N.Y. Pilot Project Designates Courts That Focus on Sex Offenses
An experimental program in New York state has created several courts that focus on sex offenses.
The idea is that the expertise of specialized judges and lawyers could help keep defendants from repeating their crimes, the New York Times reports.
One of its reporters visited a sex offender courtroom in Westchester County. Judge Jeffrey Cohen presided over hearings involving a woman who was on probation for having sex with a 14-year-old boy, a man who failed to register as a sex offender, and a man accused of breaking into a group home for mentally retarded adults and having a sexual encounter with a resident.
Diane Webster, a lawyer for the Legal Aid Society of Westchester County, told the Times that the special courts sometimes do not distinguish between different kinds of sex offenders. All of the offenders serve a probationary period with ankle monitors, undergo polygraph tests and are barred from going near parks and other places where children gather, she said.
She added that Cohen tries to treat defendants individually, but the probation department does not.
Probation commissioner Rocco Pozzi told the Times that Westchester County has been so successful monitoring offenders that only one has been rearrested for a sex crime in the past three years.
