Virginia struggle with costs of sex offender civil commitment
Virginia launched its program to keep sexual predators locked up once their prison sentences ended after learning that a serial child rapist who had kidnapped and brutalized a boy and then buried him alive might go free.
Now, nearly a decade later, state legislators are struggling with the escalating cost of the program that has kept hundreds of dangerous felons detained at the same time the state is facing growing needs in education, health care and transportation.
As of January, 252 sexual offenders had been indefinitely committed, costing taxpayers more than $100,000 per felon every year. That population is expected to more than double within five years, causing even the program’s biggest supporters to question whether the state can afford to keep so many sexual predators locked up for so long….
Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) has proposed spending nearly $70 million over the next two years to temporarily house an overflow of sexual predators at a Petersburg facility while renovating a mothball prison in Southside Virginia. But legislators in his party are balking at the cost.
The Republican-controlled House of Delegates stripped most of the money out of the state budget, proposing instead that Virginia double bunk some offenders and ship others out of state. The Democratic-led Senate is backing the governor’s plan. It is one of the biggest budget issues dividing the two chambers in the final days of Virginia’s annual legislative session, which is scheduled to end Saturday….
Other states with commitment programs require that offenders have exhibited a pattern of sexually dangerous behavior before being committed, such as through multiple convictions, but in Virginia it only takes a single crime. A committee of corrections and mental health officials recommends candidates for commitment, and a judge makes the determination…. Those committed are held indefinitely, subject to annual reviews by doctors. Since the program began, 11 have been released.
Opponents say civil commitment programs – now in 20 states – could be used to keep violent criminals behind bars forever. “Certainly society has the right to protect themselves,” said Fred Berlin, founder of the Johns Hopkins Sexual Disorders Clinic. “But I hope this is not a ruse, under the pretense of treatment, for permanent detention.”
Virginia has expanded the crimes eligible for civil commitment from four to 28, and the number of offenders admitted to the program has soared, from one a month, to six to eight a month. The cost is expected to hit $32 million next year – more than 10 times what it was eight years ago. And it’s still not enough. The 300-bed Burkeville facility built in 2008 will be full by this summer.