Public safety, civil liberties and the law
With overwhelming odds that sex offenders will strike again, it's hard to understand why someone like Gary Welsh should ever be free.
At the same time, once someone has satisfied terms of a sentence, it seems like a violation of civil liberties to keep that person locked up.
Sexually violent criminals like Welsh, granted a conditional release last week after 47 years in custody for raping and killing 3-year-old Marlene Casteel in 1962, deserve a sentence that will keep them behind bars forever. Sentenced to 60 to 100 years in 1973, it probably looked like Welsh would never get out. But good behavior helped him complete his sentence by 2004. A law that allows some sex offenders to remain in custody has kept him off the streets.
In 2007, experts declared Welsh too dangerous for release. Now experts say he is no longer a threat - even though he has refused treatment.
Judge Sharon Prather told Daily Herald reporter Charles Keeshan she didn't want to release Welsh, but the law left her no choice.
For now, Welsh can only leave his Rockford apartment to get court-ordered psychological treatment. He will be banned from watching pornography, using a computer, visiting a park or driving a car. His movements will be tracked by a monitor. One slip will put him back behind bars.
It doesn't sound a lot like freedom.
But it is. He is not in prison. And he can ask the courts to lift these conditions in the future.
Attorney General Lisa Madigan says 70 percent of sex offenders likely will strike again. In too many cases, we know this to be true. Before Welsh raped and killed the Harvard toddler, he was institutionalized after sexually attacking two young family members. A registered sex offender is accused of raping and killing former Naperville resident Chelsea King in California. Jaycee Dugard, imprisoned in the backyard of a convicted sex offender for years despite monitoring by local law enforcement, is proof the system can fail.
It's frustrating. It makes us wonder what laws must change to keep someone like Welsh locked up or at least required to undergo counseling.
It makes us wonder how Welsh could be considered too dangerous in 2007, but ready for release now, without undergoing treatment.
It makes us wonder whether we have enough resources to monitor sex offenders and which laws actually protect our communities.
One idea that has gained support in Springfield would ban all sexual predators from parks. Laws already ban pedophiles from playgrounds. Extending the ban is too arbitrary. We can't ban every criminal from every place people gather.
There are no easy answers.
We are utilizing more resources than ever. We can require lifetime monitoring as a condition of parole, counseling, use technology such as GPS and computer tracking to follow every move on Earth and the World Wide Web. We have a registry accessible from every computer with the option for e-mail alerts to let people know when a dangerous character moves to town.
Yet, with news of the release of someone like Gary Welsh, we somehow still feel helpless.