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Virginia and Maryland differ drastically in their handling of sexual predators they fear will strike again once they get out of prison.
Virginia shells out $90,000 a year for each of the nearly 300 predators it confines indefinitely in a civil commitment program after those predators are released from prison, nearly eight times what it would cost to enroll those individuals at the University of Virginia.
Maryland, meanwhile, releases sexual predators into the community after they serve their prison terms and monitors them at a fraction of the cost Virginia pays.
Virginia’s Civil Commitment of Sexually Violent Predators program, designed to hold and treat high-risk sex offenders, cost taxpayers $24.5 million in 2011 to keep 270 inmates at the Virginia Center for Behavioral Rehabilitation. Unlike a prison, which costs $24,000 per inmate, individuals in the civil commitment program must undergo psychiatric treatment by the facility’s medical staff.
But that civil commitment program in Nottoway County is expected to reach capacity just five years after it opened. And a recent state audit found that there have been problems in determining which predators should be confined there. Offenders who openly expressed concerns that they would commit additional crimes were turned away while patients who pose little risk to the community were committed, the audit found.
Seventy-eight predators were released from the Nottoway facility since 2003 and three of them were charged with new sex crimes after their release, the audit found.
Maryland has no civil commitment facility. Instead, violent sexual predators register their address with local law enforcement for life. The program costs the state about $1,100 for each predator. Maryland doesn’t track how many of the freed sex offenders commit new crimes because it doesn’t happen often enough to study, said David Wolinski, assistant director with the state Criminal Justice Information System. The Justice Department says 5.3 percent of released sex offenders will commit another crime within three years. Other studies show that 10 percent to 20 percent of predators will strike again three to six years after their release.
Virginia studied seven of the 20 states that have civil commitment programs and found that up to 5 percent of predators commit new crimes after their release. Virginia keeps predators in the civil commitment program an average of five years, though some could remain for life.
In Maryland, where sex offenders must register, officials hope public awareness will help prevent predators from striking again, Wolinski said.
“[The sex offender registry] is not to stop people from committing more crimes, it’s a tool for the public to protect themselves and their family,” Wolinski said.
Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a former state attorney general, is pushing to expand the civil commitment program by building a second, $43.5 million psychiatric facility. The existing civil program, which boasts a 5-to-4 staff-to-patient ratio, could reach capacity by 2016 if inmates double up in rooms. McDonnell expressed interest in turning the facility over to a private contractor, a move that allowed Florida to triple the number of inmates it confines for the same cost.
“We don’t want to judge what other states have done,” said Keith Hare, deputy secretary for the Virginia Department of Health and Human Services, “but from a Virginia point of view we feel like what this program does is provide adequate protection to citizens.”
