ALBANY – Dozens of convicted sex offenders who were kept locked up past their prison terms under former Gov. George Pataki because they were deemed still dangerous have been quietly released in recent months, The Post has learned.
Of the approximately 125 sex offenders civilly confined under Pataki, 44 – more than one-third – have been released after being given new court-ordered hearings before state mental-health officials, according to the state Division of Criminal Justice Services.
“The people who are being released are being released because they were afforded a hearing to see if they should have been in the first place,” said DCJS spokesman John Caher.
“We are following the courts, and they did not direct us to release people deemed to be a threat,” he added. “What they required was that we provide the people that we want to confine all the due process that the law requires.
“Hopefully, we’re not releasing people who should be confined.”
Frustrated by Assembly inaction to enact a civil-confinement law, Pataki in late 2005 ordered his administration to “push the envelope” in using existing law to keep sex predators due to be released from jail, but deemed still dangerous to themselves or others, locked up.
But the Court of Appeals has twice found that the process used by the Pataki administration violated state law. The court did not grant automatic release for the offenders, but ordered new hearings to determine if their civil confinement met legal criteria.
Of the original 40 who were detained under the order, 29 have since been released after hearings found they did not meet the criteria to be held under mental-health law, according to figures provided by DCJS.
Of the remaining 80 or so locked up until Pataki left office at the end of last year, between 12 and 15 either have been released or soon will be because they were found not to suffer from a “mental abnormality” required to keep them locked up under a new state civil-confinement law enacted in March.
Stephen Harkavy, a lawyer for Mental Health Legal Services who represented many of the offenders, charged that the Pataki administration was not discerning enough when deciding whom to keep locked up.
“They just didn’t send us the worst of the worst,” Harkavy said. “Most of the people they considered sex predators just weren’t sex predators.”
But former aides to Pataki had noted that nearly two-thirds of the 126 sexual predators kept locked up between September 2005 and the end of last year had victimized people under the age of 17.
Shortly after Gov. Spitzer took office this year, the state passed a civil-confinement law requiring a jury finding of “mental abnormality” and a judge’s order for civil confinement or release with intensive parole supervision.
While to date no one has been confined under the new law, the state has begun the process for 34 convicted sex offenders, according to state officials.