By Elizabeth Hillgrove
Four years after the General Assembly toughened its laws in regards to sexually violent predators, the state is having a tough time dealing with the number of them in jail. And most aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
The Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services (DBHDS) Commissioner James Stewart, III presented a report to the Senate Finance Committee last month, requesting more money to cover expenses for its growing detained population of "sexually violent predators," or SVPs.
The Virginia Center for Behavioral Rehabilitation (VCBR) in Nottoway County and the SVP program spends roughly $91,000 for each of the 200 beds in Fiscal Year 2010. Stewart says the cost is high because the program has been in developmental stages.
The DBHDS has been in charge of individuals deemed SVP since 1998, when the General Assembly set up a system of screening sexual offenders that cloisters off the criminally dangerous ones just before they finished their sentences in prison. The General Assembly gave it legs in 2003 when it granted funding to the program.
Because Virginia is a civil commitment state, sexual offenders in their final 10 months of prison are evaluated and processed by committees in DBHDS.
"Cases recommended for SVP civil commitment by the Commitment Review Committee are tried in the Circuit Court and may be released, granted SVP conditional release, or civilly committed to VCBR," said DBHDS spokeswoman Meghan McGuire via email.
Civil commitment is the policy keeping sexually violent predators under the state's eye.
"In states that have civil commitment, you can't keep those individuals in prison after their release date, it's unconstitutional," said Indiana Sex Offender Management and Monitoring Program (SOMM) program director Adam Deming. "You've got to classify them as a detainee or a civilly committed individual under statute because they were given a sentence at the time sentencing of their crime, so to keep them in the Department of Correction would be against the law."
Former Florida SVP program director Deming oversees the process in Indiana, a non-civil commitment state. Sexually violent predators in Indiana are classified before they serve time, but they don't feel the effects of that until after their release.
"When they are released from the department of corrections back into the community there are different supervision laws and registration laws that apply to them, such as life time parole, the requirement that they comply with GPS monitoring and life time registration, for example, as a sexually violent predator," said Deming.
Indiana monitors sexually violent predators after release and has a 1 percent re-offense rate. Virginia cannot keep sexually violent predators under the department of corrections after they have served their sentence, so the DBHDS can sometimes keep them as detainees.
After the General Assembly directed DBHDS to build and operate a secure facility for these people in 2003, the department could only fill a few beds in a 48 bed, temporary section of the Southside Virginia Training Center deemed the VCBR.
In 2006, the General Assembly added more traits and offenses to the definition of a sexually violent predator, increasing the eligibility by 350 percent and causing the number of filled beds to rise steeply. The VCBR moved to a new $62 million facility in Nottoway County, where it now houses 300 beds and about 200 sexually violent predators.
Under the original list of qualifying crimes, the facility projected they would bring in one admission per month. Now they project 5 new additions per month and they brought in 10 in May 2010.
As the numbers increase, there is little relief in the form of released offenders.
The DBHDS has released about 20 predators since the 1998 distinction, several of whom have failed and returned to the facility, McGuire estimates. Two have re-offended, one caught in the prelude to a rape and the other caught with a camera snapping photos from under a partition in a woman's dressing room.
"In the General Assembly, we love to make these policy decisions that are reactive, sometimes without regard to the fiscal impact, but we are not making it any easier to locate these people in the community with laws that we continue to pass," said Sen. Tom Norment (R-York) at the meeting. "I'm not sure if we as a legislative body have reflected on the incidental costs of that as we tighten up the ability to place them in the community."
Stewart said studies and experiences show there are "very few people who are successful" at rehabilitating back into society. There has been some promise for success in Indiana, he said.
"These people have typically burned most of their social bridges, so they don't have family or friends who support them," said Director of Sex Offender Services Steven Wolf. "We tend, because we use a community containment model in Virginia, we tend to catch people on these technical violations, that's our trip wire, long before they become sexual violations."
The DBHDS foresees a new building for these predators in the next decade, as beds are filling fast and the department does not foresee a plateau or a decrease in SVP candidates, McGuire said in an email.
"Even if you had the revenue stream to go forward with those bonds next year, it's still going to be 5 years before you get it done," said Sen. John Watkins (R-Midlothian).
Watkins sits on the Senate finance committee, but not the public safety subcommittee. He doesn't think this program is sustainable, considering the budget issues the state is facing.
"Everybody wants you to downsize government, but everybody wants you to take in more prisoners and have more sophisticated, high cost programs to oversee them," said Watkins.
Commissioner Stewart was not available by phone.
