Given all the talk we hear from Douglas about protecting people from sex offenders, you’d think that this wouldn’t happen so easily:

Local officials have expressed concerns after learning that the Department of Corrections has not provided treatment for sex offenders living in local communities in Bennington and Rutland counties for several weeks because the contract to provide that service was broken.

Oh, and it gets better…

Several Bennington County officials said they were also concerned because they hadn’t been notified by the Department of Corrections that sex offenders living in their community were not getting clinical treatment.

Bennington County State’s Attorney Erica Marthage said her office, Cole, the Bennington County Special Victims Unit and other agencies had worked together to create a successful team that had attracted positive attention for its response to sex crimes. But she said part of the success had been the trust that all members of the team were doing their part.

“My office makes plea agreements all the time in cases that require sex offender treatment. The fact that we don’t have someone doing that right now would have been good to know,” she said.

So the DOC didn’t think it necessary to tell local officials.  

I shall summarize:

Sex offenders who have treatment as part of the terms of their probation are not getting the treatment they need.  

Why is this?  We don’t know.

When did this start?  We don’t know.

Not only do we not know, but…

Georgia Cumming, the department’s program director for sex offenders, said she didn’t know the exact date the previous contract was broken, but said it was earlier in May.

It’s easy to talk about protecting people and it’s easy to talk about sex offenders in the abstract, but this is real: this is people who are supposed to be receiving treatment who aren’t.  We talk about budgets; we talk about costs.  This is the cost of trying to dismantle government:

…Corrections Commissioner Andrew Pallito said… “That gap is being filled partially by the (Department of Corrections), but for treatment like this, you really need a licensed provider. Unfortunately, the state doesn’t have the luxury of being able to afford to have any back-up providers.”

So I think I’ve got this clear now: meaningless rhetoric about sex offenders is, to quote a Douglas press release, “an important and necessary step in strengthening its sex offender registry.”

But back up providers in case of a serious gap in coverage is a “luxury.”

Good to know where our priorities are.