Justice program fails to commit nation's most dangerous sex offenders

Six years ago, the federal government set out to indefinitely detain some of the nation's most dangerous sex offenders, keeping them locked up even after their prison sentences had ended.

But despite years of effort, the government has so far won court approval for detaining just 15 men.

Far more often, men the U.S.Justice Department branded as "sexually dangerous" predators, remained imprisoned here for years without a mandatory court hearing before the government was forced to let them go, a USA TODAY investigation has found. The Justice Department has either lost or dropped its cases against 61 of the 136 men it sought to detain. Some were imprisoned for more than four years without a trial before they were freed.

Investigative reporter Wendy Halloran from KPNX 12 News in Phoenix, Arizona revealed an explosive piece of investigative work that exposed prisoner mistreatment, mismanagement and neglect in Arizona prisons.

She capped off her three part series, “Failure to Aid” by showing the severity of the mistakes made by corrections officers and the deliberate indifference to preserving human life with regards to the suicide of a mentally ill prisoner.

Update: This investigation has played a role in a federal class-action lawsuit filed against the Arizona Department of Corrections by the American Civil Liberties Union. Reporter, Wendy Halloran spent more than a year working on this investigation. The ACLU lawsuit validates her findings and includes the case she profiled in it's lawsuit. The lawsuit alleges grossly inadequate medical, mental health and dental care for prisoners resulting in serious injuries and death.

"In a multi-part series, The Seattle Times has found that almost 300 sex offenders in the state of Washington are detained indefinitely in a civil-commitment program. The center protects society from these predators, but is has been plagued by runaway legal costs, a lack of financial oversight and layers of secrecy"

After spending some time in the Delaware County jail, Edwina King was approached by other female inmates, they needed her help. "According to a federal civil rights suit, employees of the Delaware Country Sheriff's Office were abusing the inmates, including rape, sodomy, sexual battery and blackmail. County officials recently settled the lawsuit for $13.5 million."

However, The Tulsa World learned that King had letters from the inmates accounting more abuse. She was scheduled to meet with an attorney, but she never showed. Edwina King was found dead, the cause officials say was suicide, but King's family is suspicious, saying "she was anything but suicidal". Questions are now being raised about whom, if anyone wanted King dead.

"White criminals seeking presidential pardons over the past decade have been nearly four times as likely to succeed as minorities, a ProPublica examination, co-published with The Washington Post, has found.

Blacks have had the poorest chance of receiving the president's ultimate act of mercy, according to an analysis of previously unreleased records and related data."

Jack Dolan, Los Angeles Times, found that "California prisons have paid doctors and mental health professionals accused of malpractice an estimated $8.7 million since 2006 to do no work at all or to perform menial chores like sorting mail, tossing out old medical supplies and reviewing inmate charts for clerical errors."

"At least 30 medical professionals have collected their six-figure salaries for a cumulative 37 years...."