WHY OLD SEX OFFENDERS ARE STILL DANGEROUS

Contrary to popular impressions, most of the country's oldest prisoners aren't multiple murderers serving life sentences for heinous crimes committed in their youth.  Often, the very oldest are sex offenders imprisoned relatively recently and considered too dangerous to parole.  More than a quarter of Ohio's older prisoners are sex offenders.  In Wisconsin, the total runs to 30%.  The federal Bureau of Justice Statistics found that released rapists were more than ten times as likely as ex-cons charged with other crimes to be rearrested for rape, according to a 1997 study.  Convicted sex offenders were 7.5 times as likely as other ex-convicts to be rearrested for sexual assault were.