12-26-2010 Washington:
MCNEIL ISLAND
The picture on William Deaville’s purple photo badge shows a younger man with amber hair, a glimpse into the past of the now-grayed 44-year-old who’s lived in secure confinement for 21 years.
Deaville has been on McNeil Island in south Puget Sound since the state opened the Special Commitment Center (SCC), an indefinite holding facility for those found to meet the statutory definition of a “sexually violent predator.” The Bremerton man, like the other 280 residents there, served his time for a sex crime — in his case sexually abusing boys — in state prison. But when he was about to get out, the state attorney general’s office filed paperwork in Kitsap County Superior Court to have him committed indefinitely.
He keeps himself busy with therapy, group sessions, playing video games and gardening.
Deaville was homeless before he went to prison. But he has the potential to go where only a small percentage of the commitment center’s residents have ever gone: to an “LRA” or “less restrictive alternative,” which ultimately means reintegration into society. Such a transition would happen slowly and with around-the-clock monitoring at a facility in Pierce or King County.
He said he’s confronted his sexual deviancy, and staff members at the center have been pleased with the results.
“If you deal with it, you’ll get the help you need,” he said.
The $60 million facility, spread out on five acres on pastoral McNeil Island, has three “program areas.” The most restrictive is a prisonlike pod. The least is a dormitory-style home where residents can come and go, though they’re confined inside the center’s perimeter.
There’s a recreation room, basketball court, yard, pool hall, weight room, barber shop, library, and arts and crafts room for residents. There’s also a groomed lawn with many religious symbols, including a Wiccan Prayer Circle. The facility also has a Native American traditional sweat lodge.
“If they can think it, we have to provide it,” said Dan Gauntz, chief operations officer at the SCC.
Because they’re not prisoners, the residents have access to more freedoms: nonmonitored phone calls, cigarettes, video games (though none with mature themes). They wear their own clothes. There’s no uniforms, though they must always wear the purple badge with their picture and name.
Violence is relatively low, with just a few serious assaults over the course of the center’s history, according to staff. Those who commit them are prosecuted in Pierce County courts. More common are lewd sexual acts, such as public masturbation.
TO CONFINE OR TREAT
Almost all of the facility’s residents are men. One woman has been committed to the center, and she is from Bremerton. They come from all walks of life. There are former marketing executives, military leaders, and homeless people. “Residents” — they’re not called inmates — are as young as 20 and as old as 80.
Washington’s civil commitment process, established along with sex-offender registration and community notification in 1990, was the pioneer in the nation, and numerous states have copied it.
The courts, both at the federal and at the state level, have ruled that while indefinite commitments are constitutional, the residents confined in them must receive expensive mental health treatment and be allowed to “graduate” to less restrictive environments, including to outright release.
The staff believes it’s a place for treatment. But like its counterparts nationwide, the commitment center suffers from an identity crisis: is it truly a place where the sexually deviant can be helped, or is it an expensive holding tank for the state’s worst sex offenders?
Critics come from different corners.
State Sen. Tim Sheldon, D-Potlatch, said the facility exists for the worst of the worst — and that the state should do as little as is mandated but ensure they remain locked up.
“I personally don’t believe that treatment does much. They are supreme con men,” he said. “They can convince people of a lot of things.”
On the opposite end of the spectrum is Rep. Sherry Appleton, D-Poulsbo. She doesn’t believe the facility is constitutional. If an offender’s crime is heinous enough, he or she should be sentenced harshly, she said — but not given a sentence in which they do their time and then are reprosecuted for an offense they might commit in the future.
“The sentence is in perpetuity,” she said.
It costs about $177,000 a year to house each resident at the center, which adds up to about $48 million a year for all those committed. It costs $34,000 a year to house an inmate in a state prison.
Other costs include the roughly $350,000 to put a case before a jury and commit them there, according to the state’s Department of Social and Health Services. Each resident is also entitled to an annual review of their confinement.
State Attorney General Rob McKenna acknowledges that it’s expensive, but he says the center is “highly effective.” Given that many sex abuse victims never disclose the abuse to authorities, McKenna sees an even greater need for the facility. He says that those confined are likely to have many more victims than they were convicted for.
Regardless of how stark the budget outlook is for the state, McKenna insists the center must be prioritized and continue.
“It’s so important given the high likelihood of these individuals to reoffend,” he said.
McKenna points to statistics to make the case. In 2005 and 2006, his office filed for the civil commitment of 42 offenders, whose collective abuse created 370 victims. The average age of the victims was 12.
He also cites a 1998 study by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy that tracked 61 adult offenders who were recommended for the McNeil Island facility from 1990 to 1996. But prosecutors in those cases didn’t believe the need for civil commitment could be proven at trial. McKenna said that of those offenders, more than half were re-arrested in those years — 28 percent for new sex offenses.
McKenna said that only a small percentage of the approximately 1,000 sex offenders released from prison each year — between 1.5 percent and 3 percent — are recommended by the attorney general’s office for civil commitment.
CHANGING IF THEY WANT TO
Part of the expense of the facility comes from the ferry it takes to get there. In 2011, the neighboring McNeil Island Corrections Center will close, further driving up costs. Department of Corrections staff, which run the ferry and provide security, will all be gone. So will inmate labor. That will leave a $2.3 million bill each year for the Department of Social and Health Services, which runs the Special Commitment Center.
Moving it does not seem to be a possibility, according to some.
“Can you imagine the problem of putting it in a neighborhood someplace?” said state Rep. Larry Seaquist, D-Gig Harbor.
Cathi Harris, associate superintendent of the SCC, once questioned the constitutionality of such a commitment center. But she said she saw that predators who wanted help could change.
“This is a group of individuals thrown away by society,” she said. “I don’t believe in warehousing people. I believe in providing people the resources they need to change if they want to.”
Laura McCollum, the center’s sole female resident, is a former Bremerton woman who admits to sexually abusing more than 15 children, both girls and boys. She was convicted of child rape in Pierce County.
She herself was molested, but she said she’s not making excuses.
“You did it because you wanted to,” she said.
Like the other residents interviewed for this story, she believes the treatment is giving her tools, including forming a “relapse plan,” so she won’t reoffend.
“I’ve learned things to help keep me safe when I’m out in the community,” she said. “I don’t want to die in here.”
Deaville and McCollum are actually in the minority on the island. They are part of the 36 percent that have bought into the program and the treatment.
The other 64 percent refuse treatment, and many feel their only avenue is release by the courts — a path that has been successful for about 14 men in the facility’s history, according to DSHS.
“This is a prison!” a few residents grumbled during a recent media tour of the grounds.
There are residents who will stay for the rest of their lives.
Treatment of any sort requires the residents to admit they have a problem. While some residents may be willing to disclose their transgressions, they’re skeptical of how that information is used, said John Cross, a lawyer who represents SCC residents.
“What most of these guys have realized is that nothing is confidential,” he said. “They’re being cast with being transparent, saying every bad thing they’ve ever done in their lives. But a great many of them recognize this is evidence-gathering by the opposition.”
PREDATORS BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT
Deaville, like most residents at the commitment center, had done his time for sex-abuse crimes and was about to be released from prison when he received a notice from the state attorney general’s office.
In the years that followed, lawyers built the case that Deaville fit the definition, created by the community protection act, of a “sexually violent predator.”
A jury indeed found that Deaville, convicted of numerous sex acts with children, met three legal requirements for his indefinite confinement on McNeil Island:
—He’d been convicted of a crime of sexual violence (and in may cases the victims from those cases are called to testify);
—He suffered from “a mental abnormality or personality disorder which causes serious difficulty in controlling his sexually violent behavior”;
—Such an abnormality or disorder made him “likely to engage in predatory acts of sexual violence if not confined to a secure facility.”
Cross takes issue with the fact that residents are found to be sexually violent predators beyond a reasonable doubt. He said that psychologists and psychiatrists — the expert witnesses that sway jurors to or away from a commitment at McNeil Island — often develop a “working hypothesis” that might find a potential resident to be a pedophile or have an anti-social disorder. Problem is, the same doctor could develop an entirely different hypothesis later.
“There is nothing true beyond a reasonable doubt,” Cross said of the cases. “They just don’t know enough about us (as human beings) yet to make these broad decisions.”
Justin Mackey, a 30-year-old resident from Walla Walla, said he believes in the treatment process and hopes he can be successful enough to one day leave the island. He’s admitted to having more than 15 victims.
“I’m a sex offender. There’s no denying that,” he said.
Still, he does question the court process that claims he has a scientific disorder.
“Who’s to say I have a predisposed mental condition, beyond a reasonable doubt?” he wondered.
Port Orchard lawyer David Lacross, who represents some SCC residents, said he believes that flipping a coin would be just as accurate as trying to predict a resident reoffending. And attempting to do so means locking people up.
“These are people that society is not going to have a lot of sympathy for,” Lacross argues. “But they were tried, convicted and sentenced. And we’re talking about predicting what somebody’s going to do in the future.”
All of the controversy will diminish as fewer convicts are committed, predicts David Boerner, a member of the task force that drafted what would become the state’s community protection act.
Boerner said the creation of “determinate-plus sentencing” for certain sex offenders in the early 2000s will whittle the number of potential civil commitment candidates.
Certain sex offenders receive a minimum sentence. When their sentence is up, they go before the Indeterminate Sentence Review Board, whose members are appointed by the governor. The board has the power to hold indefinitely offenders it believes are more likely than not to reoffend.
Only offenders sentenced to the most serious sex crimes are subject to the board.
The SCC will remain for criminals who fail to meet the criteria for determinate-plus sentencing but who still meet the criteria for sexually violent predator.
Deaville thinks he has a shot to get out, and has been approved to join just 14 others permitted outside the barbed wire to a more transitional-style housing.
He thinks that he has the tools to survive on the outside.
Should he feel the urge to reoffend, he has support staff he can call. And while he was in denial when he arrived, he said he’s changed his thinking. “If you don’t try to get it (the illness) out, you’re going to make it worse.” ..Source.. Josh Farley
December 26, 2010
Confining State's Sex Predators: Is It Still a Cost-Effective Solution?
July 8, 2010
King County sex predator released from state center after 20 years
7-6-2010 Washington:
A 70-year-old county rapist facing indefinite commitment at a state-run center housing sexual predators will be released.
When he was moved out of Department of Social and Health Services custody later Wednesday, Andre B. Young became the third King County offender to be released from the Special Commitment Center program based on McNeil Island.
The program was created in 1990 to keep a small number of sex offenders who'd completed their prison terms from returning to society. Those held at the center have been deemed to be violent sexual predators due to a mental defect, and can be detained their indefinitely following a civil trial.
Young, a six-time convicted rapist, was committed shortly after the program was launched and has remained under Department of Social and Health Services supervision since, according to a King County Prosecutor's Office statement issued Wednesday. He's been fighting his detention since; Young was among a first group of offenders to challenge the constitutionality of the civil commitment law in federal court.
Prosecutors were preparing to oppose Young's request for release -- what would have prompted his third trial in the matter -- but dropped the effort over concerns that it would prove difficult to show the elderly man was likely to commit a violent sexual offense if released. According to the Prosecutor's Office statement, three experts, including two employed by the state, found that Young no longer could be deemed likely to re-offend.
As part of the agreed order endorsed by prosecutors and Young's attorneys, Young will be released with a number of restrictions on his behavior, including a prohibition against possessing a "rape kit" or pornography. He's also required to register as a sex offender with Pierce County authorities after moving to a Tacoma home.
In a statement Wednesday, King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg described the dismissal as an example of how the law was intended to work.
"This law provides treatment for sex offenders within a secure setting that protects the public," Satterberg said.
"The detention is based on a medical model and is supposed to last until the subject is no longer considered likely to re-offend," he added.
Since its inception, the civil commitment program has drawn fire from the defense bar and civil liberties advocates, who've contended the center served as a prison by another name.
Speaking earlier this year, Pete MacDonald, a public defender representing 13 center residents, argued that the Special Commitment Center does not deliver the rehabilitation promised.
"It's a de facto warehouse, regardless of what the intention is," said MacDonald, an attorney with The Defender Association.
"People probably don't care about this," he continued, "but this is a civil liberties issue."
Four years into the effort, offenders housed at the facility filed a federal lawsuit that prompted an $11 million fine -- later dismissed -- and federal court oversight of the facility. Thirteen years passed before an order by U.S. District Court Judge Ricardo S. Martinez ended that oversight after the judge found the Special Commitment Center was providing the treatment required under law and a path out for offenders.
"This case is most troublesome to the court in that there seems to be no right answer, and no good fix for the situation these plaintiffs face," Martinez said in his ruling. "The court can do its best to ensure adequate treatment and facilities, but ultimately must succumb to the limitations of the law."
Prosecutors note that approximately one percent of sex offenders being released into the community are detained under the state's civil commitment law.
Approximately 290 sexually violent predators are currently detained at the Special Commitment Center. At least four have been released into the community, and more than a dozen others are living off the island either in halfway houses or private homes under state supervision. ..Source.. Levi Pulkkinen
June 1, 2010
Future uncertain at McNeil
6-1-2010 Washington:
prison: Downsizing also affects workers who reside on island
As prisoners are moved off McNeil Island by the hundreds, the island’s tiny group of voluntary residents also awaits an exodus.
Forty of McNeil Island Corrections Center’s employees and their families live on the island, in state-subsidized housing that lets them avoid a daily ferry ride from Steilacoom.
Over the years, residents have built a community and sent their youngest children to the island’s one-room schoolhouse. They are inconvenienced by isolation but treated to spectacular Puget Sound views.
“We don’t have stores. We don’t have amenities for families. It’s difficult for teenagers to live out here,” said Cheryl Jorban, a volunteer coordinator at the prison, “but it is a nice place to live, a beautiful place, and I will miss living out here.”
The state plans to empty the homes by March, just part of the disruption of lives following the Legislature’s decision this year to cut the prison’s population by 80 percent.
Jorban is one of many workers – and inmates – unsure where they’ll go next.
The future is uncertain, too, for the former federal penitentiary whose 135-year history predates Washington’s statehood.
INMATES
McNeil held 1,292 prisoners as recently as December, but just 880 last Thursday. The Department of Corrections has closed one unit and plans a second closure this month.
In March, the prison is due to shrink to the 256 inmates required by this year’s state budget, a shadow of its former self.
Tyree Jones hopes to spend the last four years of his sentence at Stafford Creek Corrections Center in Aberdeen – not in Eastern Washington, where others have gone.
It’s prison, so it’s no picnic wherever you are, but at least at McNeil, Jones can see his 10- and 12-year-old sons from Tacoma. At McNeil, he could look forward to an upcoming father-son event in which kids would be allowed in the prison yard for bike-riding and hamburger-eating with Dad.
“Sending guys like me over the mountain, away from that activity” doesn’t make sense, Jones said Thursday as he sat for a haircut in a common area below the cells. “Just that little bit of stuff right there make a guy stay balanced.
“Man, when a guy can’t be around his family or his kids or something like that, he might kind of snap a little bit.”
WORKERS
The downsizing means the loss of hundreds of jobs.
McNeil will cut its 490 employees down to 136, said Sheri Poteet, associate superintendent at the prison. Many will transfer to other prisons, but some – an unknown number, Poteet said – will be laid off.
“Everybody’s in kind of a dead zone right now,” corrections officer Gerry Pinero said. “Basically, we all feel like we’ve been beaten, battered and bruised by the politicians.”
Budget-writing Democrats said that downsizing to a small, minimum-security lockup would save tens of millions of dollars to help plug a $2.8 billion state deficit and avoid adding to this year’s tax increases.
They also saw it as a middle step to closing McNeil and building a new prison elsewhere in Western Washington, saving the department the cost of running expensive ferries and utilities.
That infrastructure will continue to be needed, however, because another group of island residents isn’t going anywhere: 277 sex offenders detained at the state’s Special Commitment Center.
The lockup down the road depends on the prison for cheap inmate labor. With the prison shrinking, the commitment center may take over or share some tasks such as wastewater treatment, center Superintendent Kelly Cunningham said.
But it will need more state money if the prison shuts down altogether and takes away the inmates that had tied up the ferry and maintained the roads, he said. Lawmakers said they built the costs of replacing the labor pool into their savings projections.
Pinero and other workers protest the shutdown of the facility after they worked to bring it up to high standards that allowed it to be accredited last year by the American Correctional Association.
“You take a look at that and say, ‘Here we are, a prison that has met every single standard nationwide, and yet we are being downsized, perhaps closed,’” said corrections officer Joseph Sudyka, who’s deciding whether to transfer or face losing his job.
Corrections spokesman Chad Lewis said while employees should be proud of the recognition for McNeil, the state’s other prisons also met the standards.
After downsizing, the prison could go in one of two directions: Shut down entirely, or, if more inmates than expected enter the prison system, start filling up again.
Staying permanently at the low level of 256 inmates is “not a viable solution,” state prisons director Dick Morgan said. Using such a small fraction of the prison misses out on economies of scale, he sad.
Costs are rising to $180 per inmate per day, up from the $119 it would cost to house twice as many offenders.
COMMUNITY
The smaller population size has another effect: Prison officials figure the prison no longer needs staff living on the island.
For years, the housing was justified by the need to have immediate backup available in emergencies. Soon McNeil will be no larger than other prisons in remote areas where response times are long, Morgan said, so it won’t matter so much if employees live a ferry ride away.
Eliminating housing will disperse a community.
In the yard outside one of the houses that dot the island, three kids play, one riding a bike. Pinero hails them as he drives by.
“I’ve watched these kids come and grow and have their own kids,” said Pinero, who has worked at the prison since 1986.
He continues on, past the fire department and the old red clapboard schoolhouse. Just six students attend Harriet Taylor Elementary, where Jennipher Hennessey teaches kindergarten through fourth grade.
Cynthia Hongell, who drives the bus that takes children to the school and older students to the ferry, faces the prospect of a new job driving on the mainland.
“We weren’t ready for this closure to happen,” Hongell said. “They’ve always talked about it, but never actually acted upon it.” ..Source.. JORDAN SCHRADER; Staff writer
April 2, 2009
WA- McNeil Island Corrections Center may face closure
This is not the facility where sex offenders are held!
4-2-2009 Washington:
OLYMPIA, Wash. - Should the state close prisons to try and narrow the $9 billion budget gap?
The Senate's budget proposal targets the McNeil Island Corrections Center for extinction. The site costs roughly $49 million to operate per year, and has a higher per bed cost than any other state corrections facility.
"I like working here," says Ron Van Boening, McNeil's superintendent. "It's an anxious time for myself and my staff here; don’t know what the future holds."
Van Boening says the facility, which was run by the federal government until 1976, is in good shape. There are several newer, modern era cell blocks, but there are also a handful of buildings from the early 1900s.
State Corrections Secretary Eldon Vail, a former McNeil Island superintendent, hopes state lawmakers allow him to make the decisions on what to close or not to close. He also believes the facility, while expensive, is useful and geographically helpful.
Vail also recognizes he'll most likely face cuts whether he likes it or not.
"The net result is fewer staff tomorrow than we have today,” he said. “That's one of the ways we save money; the offenders go to other beds around the state."
The McNeil Island Corrections Center spans 89 acres and was opened by the federal government in 1875. Over the course of time, inmates included Charles Manson and the "Birdman of Alcatraz," Robert Stroud. Washington State started using it in 1981, and the U.S. government deeded the site to the state in 1984.
House Majority Leader Lynn Kessler says while the facility's closure was not part of the House plan, she could be convinced to do otherwise.
Pearse Edwards, spokesman for Gov. Chris Gregoire, says McNeil Island fills a need for the state, and "there is not a lot of support" in the governor's office for closing state prisons.
The Special Commitment Center for Sex Offenders on McNeil Island is a separate facility run by DSHS. No lawmaker has suggested closing that facility. ..News Source.. by CHRIS DANIELS / KING 5 News
January 27, 2009
WA- MCNEIL ISLAND: Special Commitment Center fire possibly arson, deputy says
1-27-2009 Washington:
Investigators believe someone intentionally set fire to a building Sunday at the Special Commitment Center on McNeil Island. No injuries were reported and no arrest was made.
The fire started shortly after 6 p.m. in the Redwood Building, the state Department of Social and Health Services reported Monday. The building is part of the mental health treatment center for civilly committed sex offenders.
The 74 residents of the commitment center were evacuated without incident to the gymnasium, where they spent the night, the agency reported.
The fire caused $155,000 in damage to the single-story building and $10,000 to the personal property inside.
A deputy fire marshal suspects the fire was arson and referred the case to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department for follow-up, DSHS reported. ..News Source.. by Stacey Mulick, The News Tribune
May 6, 2008
WA- Civil commitment primer
Cure? The whole concept of a cure for any kind of crime or criminal is complete stupidity. In life there is "no cure" for anything that one can name, at least no cure to the extent that a cure is expected of a former sex offender. Name the condition, doesn't matter what it is, nothing is ever cured to the extent that it will NEVER RETURN AGAIN! So, by placing such a standard on sex offenders is nothing more than a way to circumvent laws. PS: Is there a cure for bad politicians, or ones that make bad decisions, now is there?
5-6-2008 Washington:
Washington’s ground-breaking Sexually Violent Predator law contends that some sex offenders are simply too mentally ill to be allowed back into society.
After a sex offender’s entire prison sentence is served the state can petition the courts to commit him or her to the Special Commitment Center on McNeil Island. The center legally isn’t a prison but still has guards and is surrounded by barbed wire.
Sex offenders “qualify” for civil commitment based on a psychiatrist’s finding that they’re more than 50 percent likely to re-offend in a violent, predatory manner because of a mental disorder. U.S. Supreme Court rulings established a high bar to civilly commit someone and several dangerous sex offenders have failed to meet that standard — despite predictions they’d rape again.
Cowlitz County has five men at McNeil Island. Three, Douglas A. Alsteen, Joel S. Reimer Eric St. John, have been officially committed. Two more — Troy Belcher and James LaBaum — are awaiting their final determination.
Each has a string of horrific crimes to his name, many with details too disturbing to publish.
Once committed, the sex offender remains at the center until he or she can prove to a judge that their mental disorder has been cured and they’re safe for release. Roughly 260 sex offenders are housed on McNeil Island, in the center run by the state Department of Social and Health Services, not the Department of Corrections.
Critics contend the 17-year-old law is double punishment because the sex offenders already have served out their criminal sentences. They also call civil commitment a de facto life sentence. Supporters say the sex offenders on McNeil Island are too dangerous to release.
To date only a handful — roughly a dozen — sex offenders at the center have won limited but monitored release. ..more.. by Barbara LaBoe
