This column will regularly update readers on The WatchHouse.

“the first facility of its kind to monitor repeat sex offenders 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Teaching Humane Existence (T.H.E), a nonprofit organization, plans to submit a bill to build The Watch House, a 300 bed-facility in the metro-Denver area. The sex offenders will live at The Watch House until the end of their sentences, or until they have reliably and sufficiently changed. Unfortunately, such change is not common.”
the WatchHouse newsletter, Winter 2008.

Mr. Greig Veeder from T.H.E. and the sponsor of The Watch House push presented his ideas for The Watch House at the February 24, 2010, CURE meeting. He likened The Watch House to a Fort Logan for sex offenders or a half way house. He agreed that some would stay there for the rest of their lives and that he believes that the majority of sex offenders are at a high risk for reoffending with a sex crime. Although initially this proposal is presented as solving the housing problem many with these offenses face, it is apparent the primary goal is civil commitment, removing all those with sex offenses from their communities. In the 2/24/2010 theWatchHouse newsletter on the web site www.thewatchhouse.org, there appears the following headline: Get Sex Offenders Out of Your Neighborhood and Into The Watch House with the following fear laden message: “More than 65 percent of convicted sex offenders live in our neighborhoods and more than 50 percent of these predators continue to commit sex crimes.”
He has a proposed bill (so far unsponsored) that will ask the state to provide the land, the construction and operation of the facility.

Of special note, in the packet of information distributed to the attendees was a proposed bill (separate from the proposed bill for the state to fund the development, construction and operational costs of the Watch House) entitled Bill for Sentencing Release for Low-Risk Sex Offenders which at the offset seems to be aimed at eliminating indeterminate sentencing for low risk offenders. At a closer look at the details in the proposed bill, quite the opposite is true. Among the details in the proposed bill are the following:

the assertion that only 20% of the adult sex offenders were low risk;

that pre-sentence investigations do not determine the full scope of risk (in fact, it states that ”psychosexual evaluations done as part of a presentence investigation are far more likely to err in the direction of under-representing dangerousness than over representing dangerousness”). No basis for this assertion is given;

that if this bill becomes law, a person deemed to be low risk at time of pre-sentence investigation has 15 months of SOMB supervised treatment before a reconsideration hearing of the sentence BUT there is a rather long list of stipulations to be eligible for sentence reconsideration. Some but not all of them are:

-not identified as a sexually violent predator;
-no history of compulsive or repetitive sex offending;
-was not in a position of trust;
-not convicted in a sex-offense sting or child porn dissemination;
-no offense against a child under the age of 13 years;
-must register as low risk on a battery of relevant risk assessment scales;

-the offense can reasonably be considered consensual – various features of consent to be identified by SOMB

-the entire containment team must participate in the reconsideration and be unanimous in its decision to release the sex offender.

This proposed bill bears watching. It seems designed to challenge the pre-sentence investigations that assess risk and to potentially raise the number of previously determined low risk offenders to the high risk category, placing that responsibility with the SOMB.