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Michael St. Martin, 62, who has been civilly committed for the past 18 years, is a "detainee" at Coalinga State Hospital, where he was sent in 2006, after serving 10 years in prison. He has been designated a "sexually violent predator" or SVP, and will likely spend the rest of his natural life civilly committed there.

At Coalinga, only 36% of the detainees are participating in treatment programs, and St. Martin is one of the patients not participating in treatment. He says he believes in treatment, but that the system at the hospital, where he has been since 2006 after serving 10 years in prison for child molestation charges, is flawed.

“The bottom line is, there is no consistency with treatment,” St. Martin said. “All of public safety is an important factor, don’t get me wrong. But the state has taken the community’s money and they’re not producing that. It’s unconscionable what they’ve done. The Supreme Court ruled that the state has to provide treatment — they didn’t say it had to work.”

St. Martin is an advocate for better conditions in facilities like Coalinga, meaningful and effective sex offender treatment programs, and an end to civil commitment.

He says, "I am being held prisoner through civil commitment by the State of California, using its Department of Mental Health, for crimes that I might commit in the future by people who are actually committing crimes in the present."

Jeremy Malcolm is the Executive Director of Prostasia Foundation, a child protection nonprofit. Prior to that he was Senior Global Policy Analyst at Electronic Frontier Foundation, where he worked on the international dimensions of issues such as intellectual property, intermediary liability, net neutrality, Internet governance, and trade. Previously he worked at Consumers International coordinating its global programme Consumers in the Digital Age. Jeremy graduated with degrees in Law (with Honours) and Commerce in 1995 from Murdoch University, and completed his PhD thesis at the same University in 2008 on the topic of Internet governance. Jeremy's background is as an information technology and intellectual property lawyer and IT consultant. He is admitted to the bars of the Supreme Court of Western Australia (1995), High Court of Australia (1996) and Appellate Division of New York (2009). He is a member of the Multistakeholder Advisory Group of the United Nations Internet Governance Forum.

About Prostasia:

Protecting children from sexual abuse is a cause that everyone can unite behind. Often, however, the measures we take to combat child sexual abuse (CSA) are less effective than they should be, because they are driven by emotion rather than evidence. In striving to protect children from abuse, we may end up harming them and others.

Prostasia Foundation addresses this problem by…
helping to fund sound scientific research on CSA prevention.engaging with diverse stakeholders whose voices are not normally heard.addressing the human rights impacts of child protection laws and policies.communicating the results of our research and engagement to policymakers, platforms, and the public.

Meaghan is the co-founder and Executive Director of PERL. In 2003 at the age of sixteen, Meaghan was raped in Memphis.  She reported her rape to law enforcement and submitted to a forensic exam, but law enforcement did not investigate the case or test her rape kit until over nine years later. Meaghan strategically used her mishandled rape case to raise awareness about needed policy changes. In the course of this work, Meaghan further exposed over 12,000 untested rape kits in MPD storage.  In 2013 and 2014, over the Memphis mayor’s objections, Meaghan successfully persuaded the Memphis City Council to allocate over $3 million of its own tax revenue to cover the costs of investigating thousands of previously ignored rape cases connected to untested rape kits. In 2015, Meaghan and a group of lawyers and community organizers formed PERL which advocates for criminal justice reform and provides the community’s only peer support for people who have experienced sexual violence. She is also a contributing writer at The Appeal, part of the Harvard University School of Law’s Fair Punishment Project. Meaghan holds a BA in English from Rhodes College and a Juris Doctor from the University of Mississippi.

On October 29th, 1999 David Lee Garlock, then 20 years old, was arrested for the murder of his abuser. During his 13.5 years in an Alabama prison David's trajectory changed, and he became focused on redemption and personal betterment. Upon his release, he became involved with the Equal Justice Initiative, and graduated from Eastern University in 2017. He went on to become the Program Manager for New Person Ministries in Lancaster, PA, where he works with people on the sex offender registry, and is a member of the Lancaster County Reentry Management Organization. David speaks regularly at universities and other venues about criminal justice reform and his personal journey of redemption.

In this episode, we interview the President of Florida Actiona Committee, Gail Colletta.

From the Florida Action Committe website:

The purpose of Florida Action Committee is to educate the media, our legislators and the public with the facts surrounding Sex Offender Issues. Our concern is for every citizen of Florida to enjoy a safer environment, particularly our children.

Today people have access to a world of information through the media, internet and newspapers. Often times, information become distorted and it becomes hard to distinguish sensationalism from fact.

Our current policies for sex offender management are failing. We need to fix our broken system to create a safer Florida.

We need to realize the fiscal impact this failing system has created, the unintended consequences and immoral burden 60,000 citizens in Florida are subjected to daily, the many civil and human rights violations as well.

We encourage our Legislators to consider how important for us to step out of the box, take a broader view of these issues and create more reasonable and more fiscally responsible legislation we can benefit by for a long time to come.

Although Government’s intent was well-meaning, there is enough history to evaluate and recognize that now is the time for redirection. The collateral damage is evident and unbelievably sad. It is not too late to make changes for Florida and our Nation.

Today more than ever, citizens of Florida need to take a stand. Florida needs courageous leaders to write and support legislation that is truly for the best interest of the people and the future of our State.

Rachel Barkow, the author of "Prisoner of Politics: Breaking the Cycle of Mass Incarceration," explains how dangerous it is to base criminal justice policy on the whims of the electorate, which puts judges, sheriffs, and politicians in office. Instead, she argues for an institutional shift toward data and expertise, following the model used to set food and workplace safety rules.

America’s criminal justice policy reflects irrational fears stoked by politicians seeking to win election. A preeminent legal scholar argues that reform guided by evidence, not politics and emotions, will reduce crime and reverse mass incarceration.

The United States has the world’s highest rate of incarceration, a form of punishment that ruins lives and makes a return to prison more likely. As awful as that truth is for individuals and their families, its social consequences—recycling offenders through an overwhelmed criminal justice system, ever-mounting costs, unequal treatment before the law, and a growing class of permanently criminalized citizens—are even more devastating.

Barkow’s prescriptions are rooted in a thorough and refreshingly ideology-free cost–benefit analysis of how to cut mass incarceration while maintaining public safety. She points to specific policies that are deeply problematic on moral grounds and have failed to end the cycle of recidivism. Her concrete proposals draw on the best empirical information available to prevent crime and improve the reentry of former prisoners into society.

Prisoners of Politics aims to free criminal justice policy from the political arena, where it has repeatedly fallen prey to irrational fears and personal interest, and demonstrates that a few simple changes could make us all safer.