Michael Baldwin stood outside South Woods State Prison on a crisp October morning with a mix of anticipation and relief as he waited for his brother to emerge.
He drove more than two hours from Newark to Cumberland County with a change of clothes and a sandwich to hand his younger brother as he walked out of the prison gates a free man for the first time in a decade. Their family back home was waiting to hold a small celebration.
“I just felt exhilarated,” Baldwin said. “My baby brother’s coming home. We were going to be a family again.”
But, as the hours ticked by, his brother never appeared. Baldwin kept checking for updates.
“He has a ‘hold,’ or something to that effect,” Baldwin said he was eventually told.
After he drove home alone, Baldwin learned a new term — “civil commitment.”
That was 21 years ago.
Derrick Baldwin still isn’t home. And maybe he never will be.
Though his prison sentence ended in 2003, Derrick Baldwin is one of 416 men currently civilly committed in New Jersey under a law created in the 1990s.
While they are no longer technically prisoners, detainees are held in the Special Treatment Unit, located next to East Jersey State Prison in the Avenel section of Woodbridge. The men, called “residents,” wear their own clothes and can vote in elections, but they’re guarded by corrections officers and can’t leave.
Some expect to die there.
New Jersey’s Sexually Violent Predator Act allows the state to indefinitely detain sex offenders who complete their prison sentences but are deemed too dangerous to release. Advocates say the system is keeping the state safe. But, some detainees say they spend years, or even decades, in a Byzantine-like system with a convoluted therapy program and no clearly-defined rules for getting out.
The process is vague from the start. There is no clearly-stated criteria for who gets put in the Special Treatment Unit or exactly what detainees need to do to be released, advocates say.
For some detainees, there may never be a way out, said Dr. Steven Simring, a veteran New Jersey psychiatrist who has testified in sex offender civil commitment proceedings.
“The end result was always the same,” Simring said. “The individual did not get out and they stayed there — until they got out feet first.”
NJ Advance Media spent more than six months interviewing more than 40 people — including 14 current and former detainees — along with family members, psychiatrists, psychologists, lawyers and lawmakers. Many describe a civil commitment program that they say has little accountability, violates basic human rights and forces detainees to live in squalid conditions with a once-a-year chance to be evaluated for release.
Several researchers, along with the former president of the American Psychiatric Association, say this might all be a costly waste of time and taxpayer money. Some studies suggest the number of sex offenders who would commit new crimes after their release from prison would be very low even without treatment.
Critics also question if race is a factor in who gets civilly committed. Black prisoners, who make up about half the detainees in the state’s Special Treatment Unit, are far more likely to be civilly committed and held indefinitely than white sex offenders, a recent study found.
Twenty states, the District of Columbia and the federal government have civil commitment systems. In total, there are as many as 6,300 sex offenders being held nationwide, according to one study.
New Jersey’s program — run jointly by the state Health Department and Corrections Department — is one of the largest in the nation. Only Minnesota, Texas and Florida reported more detainees, according to a survey last year of 17 of the state civil commitment programs.
“Very few people know whether the huge public investment in civilly committing so many people in New Jersey is actually effective or whether it’s just a name for another way of achieving indefinite incarceration,” said Jenny-Brooke Condon, professor of law at Seton Hall Law School and director of the school’s Equal Justice Clinic.
Eight of the current 416 detainees were originally committed 25 years ago, state records show. A total of 96 detainees have died or been released to hospice care since the unit opened in 1999.
“It is, from my view, a prison in all but name,” Condon said.
In New Jersey, few of the people who crafted the state’s civil commitment plan in the late 1990s want to talk about it. Most either didn’t respond to requests for comment or declined to speak.
The state agencies responsible for operating the Special Treatment Unit also declined to make officials available for interviews or allow reporters or photographers to see where detainees are held. All questions were answered in writing.
Advocates say New Jersey’s program is working. It’s shielding society from the worst of the worst — rapists, child molesters, killers who can’t be trusted to reenter society.
“It’s set up to treat the treatable and release those that don’t present an ongoing threat,” said former state Assemblyman Guy Talarico, a Republican who co-sponsored the Sexually Violent Predator Act.
“There are some horrible people that we have to protect the innocent against.”
Megan Kanka’s legacy
It was a summer day in 1994 when Megan Kanka stopped to talk to a neighbor on their Mercer County street as she rode her bike in her Hamilton Township neighborhood.
Jesse Timmendequas promised to show her a puppy if she followed him into his residence. The 7-year-old, whose family described her as a “little social butterfly,” agreed to go inside.
What Megan and her parents didn’t know was that Timmendequas was a twice-convicted sex offender whose therapist worried he would eventually commit another sex crime.
Timmendequas raped Megan and strangled her with a belt before dumping her body in a park. She left a bite mark on his hand.
It was a crime that would change how the nation viewed sex offenders.
After Timmendequas was sentenced to life with no possibility of parole, Megan’s parents turned their grief into advocacy. Their work inspired Megan’s Law, a series of measures mandating a sex offender registry and public notification when a sex offender moves into a neighborhood. Other states adopted the idea and Megan’s Law became a federal statute in 1996.
New Jersey wasn’t done, though.
Lawmakers also wanted to keep those who were considered the worst sex offenders off the streets — even after they finished their prison sentences. They turned to civil commitment.
It was not a new concept. Traditionally, civil commitment was used to hold those with mental illnesses in psychiatric facilities if they were deemed a danger to themselves and others.
Even before Megan’s case, states began expanding the civil commitment system to include those determined to be sexual predators who were about to be released from prison. The idea was to ask the court to civilly commit sex offenders in a treatment facility until they were deemed fit to reenter society.
Civil commitment isn’t a criminal process and, therefore, doesn’t violate the offenders’ constitutional rights, supporters reasoned.
In 1990, Washington state was the first to enact legislation civilly committing sex offenders. Others soon followed, including many inspired by Megan Kanka’s case.
After the Kansas Supreme Court ruled its state law unconstitutional, the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the civil commitment statute in 1997.
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Buoyed by that decision, New Jersey crafted its Sexually Violent Predator Act, which Gov. Christie Whitman signed in 1998. The law says some sex offenders “suffer from mental abnormalities or personality disorders which make them likely to engage in repeat acts of predatory sexual violence if not treated for their mental conditions.”
However, not every person convicted of a sex crime is civilly committed after they are released from prison.
When an inmate’s prison sentence is coming to an end, doctors with the state’s Adult Diagnostic and Treatment Center determine if a sex offender may qualify for commitment by completing a risk assessment to determine their likelihood to reoffend, according to the state Attorney General’s office.
Two professionals, usually two psychiatrists, handle the evaluations, a spokesman said. Then, the Attorney General’s office decides if the state wants to order additional evaluations and go to court to ask a judge to civilly commit the prisoner.
The state has petitioned to civilly commit 847 people since the act took effect in 1999. Of those, 733 have been placed on full commitment, including the 416 still locked up in the Special Treatment Unit in Woodbridge today, according to the state.
It’s unclear how many people have been screened for possible civil commitment since the program began. However, the state Attorney General’s office has reviewed 3,265 people for possible civil commitment since 2005, state officials said.
Those currently in the unit range in age from 18 — including some who committed their crimes as juveniles — to 80.
‘I never came home’
Derrick Baldwin was 22 when he was accused of raping an acquaintance in Irvington in 1994. He was drinking and blacked out, he said.
“I remember punching her in the face because she resembled a girlfriend that lied on me,” Baldwin said. “I didn’t remember everything that took place, but whatever she said that I had done, there’s a possibility that happened. I was drunk and can’t recall.”
His brother persuaded him to surrender.
“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” Michael Baldwin said. “We cried. I convinced him that I’d be there for him.”
He took a plea bargain, was convicted on sexual assault and attempted murder charges and sentenced to 15 years. In prison, Derrick Baldwin taught himself to read and prepared for a new life as he counted down the days to his release.
“I took vocational training. I said when I come home I’m going to be a better person. Then, I never came home. They brought me here,” he said, speaking from inside the Special Treatment Unit.
The unit on Rahway Avenue in Woodbridge is easy to miss. From the road, only a basic sign with the words “Special Treatment Unit” differentiates it from the hulking East Jersey State Prison next door.
Civilly committed offenders live in two buildings. “The Main,” a three-story, concrete edifice with narrow, slit windows, is a former prison building with cells once used for solitary confinement.
Next door, “The Annex” is a one-story brick structure holding detainees in dorm-like rooms, with partitions separating pods of three or four people each. Personal belongings and furniture are jumbled in the warehouse-like spaces.
NJ Advance Media was not allowed inside, but a reporter was permitted in a trailer within the compound to meet with detainees willing to talk about their experiences.
Sporting a gray beard and shaved head, Derrick Baldwin is a tall, burly man with an easy-going demeanor.
He described his typical day inside the unit, which begins with prayers in his pod.
From there, his movements are controlled by a schedule and loudspeaker.
All activities — mealtimes, treatment sessions, going outside to the recreation area — are dictated by announcements permitting movement between areas. Detainees are allowed in common areas to use pay phones, work out or socialize.
Baldwin attends two 90-minute sex offender group therapy sessions each week, as well as a 90-minute substance abuse group, along with sessions covering other treatment topics. Self-help groups, led by detainees, but audio recorded and reviewed by treatment staff, are held in the evenings and deal with sex addiction and other topics.
The routine can be thrown off when a “code” is called, requiring detainees to return to their pods, Baldwin said. Codes may involve fights or medical emergencies. Several detainees said drug overdoses are common inside the unit.
Detainees receive three meals a day and can buy food from outside sources. They can have televisions, gaming systems, books and other possessions, but can’t have cellphones, pornography, drugs or alcohol.
They can have jobs in the facility, working limited hours for minimum wage.
Unlike inmates, names of treatment unit detainees aren’t public. Their identities are shielded by federal protections against release of patient health information.
Only two women have ever been committed under the predator act in New Jersey, an attorney familiar with their cases said, but neither remains detained. Both were held separately from the men.
Now 52 years old, Baldwin believes he’s ready to leave, saying he follows the rules, cooperates with treatment and has matured after a decade in prison and another 21 years in the Special Treatment Unit.
The state disagrees.
“I’ve been locked up for 30 years, longer than I was on the street,” Baldwin said. “When you say look at the light at the end of the tunnel, how do I do that? I don’t know what that is.”
‘Expect to lose’
Sharrod Hargrove was in his late teens when he was accused of raping a 14-year-old girl in 1995. While out on bail, he raped a 17-year-old girl the following year.
Civil commitment for sex offenders didn’t exist when Hargrove signed a plea deal in 1997 and was sentenced to seven years in prison.
When he completed his sentence in 2005, he thought he was going home to Newark, but that never happened. He was moved to the Special Treatment Unit, where he remains today.
At the time, he said he felt like he was being kidnapped — transferred to a facility he’d never heard of when he thought he was being released.
“I’m sitting there waiting for my max date and the whole time the system got something going on that I don’t know about,” said Hargrove, 48.
“What is this place? I just paid my debt to society,” he recalled thinking.
Victories are rare for sex offenders trying to argue against being civilly committed, said attorney Michael Mangels, who leads the team of public defenders representing most detainees at hearings.
“I counsel my attorneys to be as upfront as possible with the likelihood of success, which is tell your clients there’s a near zero chance of success every time you go into court,” Mangels said. “Expect to lose. If you do win, great, but that’s a miracle and treat it as such.”
Detainees attend annual court hearings to determine if they must remain detained, according to Department of Health spokeswoman Nancy Kearney.
“The Department provides assessment by a psychiatrist and psychologist for annual hearings utilizing best practices in the field. Psychological assessments are conducted at least annually by the state Health Department to assess treatment progress and risk to sexually recidivate,” Kearney said in a statement.
Psychologist Jeffrey Singer, who conducted sex offender civil commitment evaluations for New Jersey from 2000 to 2002, alleged doctors generally do a poor job of predicting whether someone will commit a sexually violent crime in the future.
“We’re trying to predict something that occurs infrequently,” he said. “And our biases are towards the over-prediction of an event which occurs rarely. So we’re terrible at it.”
He recalled feeling an “institutional pressure” to side with the state when he conducted evaluations in New Jersey.
Hargrove, the detainee who has been held for nearly two decades, said he believes he has made progress.
“I came here angry as hell,” he said. “I feel as though I got better. I learned a whole lot of things about how my traumatic experiences helped shape me. All these emotions that I felt went to anger and I acted off of them.”
He acknowledges he broke rules in the treatment unit — including exposing himself and having relationships with staff members. He says he has not committed any infractions since 2018.
A judge recently concluded that, while Hargrove has made positive steps in his nearly 20 years in the unit, his progress has been hampered by “several institutional infractions.” He ordered Hargrove to remain detained.
Sitting in a visitors’ trailer outside the facility, Hargrove proudly shared photos of his grandchildren. He isn’t sure when he will get to go home to see them.
When asked if he considers himself a “resident” at the facility, Hargrove raised his legs to show the shackles around his ankles, which officers put on when he arrived at the trailer for the interview.
“You do the math,” he replied.
A $489M investment
Taxpayers have spent more than $489 million to operate the Special Treatment Unit since 2001 and the costs are rising every year, according to state data.
New Jersey allocated $38.2 million to house, treat and guard civilly committed sex offenders in fiscal year 2023. The annual cost per detainee is $78,644, according to the state, or about $3,000 more than the cost to hold a prison inmate.
Supporters say it’s money well spent to keep New Jerseyans safe. Some psychiatrists disagree.
“It’s fair to say that many psychiatrists, and for that matter, the American Psychiatric Association, looks on these sex offender commitment programs with a great deal of skepticism,” said Dr. Paul Appelbaum, past president of the American Psychiatric Association and director of Columbia University’s Division of Law, Ethics and Psychiatry.
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There is a “fairly profound” lack of evidence civil commitment programs work, he said.
“What they seem to be designed for is long-term incapacitation incarceration of people about whom the general public has extreme fears,” Appelbaum said.
New Jersey has been sued for allegedly not offering adequate treatment to those being held in the Special Treatment Unit and detainees signed a petition a few years ago claiming unhealthy living conditions.
Talarico, the former assemblyman who co-sponsored the legislation to start New Jersey’s civil commitment program, forcefully defends the system and the predator law that created it.
The system’s safeguards ensure experts are making detention decisions that are not driven by emotion, he said.
“It’s not a bunch of angry people,” Talarico said. “It’s professionals who have skills in assessing this. These people are fair, it’s balanced, it’s professional.”
Talarico bristled at the suggestion that money for civil commitment could be better spent elsewhere.
“I think that’s a completely weak argument,” he said. “We’re going to release insanely conditioned criminals that are going to prey on the most innocent element of our society? That’s absurd.”
Getting out
Detainees say it isn’t easy, but it is possible to get out of the Special Treatment Unit.
In its history, around 820 people have been detained at the facility on temporary or full commitment, and 85 of those were released after their first court hearing.
The rest were ordered to remain in the facility. Of those, 247 have been conditionally released to the community — meaning they ended up in approved boarding houses or other outside programs. Of those, 63 have been fully removed from conditional discharge and have been permitted to go home, according to the state.
Conditional discharge rates nationwide range from 2% to more than 50%, according to states that responded to the 2023 Sex Offender Civil Commitment Programs Network survey. Texas and Missouri reported some of the lowest rates.
However, New Jersey has one of the lower rates in the nation for full discharges for detainees, with 8.6% fully released. North Dakota reported the highest rate at 75%.
A transgender detainee who served time for sexual assault was released from the Special Treatment Unit several years ago. She had to fight to get out, she said.
The ex-detainee, who asked that her name not be used, said she committed her first sex offenses as a juvenile and was charged with aggravated sexual assault at 18. She attributed her crimes to alcohol, drugs and struggles with her gender identity.
Now in her 60s, she came out as transgender while being detained in the treatment unit. She was accused of lying about her gender identity to get out of the unit. The state fought her release, saying she was violent, though she claimed to have no violence record at the unit.
The state argued during one of her hearings that she read violent books, which was deemed a red flag. “All I read was fiction,” she said, including books by Stephen King and crime novelist John Sandford.
“The judge said, ‘I read the same books. Are you saying I would commit an act of violence?’” she recalled with a laugh. “At the end of the hearing, the judge ordered that my release process begin.”
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A 64-page guide detainees receive when they arrive in the Special Treatment Unit bluntly states they aren’t going home anytime soon.
“We understand that most Residents find it upsetting, traumatic, or at least annoying to be here but still have to deal with the situation as best they can,” it begins, noting the average detainee spends nine years in the unit.
Detainees are assigned to a group for therapy and focus on victim empathy, relapse prevention, anger management and other topics. The five-phase treatment program includes writing sexual offense histories, examining the origins of their behavior and developing relapse prevention plans.
“We offer cognitive behavioral therapy groups, which include discussion, written and experiential work. Residents also participate in recreation therapy, vocational rehabilitation, and art and music therapy. Some individuals are prescribed medication as a component of their treatment,” according to a health department statement.
Polygraph tests are used to determine how honest detainees are being about their sexual offense histories, according to the guide. A plethysmograph, a device attached to a detainee’s genitals to measure sexual arousal, is used in arousal reconditioning.
But, the state has been accused of failing to deliver the treatments it promises.
A class-action federal lawsuit by detainees in the early 2000s claimed the state didn’t provide adequate treatment — resulting in few being released. The lawsuit also accused the state of withholding treatment as punishment and being unclear about what detainees needed to do to get released.
Under terms of a 2012 settlement agreement, detainees were guaranteed a minimum 20 hours a week of group therapy — individual therapy is rare — and better feedback about treatment goals. The state also agreed to hire more therapists.
Today, the health department staff consists of 132 people — including 108 psychiatrists, psychologists, clinical administrators, social workers and other professionals — and 24 support staffers. There are another 107 senior correctional officers and seven civilians in the unit.
For detainees granted a conditional discharge, the process includes 12 to 24 furloughs to acclimate to the outside world. Supervised furloughs, in which detainees are accompanied by staff members, eventually lead to unsupervised furloughs where detainees can begin looking for work and spend nights away from the unit.
‘Setting me up for failure’
Not everyone participates in treatment. Roy Marcum, 60, has been a treatment refuser since arriving in 2000.
“I don’t think there was ever any legitimacy to the program,” he said. “We’re being told we’re not prisoners and that this is supposed to be a treatment center, yet we have corrections officers in here, we have concertina wire around the place.”
Marcum pleaded guilty to molesting two kids in the 1990s.
“I made a deal with the state to do five years and we’ll forgo the trial and I’ll plead guilty and they’ll let me out,” he said. “I get to the end of that deal and the state hands me another bill, to which my answer has been for 20 years, f--- you.”
For those who do participate, detainees are eventually encouraged to apply for admission to the facility’s most intensive therapy — called the therapeutic community — where detainees who are considered advanced in their treatment are encouraged to both praise and challenge one another in group therapy. The treatment includes “pull-ups,” a term for constructive criticism for detainees’ dysfunctional behavior.
Though participation in the therapeutic community is necessary for release, several detainees called it emotionally abusive and claimed it pits people against each other.
The pull-up process can be weaponized by detainees, said Public Defender Alfred A. Egenhofer.
“It’s a tool that they can use to gain leverage over other residents,” Egenhofer said. “If the group is angry at a particular person for either a valid cause or, for example, discovering that they’re getting considered for discharge, they can all start to write posts about one particular person.”
The process causes some detainees to drop out of the therapeutic community, he said.
“They have signed themselves out because they said the stress that it created was too great,” Egenhofer said.
Detainee Robert Wilson said he was removed from the therapeutic community after he reported threats by other detainees and got into a fight. He doesn’t want to return.
“It seems like ya’ll are setting me up for failure,” Wilson said.
Other detainees say they’ve run into barriers in treatment over what crimes they’ve been willing to admit.
Detainee Thermond Williams said he served time for two rapes in the 1970s and was accused of two more rapes in the 1980s, but he was sentenced on a robbery charge after the 1980s rape charges were dropped.
Those dropped charges still come up in treatment, said Williams, who has been in the unit for more than 20 years.
“They say, even though you wasn’t convicted of these crimes, could you talk about it hypothetically? I know I’m kind of slow, but I ain’t that goddamn slow,” he said. “If I tell you I wasn’t convicted for it and the judge saw fit to dismiss it, and you want me to talk about it hypothetically?”
Requiring detainees to “fess up” to acts for which they weren’t convicted or even charged is a disincentive to participate in treatment, according to Appelbaum, past president of the American Psychiatric Association.
“And yet, they’re in this Catch-22 where in order to make progress from the perspective of the program, that’s exactly what they need to do,” he said. “They conclude that they’re never going to get out and simply withdraw and refuse to participate.”
Treatment or prison?
The Special Treatment Unit is not classified as a prison, but detainees say it feels like one. In 2017, corrections officers looking for contraband conducted a mass strip search of the facility, according to detainees.
Detainee Sharrod Hargrove said he refused to strip and was pushed to the ground, kicked and maced.
“It’s a treatment facility, so how the hell you going to help me with treatment when somebody is humiliating me and dehumanizing me?” he said.
The corrections department confirmed the 2017 search occurred and said the agency investigated a detainee’s claim he was assaulted, but the allegation was not substantiated.
Several insiders say there is an ongoing conflict between the state Department of Corrections and the state Department of Health over how the Special Treatment Unit should be run. A 1999 report by Seton Hall Law School researchers expressed concerns about the two-agency plan, calling it an “invitation for friction and divergence.”
The arrangement creates confusion about oversight, said Kenneth Rozov, who previously worked as an ombudsman overseeing the Special Treatment Unit. As part of the 2012 settlement, an ombudsman was appointed to handle concerns raised about treatment and Rozov filled that role for about four years, until the settlement agreement expired, then continued as ombudsman for general issues at the unit until retiring in 2021.
Rozov said he would recommend the unit be run like the state’s Ann Klein Forensic Center in Trenton, with no involvement from the state Department of Corrections. The state Department of Health oversees that psychiatric hospital for convicted criminals and those awaiting trial, and state Human Services Police provides security.
Human Services Police would make the program seamless, with both treatment and security staff at the unit answering to the same administration, Rozov said.
It’s the corrections officers who are at risk in the unit, where detainees often face few consequences for illegal behavior, said state PBA Local 105 President Bill Sullivan.
“If an inmate assaults an officer in a prison, they are placed in lockup until they go to a disciplinary hearing and then they face sanctions,” Sullivan said. At the Special Treatment Unit, “there’s no disciplinary process because they’re private citizens. You have to charge them through the legal system.”
He described the case of a detainee who was convicted of assaulting an officer and given a three-year sentence. Instead of sending him to prison, the judge ordered the sentence to run concurrent to his time at the treatment unit.
Sullivan also said contraband, including drugs and cellphones, is a huge problem. Items have even been smuggled in by drone and dropped into garbage cans outside at the unit, he said.
Those caught bringing in contraband have included corrections officers and civilian employees, Sullivan said. He criticized a lack of proper vetting and supervision of civilian staff within the health department as contributing to the problem.
The health department declined to comment on Sullivan’s remarks. The corrections department said in a statement that it investigates assaults on staff and refers cases to prosecutors.
‘It looks like a dungeon’
When the pandemic hit in 2020, much of life in the Special Treatment Unit shut down. The state reported eight COVID-19 deaths among unit detainees, including six confirmed cases and two probable.
During the pandemic, a 2021 ombudsman’s report said a petition signed by 48 residents complained about bed bugs, insect and rodent infestations, mold and problems with air conditioning and heating. Detainees said they have complained for years about the ongoing conditions.
“The lighting is real poor. It looks like a dungeon. It’s nasty, it’s cold in the winter. It’s hot in the summer,” said detainee Derrick Baldwin.
Another detainee described soggy conditions in the main building after a recent heavy rain.
“It’ll come through the ceiling … It leaks into people’s cells,” he said.
Capital projects completed at the unit since 2010 include roof repairs, temporary heating systems and a new fire alarm system, a corrections spokeswoman said. Emergency repairs included water main and power generator fixes.
Racial disparities
During his time as unit ombudsman, Rozov’s annual reports noted a concerning pattern about how minority detainees were handled.
They were placed into the Modified Activities Program — for what the health department deems “disruptive or dangerous behaviors” — at a higher rate than white detainees, he wrote. The program involves moving detainees who violate rules to a separate wing of the main building. Their penalties can include loss of privileges and restricting unescorted movements.
Rozov’s 2019 report, which was the seventh year he raised the issue, said a study showed minorities accounted for 69% of Modified Activities Program placements over a seven-day period.
The treatment unit’s current population is around 50% Black, 41% white and 8% Latino.
Rozov repeatedly called on officials to reexamine how the Modified Activities Program is administered.
“The state Health Department monitors data and clinical outcomes when possible by race to ensure continuous improvement and the implementation of equitable care at the STU as part of our overall efforts to prioritize equity and eliminate any potential disparities in access to health care, treatment, and clinical outcomes,” the agency said.
Racial disparities in civil commitment programs have been raised by others.
A 2020 UCLA study of civilly committed sex offenders from 13 states found Black residents in 10 of those states saw elevated detention rates when compared to white residents.
Black people in New Jersey were five times as likely as whites to be civilly committed, the study found. That’s the largest disparity among the states evaluated.
When asked about the racial disparity in New Jersey, a spokesman for the state Attorney General’s office said the pursuit of racial equality and justice is one of the office’s highest priorities.
“We recognize that racial disparities unfortunately still persist in every sector of society, including within the criminal legal system in the United States,” the spokesman said in a statement.
Fighting for family
Families of some detainees have publicly lobbied for their release. Delores Black has even organized protests outside the facility.
Her partner of five years is Sharrod Hargrove’s brother and she met Hargrove several years ago during a family visit.
Black served 18 months in an inpatient treatment facility for drug possession in 2001 and now advocates for re-entry programs that help ex-offenders get back on their feet.
She reached out to families of other Special Treatment Unit detainees and they met outside the facility carrying signs and wearing t-shirts with detainee names.
“The families started sharing the same stories about civil commitment,” Black said. “You have this group of people that are ex-offenders. Why are they not entitled to these same re-entry services?”
Some critics of civil commitment programs also question whether holding sex offenders after their prison sentences makes sense at all. Studies show convicted sex offenders are less likely than other types of offenders to commit new crimes and most charged with sex crimes are first-time offenders. While some detainees may be truly too dangerous to free, many could be monitored in the community, these critics suggest.
As of 2015, four released detainees were readmitted to the New Jersey Special Treatment Unit for new sex crimes and one for a child porn offense, according to a state report obtained by NJ Advance Media. It is unclear how many detainees were released in total as of that year.
Dr. Cynthia Calkins, a licensed clinical forensic psychologist and associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, co-authored a 2020 study of recidivism rates for New Jersey sex offenders.
The study, which included around 3,000 offenders released from New Jersey prisons over an 11-year period, found that of those not screened for civil commitment, the recidivism rate for new sex offenses was 5%, and the rate for those who were screened but not committed was 11%.
“If you were to conduct a survey asking what percent of sex offenders are going to reoffend with a new sex offense, people would probably say 80 to 90% or 100%,” Calkins said.
Appelbaum questioned why other criminal offenses don’t draw similar demands for post-prison detention.
“In general, people who are released from a prison term have an average probability of recidivism of roughly 60%. If you look at studies of many categories of sex offenders, they have much lower rates of recidivism … which suggests that there’s something other than the risk of future recurrence that motivates all this,” Applebaum said. “Otherwise, we’d come up with a parallel civil commitment process for felons in general.”
‘Something has to give’
Now 68, detainee Thermond Williams has kidney problems and gets dialysis three days a week at the Special Treatment Unit.
He doubts he’ll ever get out.
“People still care about me, so I try to put a brave face on for them,” he said. “I don’t know how many more years I got, but most of my medical reports coming back from dialysis say I’m on the right track, taking my meds.”
Some believe more detainees deserve a chance at release and suggested step-down programs that would allow greater freedom while still being monitored.
“At some point, we just have to say that as long as the resident participates in treatment, and objective and realistic criteria are established to measure treatment success, we’re going to have to have faith in that treatment and take a chance with these guys,” Rozov said. “If the N.J. legislature established a civil commitment program that includes a pathway to release, at some point, those that faithfully participate have to be released.
“Unless that pathway is utilized, it’s simply warehousing with endless, meaningless treatment.”
Michael Baldwin knows his brother has missed out on much in life.
He was locked up days before his son’s second birthday. That son is now in his 30s and has two kids.
Accompanied by officers, Derrick Baldwin was allowed to visit his mother in the hospital before she died. His siblings are getting older and face their own health challenges, Michael said.
“I just think they should give him an opportunity to show he has been rehabilitated,” he said. “If you were going to give him life, if that was the plan, then why not state it from the door and then everyone in the family could have been prepared.”
He understands most won’t be sympathetic to a sex offender’s plight. All the family wants is a second chance.
“Maybe it looks like a furlough. Let him come home for two or three hours a day and he goes back inside,” Michael Baldwin said. “You can ween him into it.
“But something has to give.”
