Grisly attack on 9-year-old sparked Florida's effort

6-27-2010 Florida:

Jimmy Ryce, a 9-year-old from a nice neighborhood in Miami-Dade County, was walking home from his school bus stop in September 1995 when a truck blocked the sidewalk. A man took out a gun and forced Jimmy to go with him.

Jimmy was raped, beaten and fatally shot when he tried to escape. Handyman Juan Carlos Chavez confessed, was convicted in 1998 and was sentenced to death.

Friends and family remember Jimmy Ryce as a budding artist and a kid who loved baseball. But he'll also be remembered for the Jimmy Ryce Act, Florida's civil commitment law named for the youngster and passed in 1998.

The law allows civil confinement of "sexually violent predators," after their sentences have been served, at a secure facility where they can receive treatment until they are deemed to no longer be a threat to society. The law applies only to people who have been convicted of a sexually violent crime.

The Ryce Act works like this, according to the Department of Children and Families, which runs Florida's Sexually Violent Predator Program: When the prison term of someone who committed a sexual crime is nearing completion, DCF reviews the case. After interviews with mental health professionals, eligible prisoners are recommended for civil commitment. This requires the offender to be declared - at a civil trial or by voluntarily entering the program - a sexually violent predator likely to re-offend.

Such predators are housed at the year-old Florida Civil Commitment Center in Arcadia, a five-acre $6 million facility that replaced the former center, a prison in rural DeSoto County, in 2009. GEO Care Inc. has contracted with the Department of Children and Families since 2006 to operate the center, the company's website shows.

As of June 22, there were 673 residents at the center, according to Suzonne M. Kline, director of DCF's Sexually Violent Predator Program, who responded by e-mail to questions from The Times-Union.

As in other such centers in the nation, the population of Florida's committed sexual predators has grown. At the end of fiscal year 2004-05, there were 491 residents. In five years, that number has grown by 182. With the new facility, capacity increased from 660 beds to 720, GEO Care notes.

And also like other centers, the cost is high. DCF pays $25,464,372 annually to GEO Care to run the facility, Kline said. The cost per resident per year is $36,890.55, not quite double what it costs to incarcerate an average inmate at one of Florida's prisons, according to the state Department of Corrections.

With the state budget in crisis, some question whether this is money well-spent. Others think such programs are critical to protect children.

Rep. Charles McBurney, R-Jacksonville, and vice chairman of the Criminal and Civil Justice Appropriations Committee, said any drive for efficiency has to be viewed in the prism of what the programs might prevent.

"From my experience, recidivism can end up being more costly, and that's not just monetary," said McBurney, a former prosecutor. "The impact of crime doesn't stop with a dollar sign, particularly with those crimes."

Rep. Lake Ray, R-Jacksonville, said the state should consider the value of the programs and make sure it's "not creating something that becomes, if you will, a prisoner welfare state."

He said how well the center works should be considered, particularly if offenders end up being released anyway.

"If there's not much of a success rate, then I'm not sure that we need to continue spending money on that," Ray said.

At least the graduation rate has improved greatly since The Times-Union reported in April 2005 that no residents had been released since the center opened in 1999 because the four-stage treatment program had no fourth stage and the third stage was incomplete.

Kline reports that 31 committed residents have been released by the court in the final phase of treatment, with 18 recommended by the program as having achieved maximum therapeutic benefit. ..Source.. Carole Fader