FL- What we think: Keep eye on sex predators

6-20-2009 Florida:

In a high-profile (civil commitment) court case last month in Sanford, a man held since 2001 at the state mental hospital for violent sex offenders was released into the community — without any provision for further treatment or law-enforcement monitoring.

It's a scene that plays out over and over again for other violent sex offenders in Florida courts, despite a higher risk they'll just do it again without specialized supervision.

At least 16 other states that keep violent sex offenders -civilly committed- after their sentences expire routinely require them to submit to treatment and monitoring upon their release. Florida usually doesn't, unless the offenders still have some probation time left over from their original criminal sentences.

This policy threatens public safety and wastes public dollars.

The national Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers has warned that sex offenders are more likely to relapse when they are released into the community without programs specially designed to treat and monitor them. The state official responsible for overseeing the hospital for violent sex offenders in Arcadia also acknowledges that "continuing treatment is an important part of staying well." Other experts in Florida have been pleading for such programs for years.

State legislators have balked, in part because of the cost of funding mandatory community supervision for sex offenders. However, the state could save far more than it spends if the programs allow more offenders to be safely released from the hospital in Arcadia.

The annual cost per resident at the hospital tops $35,000, many times the cost of community-based programs. And released offenders who work can be required to repay their supervision costs.

Legislators created the state system for holding violent sex offenders in 1998 by unanimously passing the Jimmy Ryce Act. The law was named after a 9-year-old boy from Miami-Dade County who was sexually abused and murdered. From the start, legislators showed far more interest in moving offenders into the system than in moving them out.

In 2001, legislators spurned a request from DCF for $970,000 to start treating sex offenders and tracking them with satellite technology after their release from Arcadia. This cost was peanuts, matched against the hospital's current budget of more than $25 million a year, and considering the public-safety benefits of post-release treatment and monitoring.

In last month's case in Sanford, 26-year-old Kareem Merthie had been locked up for nine years for raping boys in his father's church. After pleading no contest to abusing two boys in 1999, he served two years in juvenile detention. He was then sent to the hospital in Arcadia, where he confessed to abusing 20 children. He completed a lengthy treatment program there.

A mental-health expert reported in March that he thought Mr. Merthie remained a danger to reoffend despite the treatment. However, two other experts testified at last month's hearing that there was no longer a legal basis to keep him confined. Circuit Judge O.H. Eaton then ordered Mr. Merthie's release.

Six months earlier, another mental-health expert testified that it would not be safe to release Mr. Merthie without community supervision. The expert, Ted Shaw, has spent decades evaluating sex offenders. He argues compellingly that treatment behind the walls at Arcadia doesn't necessarily prepare an offender to behave responsibly on the other side.

State legislators might claim they're tough on violent sex offenders by locking them up. But legislators aren't really protecting the public if they won't do more to deal with those offenders after they get out. ..Source.. by Orlando Sentinel.com