Civil Committment

After reading this article on CNN.com--I began to think about what might really be going on regarding holding sex offenders past their release date. Then I thought about civil commitment--what this article doesn't share is that usually when offenders are committed civilly there is some sort of severe mental health disorder that accounts for their behavior. This article makes it seems like correctional facilities are just arbitrarily holding an offender past their sentence based upon their a sex offense...which usually would make me irate, however--I do believe that there are some pertinent facts that might be left out...like ah, lets say, someone suffering from psychosis who also committed a sex offense who may still be actively psychotic..yea, maybe that person might be better off in a controlled environment--and might be civilly committed to prevent him for doing harm to himself or others. The issue that I have is...are correctional facilities a good option for people who are likely in need of treatment and habitation? Often times, prison and jails become a dumping ground for the people in society that we don't want to deal with. They serve their terms, often times being released into the same environment with $25 in their pocket...and are more criminal minded upon release then they were prior to incarceration. In the case of sex offenders...we now have a registry that has proven to have severe unintended consequences--and serves a barrier to regaining any sort of normalcy once released. Maybe we have created such a volatile environment for these individuals that they would rather stay locked up. Who knows....at any rate--this is just another opportunity to put a critcial thinking hat on, and wonder about what sources are being reporting??