A Visit to the Sex Offender Accountability and Responsibility Program

Yesterday I went to Lillington to teach a class for the inmates in the North Carolina prison system’s Sex Offender Accountability and Responsibility (SOAR) program. I’d like to share a little bit about what I taught—and what I learned. The lone sex offender treatment program in the North Carolina prison system is the SOAR program at Harnett Correctional Institution in Lillington. Around 50 inmates participate in the program at any given time. All of the participants are men; there is no counterpart program for women. Recidivism data for SOAR program participants are promising. As I noted in my recap of the Sentencing Commission’s most recent recidivism report, graduates have the lowest rates of re-arrest and reimprisonment of any correctional program. The psychologist who runs the program invited me to come talk to the inmates about sex offender sentencing, registration, and monitoring. He is always kind enough to come teach in our classes for judges and lawyers in Chapel Hill, so making the trip to Lillington was the least I could do. He said the participants had a few questions, and that he would email them to me in advance. He sent me a list of 51 distinct questions. Some of the questions were basic. Will I have to register? For how long? How much does it cost? Some were harder to answer. Can I go to a PG movie? Can I go to church? Will they implant a chip in my arm? What if I’m homeless? I didn’t answer every question—not [...]