Matthew T. Mangino: The enormous cost of civil commitments

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6-9-17 National:

Earlier this year, The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit upheld a Minnesota law that provided for the indefinite detention of sex offenders after completion of their prison sentences.
U.S. District Court Judge Donovan Frank wrote that the Minnesota Sex Offender Program violated the due process rights of the people it involuntarily detained in prison. The Eighth Circuit disagreed.

Pennsylvania currently has eight men locked-up who have served their complete sentence for a crime committed years ago. These men are sex offenders. They are sexually violent predators, as determined by a civil court, and are being detained indefinitely. Pennsylvania is one of 20 states that provide for the civil commitment of sexually dangerous offenders. There are more than 3,600 men, and some women, committed or detained across the country.

There are 231 sex offenders currently being held indefinitely in New York, who have also completed their criminal sentences. Civil commitment is not new. The procedure has been used for decades with regard to the mentally ill and those with highly contagious diseases. More recently it has been applied to sex offenders with a diagnosable mental abnormality with likelihood to re-offend.

Sex Offenders Sue Over Iowa's Civil Commitment Program

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9-22-16 Iowa:

Nine men who were convicted of sex crimes, served their prison sentences and are now indefinitely confined to an Iowa mental health unit have filed a federal lawsuit against the state, claiming its civil commitment program is unconstitutional because it fails to offer adequate counseling and other services that would rehabilitate them enough for release.

The lawsuit, filed in September 2012 in federal court in Cedar Rapids, again highlights the difficult balance states must strike between keeping dangerous sexual predators off the streets and not violating their constitutional rights by imprisoning them longer than their court-mandated sentences. The men claim Iowa's five-phase program is undue punishment and inhumane treatment.

More than 5,000 people are believed to be civilly committed in such programs in 20 states and by the federal Bureau of Prisons. In the last year, federal judges in Minnesota and Missouri have ordered changes to those states' programs after finding them unconstitutional due to inadequate rehabilitation and proper assessment of risk of reoffending. A similar challenge in North Dakota is likely to go to trial next year.

In Iowa, U.S. District Judge Mark Bennett rejected the state's motion to dismiss the lawsuit in March, using "Hotel California" lyrics in his 50-page ruling to describe Iowa's Civil Commitment Unit for Sexual Offenders program: "You can check-out any time you like, But you can never leave!"

SC project to house sexual predators approved

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9-14-16 South Carolina:

COLUMBIA - A multi-million project that will help South Carolina house up to 500 sexually violent predators received approval Tuesday.

Members of the state’s Joint Bond Review Committee approved the Department of Mental Health’s request to borrow up to $45 million in bonds to cover the cost of constructing two new buildings and renovating three existing ones to house predators who have been committed to the state’s custody.

The predators – child abusers, rapists, serial predators, etc. – have served their time for criminal offenses, but are deemed too “mentally abnormal” and “extremely dangerous” to be released. Instead, they are committed by a judge or a jury civilly to these facilities run by the Department of Mental Health for sex offender treatment. Each resident costs about $85,000 a year to house.

The agency has been outgrowing its two buildings at the Department of Corrections’ Broad River prison complex for years. In 2007, it installed bunk beds to make up for the lack of space. But the agency is on pace to reach its maximum capacity by early 2017.

An infirmary also will be part of the project, so the difficult-to-transport residents no longer have to be taken off the prison complex when they’re sick.

State needs more housing for worst sexual predators, officials say

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9-12-16 South Carolina:

COLUMBIA, SC A $41 million project that will help South Carolina house up to 500 sexually violent predators received approval Tuesday.

Members of the state’s Joint Bond Review Committee approved the Department of Mental Health’s request to borrow up to $45 million in bonds to cover the cost of constructing two new buildings and renovating three existing ones to house predators who have been committed to the state’s custody.

The predators – including child abusers, rapists, serial predators – have served their time for criminal offenses but are deemed too “mentally abnormal” and “extremely dangerous” to be released. Instead, they are committed by a judge or a jury civilly to these facilities run by the Department of Mental Health for sex offender treatment. Each resident costs about $85,000 a year to house.

The agency has been outgrowing its two buildings at the Department of Corrections’ Broad River prison complex for years. In 2007, it installed bunk beds to make up for the lack of space. But the agency is on pace to reach its maximum capacity by early 2017.

Security Hospital, Minnesota Sex Offender Program seek $85 million in state funding

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11-17-15 Minnesota:

Minnesota state senators heard the message clearly. Facility upgrades totaling $85 million for the state Security Hospital and Minnesota Sex Offender Program are needed to assure safety for patients and staff.

Department of Human Services officials hosted a Tuesday tour for members of the Minnesota Senate Capital Investment Committee, as well as staff members and local media. Carol Olson, director of the Minnesota Security Hospital, and Nancy Johnston, new director of the state’s Sex Offender Program, outlined facility needs prior to the tour of the St. Peter campus.

The latest capital budget request by DHS comes on the heels of over $72 million already approved during the 2014 State Legislative biennium. The Minnesota Security Hospital was allocated over $56 last year, while the Sex Offender Program received $7.4 million. Phase 1 improvements on the St. Peter campus are expected to be completed by November 2016, DHS officials said.

A second phase of facility improvement requests total $70.3 million for MSH and $14.5 million for MSOP.

Cost of sex offender program shocks lawmakers

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11-12-15 Virginia:

Lawmakers expressed shock Friday over the exponentially rising cost of a program to keep some sex offenders locked up after they complete their criminal sentences.

The annual operating cost of Virginia's Sexually Violent Predator Program is projected to hit $32 million next year - more than a tenfold increase in eight years.

The General Assembly created the program in 1998 to keep sex offenders deemed likely to re-offend off the streets after they finish their criminal sentences. The process is known as civil commitment.

The 300-bed Virginia Center for Behavioral Rehabilitation in Nottoway County, built just two years ago for $62 million, will be filled by this fall, the House Appropriations Committee was told Friday.

Gov. Bob McDonnell has proposed spending an additional $68.5 million this year to accommodate the growing number of offenders coming into the program, including $43.5 million in borrowed money to convert a closed prison in Brunswick County into a second 300-bed treatment center.

The numbers generated bipartisan alarm on the budget-writing panel.

Judge: State’s sex offender program needs overhaul

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8-30-15 New York:

A state Supreme Court justice who has likely ruled on more civil commitment cases than any other judge in New York this month issued a bruising indictment of the program for institutionalized sex offenders, questioning whether the psychiatric program is providing “meaningful treatment” as mandated by law.

The state Legislature should consider an overhaul of the civil confinement program for sex offenders, wrote state Supreme Court Justice James Tormey, who is based in Syracuse. Now, Tormey wrote, the state is spending more than $200,000 annually for each civilly confined sex offender in New York facilities “with those numbers (of offenders) rising every year.”

While judges across New York regularly hear civil commitment cases, determining whether sex offenders are safe to release to the community after their imprisonment, Tormey is a particularly knowledgeable jurist on the program. The state’s largest sex offender psychiatric facility, Central New York Psychiatric Center, or CNYPC, is in Marcy, Oneida County, which is within his judicial jurisdiction. Civilly committed sex offenders are allowed to petition for release to a community program annually, and Tormey has handled hundreds of those cases.

Tormey’s expertise on the program is so recognized that he organizes training programs for judges and lawyers across the state and travels to treatment facilities, including some in Canada, to see how programs elsewhere operate. In his recent ruling, a response to a sex offender seeking release from CNYPC to community-based supervision, Tormey acknowledges that “it is not this Court’s role or position to legislate, but to follow laws promulgated by legislation and to follow legislative intent.”

Sex Offender Treatment Costs Skyrocket, Records Show

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12-11-2007 South Carolina:

More than $82 million has been spent over the past 10 fiscal years to treat designated “sexually violent predators,” while offenders in the program have paid virtually nothing toward their involuntary commitments, state records show.

Offenders in the treatment program run by the S.C. Department of Mental Health collectively were billed an average of about $8.3 million annually from fiscal year 2002 through last fiscal year, which ended June 30, according to The Nerve’s review of a DMH spreadsheet provided under the S.C. Freedom of Information Act.

The total tab for treatment during the 10-year period was $82,755,902, while offenders paid a total of only $753 as reimbursement for the costs, the spreadsheet shows.

The overall annual amount billed to offenders has sharply increased in recent years, from about $6.5 million in fiscal year 2006 to nearly $11.6 million last fiscal year, according to the spreadsheet. That’s an overall hike of 78 percent, or about 59 percent after adjusting for inflation.

The number of offenders in the program has grown sharply in recent years, according to agency records, from 94 as of June 30, 2008, to 138 as of Dec. 12, an increase of about 47 percent.

Cost of Care for the Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP)

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Click to see the Bulletin

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Kansas faces criticism for cost of sex offender program

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4-27-15 Kansas:

LARNED, Kan. (AP) - Kansas is among a number of states facing questions about whether its program that commits sex offenders to involuntary treatment rehabilitates them or, as critics claim, merely warehouses them indefinitely due to public safety concerns.

At a time when Kansas legislators are seeking to find a mix of cuts and tax increases to fill roughly $422 million in budget shortfalls, Republican Gov. Sam Brownback has recommended increasing funds for the sexual predator program from $13.9 million in 2014 to $20.4 million by 2017 to accommodate its growing population. Since its inception in 1994, the number of offenders confined has grown to 258 and only three have been released back into public, according to the Department for Aging and Disability Services, which runs the program.

Supporters of the program argue that the funding increases are necessary to keep dangerous offenders off the street, but some lawmakers have expressed concern as its costs and population balloon. A state audit report is due out Tuesday, looking at ways to address costs and comparing Kansas' program to those in in 19 other states and the District of Columbia.

The report "won't be a pretty thing to look at," said state Rep. John Carmichael, a Wichita Democrat. He added he believes the Kansas program may be unconstitutionally prolonging offenders' incarceration without offering proper treatment.

WCCO Investigates Minnesota’s Sex Offender Program

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4-22-15 Minnesota:

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – For more than two decades, Minnesota’s most dangerous sex offenders have been locked up a second time after serving prison sentences.

They’ve been committed to indefinite detention in treatment programs after parole.

But now, more than 700-sex offenders are suing the state saying that’s unconstitutional.

A WCCO investigation found that Minnesota taxpayers have spent $2 billion on a sex offender program that critics, and the offenders themselves, say is a waste of money.

The investigation also found repeated warnings that could have saved taxpayers millions were ignored, and that when a top administrator tried to cut costs his efforts were rejected.

Kevin Nelson is a civilly committed sex offender.

WCCO interviewed him at the state’s Moose Lake sex offender treatment center where he has been held in a maximum security facility for seven years. He spoke about his offense.

How Do Our Neighboring States Handle Sex Offenders?

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3-2-15 Minnesota:

For more than two decades, Minnesota’s most dangerous sex offenders have been locked up a second time after serving prison sentences. They’ve been committed to indefinite detention in treatment programs.

Now, more than 700 sex offenders are suing the state saying that’s unconstitutional.

So we wondered: How do our neighboring states handle sex offenders? Do they get out? And what happens when they do?

Seven-hundred-and-nine of Minnesota’s worst sex offenders call Moose Lake or St. Peter’s treatment programs home.

Two have been granted provisional release in the civil commitment program’s 20-year history.

But when WCCO checked neighboring states, we found big differences in how they deal with their most dangerous sex offenders.

Facility holds sex offenders who've served their time

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2-22-15 Virginia:

CHESAPEAKE

Rodney Bernard Jones has a history of grabbing young women's buttocks.

A clinical psychologist said the 52-year-old felon has a mental disorder that makes it difficult to control his predatory behavior and "makes him likely to engage in sexually violent acts," according to court documents.

After nearly 15 years in prison for sex assault, Jones was scheduled to be released April 1.

But the state attorney general wants him to be civilly committed to a state facility that houses sexually violent predators after they've served their time.

Once again, Jones must go before a judge or jury who will decide his fate.

Each year, an average of 132 inmates like Jones are evaluated for potential commitment. Of the cases the attorney general brings before the court, an estimated 90 percent end up being admitted to the state facility in central Virginia, according to state figures.

The Virginia Center for Behavioral Rehabilitation in Nottoway County houses 367 residents who are considered likely to re-offend and therefore unfit to re-enter society.

Trial may bring changes to sex offender program

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2-9-2015 Minnesota:

A federal court trial starting today could decide the future of the state's controversial sex offender treatment program.

More than 700 civilly committed sex offenders are suing the state claiming it's unconstitutional to keep them locked up indefinitely and that they don't get adequate treatment from the program run by the Minnesota Department of Human Services.

Most were court-ordered to receive sex offender treatment after they finished their prison sentences — a process called civil commitment. Offenders are confined to one of two treatment facilities in Moose Lake or St. Peter. The system was set up in the 1990s when current civil commitment laws went into effect. But it's been under fire for rarely letting anyone out until recently.

The program's been politically charged for years. There's no consensus among Minnesota lawmakers on how to fix it through legislation. With the federal suit pending, some in the Capitol want to let the case play out in court.

The Legislature should not act to change the sex offender treatment program until the judge decides the lawsuit, said state Rep. Tony Cornish, R-Vernon Center.

"If he does rule this unconstitutional, I would ask the attorney general to immediately appeal it to a higher, more conservative court and to have the system keep in place until we can fix it," Cornish said.


The program held 703 people as of Oct. 1. The cost per day per client is $341, according to the Department of Human Services. That amounts to more than $124,000 a year to house and treat each offender.

While the state calls it a treatment facility and refers to offenders as "clients," many of the buildings at Moose Lake look and feel more like a prison.

Judge sides with Minnesota sex offenders

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2-6-2015 Minnesota:

The class-action lawsuit featuring more than 700 civilly committed sex offenders, many from Moose Lake, will go to trial in a St. Paul courtroom beginning Monday after a judge denied the state and its defendants a summary judgment earlier this week.

In his ruling filed Monday, U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank scolded the state’s legislative and executive branches for having “let politics, rather than the rule of law and the rights of ‘all’ of their citizens, guide their decisions.”

In 2011, residents within the Minnesota Sex Offender Programs in Moose Lake and St. Peter filed a complaint in U.S. District Court alleging confinement that violated their civil rights and was unconstitutional for the way their treatment rarely, if ever, resulted in release to environments that were less restrictive than the secure, razor-wire confines of the two state facilities.

The federal trial will address a system that has overseen three people released in 20 years. Meanwhile, Frank cited the number of civilly committed sex offenders having risen from 30 in 1990 — four years before the start of the current MSOP program — to 721. Frank projected that number to reach 1,215 by 2022 in his 43-page written ruling.

Some CCUSO patients return to communities

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1-12-2015 Iowa:

Both the commitment process for patients at the Civil Commitment Unit for Sexual Offenders (CCUSO) at the Mental Health Institute campus in Cherokee and the release process are court directed, according to Amy McCoy, public information officer for the Iowa Department of Human Services.

Only a fraction of the inmates committed to CCUSO since the program started in 1998 have been granted supervised release to communities where they came from or other communities where they have found employment.

Anyone committed to CCUSO has completed a prison term for a predatory sexual felony and then in a separate legal proceeding, been committed to the CCUSO unit as at high risk to re-offend. There are currently six individuals released from the facility in Cherokee, the only CCUSO unit in the state. All have supervision and all remain on a sex offender watch list maintained by the state.

Sex offenders are at the threshold

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1-2-2015 Iowa:

17 years after a law allowed Iowa to commit people who already served jail time, doors are starting to open

DES MOINES, Iowa – Iowa’s 1998 law allowing convicted sex offenders to be civilly committed for treatment and rehabilitation after completing their prison terms has opened the door for six men to graduate from the program and be released under court-approved supervision in Iowa communities.

Another 14 patients being housed in the Civil Commitment Unit for Sexual Offenders, or CCUSO, at the Cherokee Mental Health Institute in northwest Iowa are in transitional release phases of the highly structured inpatient treatment program for violent sexual predators that have served their prison sentences but in a separate civil trial were found likely to commit further sex offenses.

CCUSO patients are receiving secure treatment services from Iowa Department of Human Services staff, but are supervised upon their court-sanctioned discharge by the state Department of Corrections, which contracts with community-based professionals in the state’s judicial districts. In the various court-ordered releases, Iowa judges found that the state did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the six committed men should not be discharged under provisions of DHS release plans, but in one case over-ruled a constitutionally based objection to any level of supervision.

Addressing concerns

State corrections director John Baldwin said all agencies are complying with current law to maximize public safety, but some concerns have arisen as CCUSO patients released from involuntary civil commitment who are no longer on offender status locate in smaller communities that don’t have the treatment resources and law enforcement capabilities to track activities covered under release plans that are available in larger cities.

Civil confinement program's numbers grow

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9-2-2014 New York:

With plans for expanded housing, the state's program for civilly committed sex offenders has seen a spike in the number of newly confined offenders.

Meanwhile, the program's budget has swelled.

Now in its seventh year, the program, designed for those considered the most dangerous sex offenders, is experiencing some of the growth that critics predicted at the program's outset. Other states with decades of experience with similar programs had seen the budgets explode because of the costly psychiatric treatment for offenders and the fact that very few are released for years.

An examination of recent reports from state agencies, coupled with information provided by state officials, shows that:

• The Office of Mental Health, or OMH, budget for civil commitment has grown 45 percent in the past three years — from $44 million to $64 million.

• Between November 2012 and October 2013 — the months highlighted in a recently released OMH report — the number of state prisoners deemed eligible for the civil commitment program was more than twice that in recent years.

• While OMH psychologists had judged fewer than 4.5 percent of the eligible pool of inmates fitting for the civil commitment program in the previous four years, almost 7 percent were referred for the program in the year covered in the recent report.

Former Gov. Eliot Spitzer and the legislature created the program in 2007. Before their release from prison, sex offenders are evaluated by mental health specialists to determine whether they have a "mental abnormality" that makes them likely to commit new sex crimes.

Minnesota Sex Offender Program Establishes Cost of Care Rate as of July 1, 2014

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7-9-2014 Minnesota:

The Department of Human Services Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP) calculates a per diem charge for cost of care for each fiscal year (July 1 through June 30). This rate is the sum of all projected costs divided by the projected client days. This rate is an average of all services provided to clients by MSOP.

Effective July 1, 2014 the charge for the Minnesota Sex Offender Program shall be $341
per day.

The cost of care rate applies to any person admitted to MSOP, including hold orders and
emergency admissions under Minnesota Statutes, section 253B.05., subdivisions. 1 and 2
and Minnesota Statutes, section 253B.045. (PDF)

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Tough thing, isn't it, this 'due process'?

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2-3-2014 Minnesota:

Particularly when it comes to sex offenders who’ve served their time.

This month a federal judge may issue a long-awaited ruling on the constitutionality of the Minnesota Sex Offender Program. Along with national controversies over vast government surveillance programs, MSOP’s troubles raise a basic question that we should occasionally challenge ourselves to answer:

Why should Americans respect constitutional rights that get in the way of government keeping us safe?

First, some background, courtesy of Gov. Mark Dayton:

Two months ago, Dayton released a remarkable document — a letter to Department of Human Services Commissioner Lucinda Jesson that told the MSOP story with almost embarrassing candor.

“[F]or many years,” the governor wrote, Minnesota “has kept its most serious criminal sexual offenders locked away with virtually no chance of release.” And like “most Minnesotans,” Dayton added, he is just fine with that.

“As Governor, however,” he went on, almost with a note of regret, “I am responsible to carry out the laws … .” And the laws, he explained, say that offenders are eligible for release once they have served the prison sentences required at the time of their convictions — even under the “weaker laws” that applied to sex offenders years ago.