal con­fi­dence in the med­ical mod­el of civ­il commitment.”

Men­tal Health Amer­i­ca, a non-prof­it that aims to meet the needs of peo­ple liv­ing with men­tal ill­ness, express­es sim­i­lar con­cerns about civ­il com­mit­ment. ​“They focus on pun­ish­ment rather than treat­ment, deal with peo­ple who often do not have a treat­able men­tal ill­ness, increase stig­ma, dis­tort civ­il com­mit­ment, risk the safe­ty of oth­er per­sons in men­tal health facil­i­ties, divert resources from men­tal health­care and inap­pro­pri­ate­ly bur­den the men­tal health sys­tem with a crim­i­nal jus­tice func­tion for which it is not fund­ed or equipped,” the organization’s web­site states.

Con­tro­ver­sial assess­ment methods

Crit­ics point out that the tests and eval­u­a­tion tools used to assess whether an indi­vid­ual can progress through the treat­ment pro­gram at the Rushville facil­i­ty are not uni­ver­sal­ly accept­ed as sound sci­ence. Lawyers, schol­ars and res­i­dents con­firmed to In These Times that peo­ple held in Rushville have to take poly­graph ​“lie detec­tor” tests, which have been broad­ly dis­cred­it­ed as junk sci­ence. In a posi­tion state­ment on this test, the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion advis­es, ​“although the idea of a lie detec­tor may be com­fort­ing, the most prac­ti­cal advice is to remain skep­ti­cal about any con­clu­sion wrung from a polygraph.”

There is anoth­er, more inva­sive test peo­ple held at the Rushville facil­i­ty must take if they wish to progress, accord­ing to lawyers, schol­ars and res­i­dents: The penile plethys­mo­graph. Vogler explains, ​“A blood pres­sure test or tube is placed on a man’s penis, and then he is either shown porno­graph­ic images or pre­sent­ed with audio vignettes of sex­u­al sit­u­a­tions, and they gauge his erec­tile response. This is how they deter­mine if they think some­one is sex­u­al­ly dan­ger­ous. If some­one shows arousal to a scene involv­ing coer­cion or forced sex­u­al pen­e­tra­tion, then they could take that as indi­ca­tion of under­ly­ing sex­u­al danger.”

In its brochure, the Lib­er­ty Health­care Cor­po­ra­tion acknowl­edges its use of the test, stat­ing, ​“Detec­tion and mea­sure­ment of deviant sex­u­al arousal is an impor­tant index of response to treat­ment and treat­ment effectiveness.”

But the penile plethys­mo­graph is a con­tro­ver­sial pro­ce­dure, and numer­ous experts do not con­sid­er it sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly reli­able. For one, it is pos­si­ble to sti­fle an erec­tion by focus­ing one’s mind on oth­er, non-arous­ing thoughts. In addi­tion, becom­ing aroused by rep­re­sen­ta­tions or descrip­tions of vio­lent acts does not prove that an indi­vid­ual will com­mit sex­u­al vio­lence in the future. Final­ly, as psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor at Bea­con Col­lege in Flori­da, Dr. A.J. Mars­den, toldVICE, ​“A lot of ther­a­pists think [the penile plethys­mo­graph is] not the best mea­sure to prove if they are real­ly attract­ed to the images they show them.”

Accord­ing to Vogler, the test ​“reflects a poor under­stand­ing of how sex­u­al­i­ty and anato­my works. This is not a good test.” He con­tin­ues, ​“Peo­ple have brought law­suits say­ing this is cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment and inva­sion of pri­va­cy. Often peo­ple freeze at those points in treat­ment, and they can’t progress and if they can’t progress they can nev­er be released.”

Most U.S. courts do not con­sid­er evi­dence obtained by penile plethys­mo­graph to be admis­si­ble to deter­mine guilt or inno­cence. In 2006, the U.S. Ninth Cir­cuit Court of Appeals ruled that the penile plethys­mo­graph vio­lat­ed the civ­il lib­er­ties of the defen­dant, a man who was con­vict­ed of pos­sess­ing child pornog­ra­phy. The court stat­ed that it ​“viewed penile plethys­mog­ra­phy as an intru­sive pro­ce­dure, both phys­i­cal­ly and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly, liken­ing the pro­ce­dure to a device from a George Orwell nov­el,” accord­ing to a sum­ma­ry of the case pub­lished in the Jour­nal of the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Psy­chi­a­try and the Law.

Yet, with­in the Rushville facil­i­ty, such a test could play a role in deter­min­ing whether some­one remains con­fined, lawyers, schol­ars and res­i­dents confirmed.

These are not the only assess­ment meth­ods that have gar­nered crit­i­cism. Anoth­er eval­u­a­tion tool — the Sta­t­ic-99—came up in numer­ous inter­views, with experts express­ing con­cern that homo­pho­bia is baked into its meth­ods. The Sta­t­ic-99 and oth­er updat­ed ver­sions of this tool are broad­ly used in civ­il com­mit­ment cas­es — includ­ing at Rushville — to eval­u­ate the risk posed by peo­ple con­vict­ed of sex crimes. One of the ques­tions this tool asks is whether the indi­vid­u­als, who the state deems to be men, had a male vic­tim. If so, they are deter­mined to be more dangerous.

Accord­ing to Vogler, ​“There is bias built into the ​‘objec­tive’ actu­ar­i­al tool we use to eval­u­ate people.”

Hoppe puts it suc­cinct­ly: ​“They are assign­ing a high­er risk score to gay men necessarily.”

Not the right way to address sex­u­al violence

Civ­il com­mit­ment laws spread through­out the Unit­ed States dur­ing the 1990s-era pan­ic about crime, and the relat­ed 1990s and ear­ly 2000s expan­sion of sex offend­er noti­fi­ca­tion and reg­istry laws. Some ves­tiges of the tough-on-crime ​‘90s, like the 1994 crime bill and the 1996 Prison Lit­i­ga­tion Reform Act, have fall­en out of favor in recent years, due to con­cerns over mass incar­cer­a­tion. Yet, civ­il com­mit­ment laws remain rel­a­tive­ly polit­i­cal­ly unchal­lenged, in a cli­mate where few want to ques­tion laws that tar­get peo­ple con­vict­ed of sex offens­es. ​“There are very few coura­geous law­mak­ers who are going to say, ​‘Hey, we need to look at this,’” says Tony Thed­ford, a lawyer with expe­ri­ence lit­i­gat­ing SVP cas­es in Illinois.

Pro­po­nents of civ­il com­mit­ment laws cite the need to pro­tect pub­lic safe­ty from dan­ger­ous sex­u­al preda­tors. ​“Illi­nois’ Sex­u­al­ly Vio­lent Per­sons Act and the eval­u­a­tion by the IDOC is the clos­est thing we have to a crys­tal ball when it comes to deter­min­ing whether an offend­er will attack again,” then-Illi­nois Attor­ney Gen­er­al Lisa Madi­gan said in a 2006state­ment announc­ing an expan­sion of the law. ​“This process is designed to iden­ti­fy those offend­ers for whom it is sub­stan­tial­ly prob­a­ble that they will engage in future acts of sex­u­al vio­lence and to keep them out of soci­ety for as long as they remain a danger.”

But, accord­ing to Mein­ers, ​“There is no research that shows states with civ­il com­mit­ment have low­er inci­dents of sex­u­al assault than states that don’t have civ­il commitment.”

Indeed, a study pub­lished in Brook­lyn Law Review in 2013, based on orig­i­nal data ​“gath­ered direct­ly from states with SVP laws,” found, ​“SVP laws have had no dis­cernible impact on the inci­dence of sex crimes.” The arti­cle con­cludes, ​“These results imply that states could more effec­tive­ly reduce sex crimes by allo­cat­ing these resources elsewhere.”

Hoppe puts it this way: ​“These pro­grams don’t make us safer in real­i­ty. Many would say it makes them feel safer. We’re not real­ly tack­ling the prob­lem, just mak­ing a lot of people’s lives insufferable.”

What’s more, crit­ics charge that civ­il com­mit­ment sends the false mes­sage that the key to stop­ping sex­u­al vio­lence is pro­tect­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic from dan­ger­ous strangers. Accord­ing to the Rape, Abuse & Incest Nation­al Net­work, an anti-sex­u­al vio­lence group, eight out of 10 rapes are ​“com­mit­ted by some­one known to the vic­tim.” Mein­ers says civ­il com­mit­ment per­pet­u­ates the myth that ​”stranger dan­ger” is the big­ger threat. ​“It’s over­whelm­ing­ly peo­ple that we know, peo­ple inti­mate to the fam­i­ly cir­cle,” she says. ​“We should­n’t be falling for that line.”

Peo­ple held in civ­il com­mit­ment are osten­si­bly mem­bers of the pub­lic, so any claims that the laws pro­tect pub­lic safe­ty must take their well­be­ing into account. Emma Williams is a vol­un­teer for Black and Pink: Chica­go who helped run the sur­vey of res­i­dents at the Rushville facil­i­ty, and she became con­cerned about civ­il com­mit­ment as a result of her years of sup­port­ing sex­u­al assault sur­vivors. ​“A num­ber of peo­ple in the sys­tem are sur­vivors them­selves, par­tic­u­lar­ly of child­hood sex­u­al assault,” she says. Williams empha­sizes that peo­ple in civ­il com­mit­ment say it doesn’t work, they feel judged and have to recount every sex­u­al trau­ma they’ve suf­fered since child­hood. ​“They’re hav­ing to do that in a sit­u­a­tion where every­thing you’re shar­ing is shared with a prosecutor.”

“If you want to end sex­u­al vio­lence,” argues Williams, ​“you have to end this too. This is a form of sex­u­al violence.”

As long as we focus on things like civ­il com­mit­ment as the solu­tion to sex­u­al assault, we are not pur­su­ing actu­al solu­tions, crit­ics charge. ​“As a fem­i­nist, I’m some­one who has a his­to­ry of being com­mit­ted to end­ing gen­der and sex­u­al vio­lence,” explains Mein­ers. ​“What push­es me to con­tin­ue this work is that the cur­rent régime of more pun­ish­ment of peo­ple with con­vic­tions is not the path. If we’re com­mit­ted to end­ing gen­der and sex­u­al vio­lence, we have to do that work. This sys­tem func­tions as a resource drain and dis­trac­tion from the real ques­tions that we as com­mu­ni­ties, fam­i­lies and soci­ety need to be addressing.”

Accord­ing to Mein­ers, a ​“par­a­digm shift” is need­ed. ​“If we’re think­ing about child sex­u­al vio­lence, which dri­ves a lot of anx­i­ety around civ­il com­mit­ment and the push for crim­i­nal­iza­tion, approx­i­mate­ly one in five young peo­ple lives in pover­ty across the Unit­ed States,” she says. ​“We have no mean­ing­ful child­care, we have no gen­der-affirm­ing fem­i­nist sex edu­ca­tion in pub­lic schools. We need shifts that would let fam­i­lies, moth­ers and care­givers have some social safe­ty net that’s actu­al­ly mean­ing­ful. Those are just some things that are preventative.”

Williams, for her part, empha­sizes the need for gen­uine account­abil­i­ty and resti­tu­tion for harm done. ​“While there are like­ly some wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed peo­ple inside, for those who tru­ly did cause harm that they must account for, account­abil­i­ty is some­thing that must hap­pen with­in their com­mu­ni­ty,” she says. ​“When you remove some­one from their com­mu­ni­ty indef­i­nite­ly, they’re not going to want to change their behav­ior because they will no longer feel a sense of account­abil­i­ty to that com­mu­ni­ty. It’s a sys­tem of pun­ish­ment and also iso­la­tion.”

Amid grow­ing calls to defund the police, and the for­ay of con­cepts like prison abo­li­tion into main­stream dis­course, Mein­ers says now is an impor­tant time to take a long, hard look at the civ­il com­mit­ment sys­tem. Yet, even as mass incar­cer­a­tion falls fur­ther out of polit­i­cal favor, few politi­cians are will­ing to expend their polit­i­cal cap­i­tal pro­tect­ing the rights of peo­ple con­vict­ed of sex crimes. There is lit­tle to gain from defend­ing those peo­ple whom soci­ety has deter­mined to be irre­deemable and less than human. The result is that places like the Rushville facil­i­ty oper­ate with lit­tle over­sight and pro­tec­tion for those held inside.

​“It’s so depress­ing here, I’m sur­prised more peo­ple haven’t com­mit­ted sui­cide,” says Arring­ton. ​“I con­sid­ered that when I first got here.” Des­per­ate for release, Arring­ton says over the phone he fears he will spend the rest of his life in the Rushville facil­i­ty.

​“No one,” he says, ​“wants to stand up for peo­ple in this kind of program.”