he has been in atascadero since 1997.t want us to show you his face. >> there is a lot of hype with the megan's law and the registration and the posters going up and stuff, and that is all fine and dandy, but the public ought to be happy to know who is in their neighborhood. they need to worry about who is not in the neighborhood who is out molesting the children and raping the wives and daughters and sisters and mothers. >> the prison system releases 300 to 350 sexual offenders every month. that is an enormous number of people, and these are people who by and large have not been treated in any way for their sexual acting out. >> that statistic refers only to those released from california prisons. national rates for rape and sexual assault remain fairly constant despite the high cost of releasing sex offenders to state institutions at least 15 other states have followed california's lead and locking up the sexual offenders on indefinite parole. >> we don't talk about cure in any of the areas in which we treat people, but

. >>> in a remote area outside of atascadero, california, susan worthen was kidnapped and killed. act of violence that took this teenager's life cost ron brook his freedom. ronald brook has spent more than half of his life behind bars. prison is the world he understands. >> you've got to remember, prison's a perfect place for people who never grow up. for somebody with the mentality or the emotional state of a child, prison's perfect. they tell you when to get up. they tell you when to go to bed. they do your laundry for you, they cook your meals for you, tell you when to eat. they give you chores to do. if you're good, you get to go out and play in the park with the other kids. if you're bad, you go to your room. if you're really bad, they put you in a little special room. >> ronald brook feels his childhood was missing this kind of order and stability. in today's therapy session, ron brook is asked to talk about his marriage. a union, he claims, ended in betrayal. >> i married at too young of age, i was 22 -- 21, and she was 16. much too young for either one of us, really. we ha

5,000 school-aged children living in 12 southern california communities, from atascadero to alpine. john peters: we decided to look at children primarily because we can find them more easily. we can go to schools, and if they're young enough, they don't smoke yet. they don't have hazardous occupations, so that there are some things about them that are amenable to study, maybe not the least of which is-- at least thought by some-- that the growing lung in a young person is more susceptible to the effects of air pollution as well. plus the fact that children spend more time outdoors and they exercise more so that they would be breathing more of the ambient air and when they're exercising, even more. children in the study are periodically tested to determine if there are any long-term effects from air pollution. researchers measure each child's lung development and function in relation to the air quality at home and in school, as well as the outside environment. so if we see an effect, we'll be trying to isolate whether it's caused by particles in the air, or ozone in the air, or a com