With the 2007 slayings of a Cheshire, Ct., mother and her two daughters fresh on their minds, Connecticut legislators moved quickly last year to toughen up the state’s criminal justice system, says the Hartford Courant. But one reforms – creation of a residential treatment facility with a range of services for sex offenders on parole or probation – never happened, even though it was part of a bill that passed by wide margins in both the state House of Representatives and the Senate.
Now, a three-time convicted rapist – considered so dangerous and untreatable he was denied admission to sex offender programs in Connecticut and seven other states only two years ago – will have nowhere to go when he is released from prison on Christmas Eve. Ransome Lee Moody, 52, will be waiting in line for a bed at a homeless shelter in New Haven, a place where indigent offenders who have done their time often go for housing when there are no other options. Judicial officials say Connecticut badly needs a sex offender treatment facility for recently released inmates. They blame state budget woes for the failure to create one.