Inside the world of New Jersey’s civil confinement

NewsWorks Tonight host Dave Heller speaks with reporters George Steptoe and Antoine Goldet about their work, now featured on The Marshall Project, on a practice known as “civil confinement.”

Twenty states have laws allowing violent sexual predators to be held for an indefinite period of time after they’ve completed their sentences. Civil confinement is intended to protect the public and offer therapy to help the offenders control their impulses.

But the analysis of Steptoe and Goldet revealed that most people who enter these programs are detained for years, and often have little chance of being released.