In the county's eyes, they're all perverts. The mother of one of his clients strongly agrees. Her son says the sex was consensual. But because the incidents occurred just after he turned 18, he was tried and convicted as an adult. After a plea bargain, Larry was sentenced to a year in county jail and to lifetime probation.
Every case needs to be looked at on an individual basis.
But in Maricopa, her son has to go through the tests and live under strict constraints on his behavior. Maricopa's program isn't cheap. It remains unclear whether the program has generally deterred sex crimes in the Phoenix area. Reported sex crimes have increased 9 percent so far this year, but that may be because of increased efforts to identify such crimes and growth in the area's population. Still, there are enough success stories to encourage participants.