Keeping sex offenders off the streets.

It's a parent's worst nightmare: a convicted pedophile wandering the neighborhood. To ensure greater safety, policymakers have taken action against sexual predators.

An historic decision last year by the U.S. Supreme Court puts convicted sexual predators back in lock-up, even after their prison terms are served. In Kansas vs. Hendricks, the Court decided 5-4 to uphold a 1994 state law allowing dangerous sexual predators to be confined in a mental institution after their prison sentences are completed.

Although eight other states - Arizona, California, Illinois, Minnesota, North Dakota, New Jersey, Washington and Wisconsin - have similar laws and Delaware and Missouri have pre-filed bills along the same lines, 45 states and territories filed briefs supporting the Kansas law, which was modeled on a statute enacted by Washington state in 1990.

That didn't surprise Representative Mike O'Neal, former chairman of the Kansas House Judiciary Committee and one of the principal authors of the law, who said most states would have an "intense interest" in the Court decision. He was right. Forty-one bills were introduced as of January, according to NCSL's Health Policy Tracking Service.

O'Neal was "relieved" by the Supreme Court decision, but added that he had been sure when he sponsored the law that "we'd done the right things" to keep repeat offenders off the streets within the realm of the Constitution.

"The problem of sexual predators has very few solutions," he said, "but we do need to assure our public that we are going to do something to protect them."

The Kansas law says that sexual offenders who have completed their prison terms can be involuntarily committed for an indefinite period of time if they suffer from a "mental abnormality or personality disorder" and are likely to commit sex crimes again.

"It actually arose from a gruesome case in my own district," O'Neal said. "A man, a pedophile, who was convicted wrote letters to a local prosecutor, telling him that once he got out he would re-commit.

"The prosecutor was absolutely appalled, telling me that we had young kids out there, that he knew the man would molest another child, and that his hands were tied until there was another victim. We couldn't act until another child was hurt."

Another factor was the rape and murder of a college co-ed by a convicted sexual offender who had been released from prison.

PAINSTAKING PROCESS

O'Neal said that it was a painstaking process to craft the law, taking two to three years before it passed in 1994. Once it was enacted, however, the impetus that took it to the U.S. Supreme Court started with the impending release of Leroy Hendricks, who had a 40-year history of abusing young girls and boys. Hendricks had served 10 years in prison on his fifth sex-abuse conviction.

Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority, pointed out, "The Kansas Legislature has taken great care to confine only a narrow class of particularly dangerous individuals, and then only after meeting the strictest procedural standards."

The verdict brought heated and mixed reactions. Wendy McFarland of the Kansas and Western Missouri Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union spoke for opponents when she commented, "Anticipating crimes before they've been committed and penalizing them before they happen is a precedent that should frighten every American." Critics are afraid authorities could use similar measures to imprison criminals indefinitely under the guise of mental treatment.

On the other hand, Kansas Attorney General Carla Stovall, who argued the case before the Court, said, "It means that we can continue to protect the public from the worst kind of criminals ... the criminals who repeatedly and repeatedly prey on children."

The Kansas law sets up an elaborate, multistep process to review the cases of sex offenders before their release by two separate panels and a judge. Psychological evaluations must be made and, ultimately, a 12-member jury must agree unanimously that the offender has a mental abnormality or personality disorder - not mental illness - that makes him likely to commit rape, sodomy, sexual battery or other sexual offenses if set free.

Inmates are entitled to legal counsel and the assistance of a mental health worker before the jury and while confined. There are no time limits on the civil commitments, but those sentenced must be re-evaluated once a year.

NEW DEFINITIONS

The mental abnormality clause is key to the commitment. And, in fact, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that the law unconstitutionally deprived an individual of liberty without due process, setting the stage for the U.S. Supreme Court hearing.

The Kansas court found that mental illness is a clearer and more limited definition than "mental abnormality" or "personality disorder," terms used in the statute in lieu of the clinical words "mental illness." One of the Kansas judges noted that Hendricks was antisocial, but not mentally ill and could, therefore, not be committed.

The U.S. Supreme Court disagreed. And that has opened the door for a wave of new legislation in the states.

Senator Joseph Zakas introduced a bill that mirrors the Kansas legislation when the Indiana General Assembly convened in January. House sponsor Representative Mae Dickinson pointed out that there are 2,889 sexual offenders imprisoned in the state, but the proposed law would affect fewer than 100. "We're talking about a small group of violent sexual predators who have served their sentences, are being released into our communities, but are still suffering from mental abnormalities that will cause them to be a threat to our children and to other people in our communities," Zakas said.

Despite concerns of critics, the law has not, to date, been used with a heavy hand. Of 618 offenders reviewed since the inception of the law in 1994, only nine are being held in Kansas mental institutions. In the seven other states with similar statutes, 240 sexual offenders have been committed.

State high courts in Washington and Wisconsin have previously upheld similar laws. In fact, Wisconsin Attorney General James Doyle said that the Kansas decision gave his state "a green light for continuing to use our sex predator law in appropriate cases."

Congress also has been influenced by the Court's decision on the Kansas law. Representative Louise Slaughter of New York has said that a federal law is needed, and is sponsoring a bill to allow repeat sex offenders to be prosecuted in federal court and sentenced to life in prison.

Other legislative routes to coping with sexual offenders include:

* A model long-term treatment program in Arizona requires incarcerated sex offenders to agree, as a condition of release, to lifetime probation, weekly counseling sessions, routine lie detector tests and unannounced in-home inspections by surveillance officers.

* California requires twice-convicted child molesters to be injected with drugs to reduce their sex drives. Similar laws passed last year in Florida, Georgia and Louisiana.

* Illinois requires all convicted sex offenders to supply blood samples to the state police for DNA indexing, allows prosecutors in sex crime trials to introduce prior criminal sex offenses, and has created a Sex Offender Management Board to develop uniform standards and procedures to evaluate and manage convicted sex offenders and to establish guidelines for sex offender counseling programs.

RELATED ARTICLE: THE NEW FEDERAL LAW

The feds beefed up action against sexual predators in May 1997 when President Clinton signed the Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act, which links establishment of a sex offender warning system to federal anti-crime funding.

The federal legislation went into effect in September and requires all states to notify communities of the presence of sex offenders. The federal effort is modeled on New Jersey's Megan's Law, spurred by the rape and murder of a 7-year-old girl by a paroled sex offender in 1994.

It was a bit superfluous since similar "Megan's laws" are in effect in 45 states, and all 50 have some form of sex offender registration. However, some states specify that such information is only for law enforcement use so that officers can step up oversight of offenders. Private citizens seeking information had to submit a written request to the local sheriff's office or police department.

Federal law now requires that all states register offenders with state law enforcement, maintain a data bank of all sex offenders, require annual reregistration continuing for at least 10 years, and release information as necessary to protect the public.

Washington state actually pioneered registry and notification laws. The names of offenders determined as having the highest risk for recidivism are published in local newspapers.

Dianna Gordon is an assistant editor of State Legislatures.