Civil confinement
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Civil confinement is the policy John Kiriakou proposed in one of the Letters from Loretto: moving a sex offender to a secure location on the prison grounds after he has completed his sentence, rather than releasing him.

Under the arrangement Kiriakou describes, such a man would not necessarily be subject to counts or to the ten-minute moves that govern ordinary prison life, but he would not be free to re-enter society and reoffend. Kiriakou states that the system works in Virginia and in other states and that it helps greatly to protect children.

The argument as he made it

Kiriakou reaches the proposal through two prior claims.

The first is that treatment does not exist. Despite what readers may have seen over the years, he writes, there is no such thing as treatment or rehabilitation in prison, no counselling and no medication for sex offenders. Once their sentences are served they are free to leave and to live in society again, and while they will have years of probation, he argues that this will do nothing to curb their urges. He states as a proven fact that many will reoffend.

The second is that the federal government does little to protect children from predators, a conclusion he says he came to after arriving at FCI Loretto, where he reported that nearly 30 per cent of the then 1,325 prisoners were pedophiles and child rapists.

He pairs the proposal with a smaller and cheaper reform: if sex offenders may not come within a thousand feet of a school, he asks, why may they come within five feet of his children in the visiting room, and why is there no partitioned section of the visiting room for them, which he says could not possibly be expensive.

The pushback

Kiriakou records that the letter drew criticism from the general public. A lot of people, he says, castigated him for endorsing civil confinement, on the ground that when a man has done his time he has paid his debt to society and is free.

His answer is a single case: a chapel colleague he calls Cook, who had received a mandatory five-year sentence for a first child pornography offence, then 20 years for a second, and who was back inside within four months of release facing 60 more.

Kiriakou does not soften the exchange. Told by Cook that he was going to die inside, Kiriakou says he replied that society was better off without him in it, and then went to work.

See also

- Cook The Recidivist
- Letter from Loretto
- Prison pedophile accounts
- FCI Loretto
- The chapel job
