Florida Civil Commitment Center, Arcadia, Florida
March 5, 2007 Herald Tribune
Inside a privately run treatment center here for pedophiles and
rapists who have completed their prison sentences, where they are
supposed to reflect on their crimes and learn to control their sexual
urges, bikini posters were pinned to walls. Two men took their shirts
off, rubbed each other’s backs and held hands, while others disappeared
together into dormitory rooms. Some of the sex offenders appeared to be
drunk from homemade “buck” liquor secretly brewed and sold here. And
some of the center’s employees, who openly ignored the breaking of rules
(“As long as they are happy, we let them go,” one explained), reported
that a high turnover rate among staff members was mostly because of
female employees leaving their jobs after having had sex with the
offenders. These and other observations were included in a memorandum
composed in 2004 by six employees on loan here from Pennsylvania. They
had been dispatched by the Liberty Behavioral Health Corporation, which
ran the facility, the Florida Civil Commitment Center, and a facility in
Pennsylvania. Nineteen states have laws that allow them to confine or
restrict sex criminals beyond prison in a trend that is expanding around
the country, with legislators in New York last week announcing agreement
on a new civil commitment law there. The courts have upheld the
constitutionality of such laws in part because they are meant to furnish
treatment where possible. Most of the states run their own centers to
hold and treat such predators, generally with meager results, but at a
time when private solutions are popular for prisons, toll roads and
other state functions, a few have teamed with private industry. Yet as
the story of the center here in Arcadia reveals, even a $19 million
partnership between the state and a company that describes itself as “a
national leader in the field of specialized sex offender treatment and
management” failed to meet a central purpose: treating sex offenders so
they would be well enough to return to society. “It was like walking
into a war zone,” Jared Lamantia, one of the visiting workers who signed
the memorandum, recalled in an interview. “The residents in that place
ran the whole facility.” The memorandum is among thousands of pages of
public and private documents about the Florida center reviewed by The
New York Times, providing a rare window into the lives of civilly
committed sexual predators and the people who guard and treat them.
While programs like Florida’s are popular because they keep sex
offenders locked away past their prison terms, they cost far more than
prison — in the case of Florida, on average twice as much — with no
measurable benefit beyond confinement. For more than seven years,
Liberty was in charge of almost every facet of the Florida center, where
more than 500 men are held beyond their criminal sentences in a crowded
former prison surrounded by cow pastures. That ended last June in a
cloud of claims and counterclaims, investigations and legislative
hearings. By the end, after the state did not renew Liberty’s contract,
the Florida Department of Children and Families was virtually at war
with the company, with each side pinning blame on the other — the state
accused of failing to properly finance the center, the company accused
of failing to manage it. “The place is a cesspool of despair and
depression and drug abuse — of people being lost,” said Don Sweeney, a
mental health counselor in St. Petersburg who treats some former
residents of the center, reflecting on Liberty’s tenure there. Many
outside experts, even some of the center’s critics, said the state’s
insufficient financing of the center made Florida as much to blame as
Liberty for the many failings, many of which are common in other states.
Florida spends less than $42,000 a year per resident, one of the lowest
rates in the country. “There was no money to support that facility and
to do what had to be done,” Dr. Robert Bellino, a psychiatrist who
worked at the center here, said of the company. “It’s a political
football. They were always turning the screws on Liberty — ‘Cut this,
cut that, don’t spend this, don’t spend that.’ ” Ambitious Private
Contractors: As legislators across the nation have answered public
outrage about heinous sex crimes with civil commitment laws, a bevy of
companies and well-paid specialists have cropped up like constellations
around the expanding demand. Liberty Behavioral Health and Liberty
Healthcare Corporation, affiliates with common ownership, have emerged
as the most ambitious private contractors in the commitment center
arena. As recently as last year, the affiliates had accumulated
contracts worth up to $26 million a year in California, Illinois,
Pennsylvania and Florida, which was the biggest both in terms of
compensation and responsibility. Growing out of a company that provided
emergency room employees to hospitals starting in the mid 1970s, Liberty
Healthcare Corporation was founded in 1986 as a provider of mental
health, developmental disability and primary care services. In its
earliest days, it had no experience treating sex offenders and, its
officials said, there was never a particular moment when company
officials said to one another, “Let’s go into the sex offender
business.” Yet as Shan Jumper, Liberty’s clinical director in Illinois,
tells it, after “analyzing market trends and seeing what areas they
could jump into,” Liberty executives apparently recognized the
potential. By 1998, the company, which is privately held and based in
Bala Cynwyd, Pa., won its first contract to provide services inside a
civil commitment center, in Illinois. Rick Robinson, executive vice
president and chief operating officer of Liberty Healthcare, described
the move as a natural outgrowth of its work, which included creating an
adolescent sex offender unit in an Arkansas hospital in 1995. The states
that have hired private companies reason that outside experts have more
background in the complex realm of detaining and treating sex offenders
than most public workers, and in several states where Liberty holds
contracts, officials say they have been impressed with the company’s
expertise. But at the Florida center, even beyond a string of
embarrassing failures — an escape, the death of an offender after a
fight with another over a bag of chips, a sit-in that the state
ultimately quashed with hundreds of law enforcement officers — the
treatment record was poor. In Liberty’s tenure, only one of the hundreds
of men here progressed far enough in therapy to earn a recommendation
from company clinicians that he be released. At various points, many
residents were not attending the group therapy specifically addressing
sex offending; in May 2005, 35 percent of the center’s 484 residents
fell into that category. In written responses to questions from The New
York Times, as well as court depositions, legislative testimony, e-mail
messages, letters and memorandums, Liberty defended its treatment
record, blamed Florida as insufficiently financing its commitment
program and, for years, failing to define exactly what it expected of
Liberty. Early Praise and Promise: Liberty’s early tenure in Florida won
praise from independent evaluators who said the treatment program showed
promise. Over the first four years the state asked for few changes, and
on matters such as the treatment of mentally ill residents, had a “just
do the best you can” attitude, as Susan Keenan Nayda, vice president of
operations for behavioral health programs at Liberty, said in a court
deposition. But problems began to surface publicly in June 2000 in
dramatic fashion when a resident escaped in a helicopter that an
accomplice had landed inside the center’s perimeter. The helicopter
crashed after departing with the escapee, who was caught 26 hours later
in a canal with the pilot, 2 handguns and 28 rounds of ammunition. The
pilot, a longtime friend, had visited the escapee 10 times in the five
months before the escape. The bizarre incident raised worrisome
questions and the first hints of a conflict over the center’s combined
goals of security and treatment. Too few Liberty staff members were in
the yard when the escape occurred, a report by state officials found,
and the center’s director had ordered razor wire removed from a security
fence because, he said, the wire was damaging volleyballs from a nearby
court the residents used. The report also complained about the state’s
role, questioning why corrections officers, who were in charge of
security on the perimeter, were unarmed. Commitment centers across the
country have wavered between following the legal mandate to run a
therapeutic program, as laid out by the courts, and the politically
acceptable alternative of a more prisonlike one. In Florida, the
conflict emerged again and again. The state’s emphasis swung, at various
points, toward and away from a “correctional” approach, company
officials suggested. At one point, Ms. Nayda told a Florida State Senate
committee that even she was not entirely sure what the center was trying
to be. “There’s a little bit of confusion,” Ms. Nayda said. “What is
this place? Is it a prison? Is it a mental health center? A residential
treatment facility where people are clients? What is it? We ask that
question sometimes too. We really don’t have a lot of guidance around
what it is the state wants the facility to be, and we would encourage
the state to look at that.” By the end of 2000, the state moved its
civil commitment center from Martin County on the state’s East Coast to
its current home here in Arcadia, a 14-acre compound with eight
dormitories and other buildings. From there, the population rose
swiftly, even as staff levels mostly stayed put. Liberty repeatedly
sought more money from the state for the center’s operations, for
special treatment of its large severely mentally ill population and for
creation of a supervised release program. Asked to respond to Liberty’s
complaints about financing, Rod Hall, director of the mental health
program office for the state Department of Children and Families, said,
“The funding provided to operate the facility was the amount negotiated
and agreed upon by Liberty prior to its signing of the contracts.”
Liberty’s monthly reports began suggesting that the company was feeling
the crunch. The reports noted frequent troubling incidents: residents
having sex, assaulting staff members and each another, hiding knives in
their rooms. Liberty also said it faced an unusual challenge in Florida,
where hundreds of the center’s residents are not formally committed, but
awaiting trials for commitment. These “detainees,” the company said,
often reject treatment to focus on their legal battles. Some critics,
meanwhile, began questioning the treatment. Ted Shaw, a forensic
psychologist who evaluates civilly committed sex offenders, complained
that Liberty held men back in treatment as punishment for minor
infractions. Liberty officials deny the allegations, but Michael Canty,
a child molester who was detained at the center but was never formally
committed, concurred with Dr. Shaw, saying Liberty staff members would
“harass, taunt — try to get you in trouble so you would get kicked out
of treatment.” Rising Tensions, and Violence: By the time the six
workers from Liberty’s facility in Pennsylvania arrived here in 2004,
tensions inside the center and with the state authorities were reaching
a peak. In April of that year, a mentally ill man jumped off the
center’s roof and was injured after staff members rushed at him to get
him down. In June, a resident stabbed another 12 times and the staff had
residents mop up the blood, destroying evidence before outside law
enforcement officials arrived, an internal report showed. “It was
basically a free-for-all prison, out of control,” said Josh Stiles,
another of the visiting workers from Pennsylvania. Liberty officials
said they investigated and immediately took “appropriate actions”
regarding all that their Pennsylvania employees reported. But they also
said the atmosphere in the center at the time was “probably very
conducive for allegations that were either unfounded or exaggerated,”
and noted that a second group from the Pennsylvania facility, including
its director, returned to Florida several weeks later and reported no
similar problems. Nonetheless, Lynda Sommers, a consultant hired by the
state to monitor the facility over a number of years, also found it in
disarray in the period after the second Pennsylvania group. Ms. Sommers
reported suspected sexual relationships between staff members and
offenders, staff members who slept on the job, crumbling facilities, and
vague policies on punishing troublemakers and treating the mentally ill.
Liberty’s own internal investigator, Kenneth Dudding, was also deeply
critical of hiring decisions for low-level staff members, whose salaries
started at a base rate of $12.89 an hour. “You could have worked at
Wal-Mart last week, they put you in front of a computer to read policy
for a few hours, then they send you to a dorm and let you go,” said Mr.
Dudding, who left after clashing with Liberty’s management. As for
female security workers, Mr. Dudding said they were easily manipulated
by the sex offenders. “It’s like putting candy in front of a baby,” he
said. Mr. Dudding said he ultimately called a state whistle-blower’s hot
line. The inspector general of the Department of Children and Families
investigated and issued stinging reports, saying that the facility’s
safety director had tried to cover up wrongdoing by tampering with
evidence, that an employee was suspected of selling marijuana, and that
alcohol was being made and sold there. Liberty officials said the safety
director was fired for “failure to properly function in her role” before
they received the inspector general’s critique, and they said they fired
the worker suspected of drug sales — on whom no contraband was found —
for an unrelated reason. Then a group of residents, angry when the fire
marshal demanded that they not have so many personal items, moved into a
yard. For months, the staff could not persuade them to go back to their
rooms, creating a scene one law enforcement officer called “Woodstock
gone amok.” Liberty said it first asked for help from the Department of
Corrections and was turned down, only to ultimately get a response the
company called “excessive.” In February 2005, several hundred
corrections and law enforcement officers in riot gear arrived and
restored order. That spring, Liberty’s requests to the state grew more
insistent. The company asked for $31.1 million for the next fiscal year;
it received $18.7 million, the same as the year before. By April, having
described an “alarming” set of “chronic and serious” issues at the
facility, the state was preparing to end its relationship with Liberty.
New Company Takes Over: In the end, the struggle between security and
treatment may help explain Liberty’s doomed tenure at the Florida
center. “I had imagined that we would be trying to do research or
publish or be innovative or at least use state-of-the-art equipment,”
said Dean Cauley, a former therapist at the center. “When I arrived, the
equipment wasn’t being used, tests were outdated and treatment was very
much secondary to maintaining security.” Liberty officials said that
treating patients had always been their company’s reason for being. Most
of the company leaders, including Dr. Herbert T. Caskey, the founder,
were originally clinicians, not business people. If states wanted simply
to lock up, not treat, the worst sexual predators, Kenneth Carabello,
Liberty’s director of regional operations for California and the western
United States, said, “We’d let somebody else do this.” Despite the
center’s history, Don Ryce, the father of Jimmy Ryce, the 9-year-old boy
whose 1995 rape and murder spurred the Florida Legislature to adopt a
civil commitment law in his name three years later, said the law’s
“overall intention” had been accomplished. “There are a lot of people
who are confined who otherwise I guarantee you would be out there
reoffending,” Mr. Ryce said, though he added, “I’m not going to pretend
there aren’t serious problems that need to be addressed.” As Liberty
departed, Florida picked another private company, the GEO Group Inc., to
run the center here. The GEO Group, once known as Wackenhut Corrections
Corporation, has more than 23 years of experience running prisons. Of 63
centers GEO operates worldwide, 58 are correctional and detention
facilities. Last fall, under GEO’s watch, a new glimpse of turmoil began
emerging. Early one morning, a resident said he was attacked by another
in his bunk. His screaming, kicking and banging on his door went
unanswered for almost 15 minutes before staff members responded, other
residents said. GEO officials said workers from the company and the
Department of Corrections “responded promptly” to what GEO described as
a “resident upon resident” fight, an assessment echoed in a DeSoto
County sheriff’s report. But some 100 residents signed a letter calling
for an end to the practice of housing two residents in a single room.
The center “is supposed to be a mental health facility, not a prison,”
the residents wrote. “We are to be treated as patients, not state
convicts.”July 13, 2006 Sun-Herald
The Florida Civil Commitment Center near Arcadia underwent a changing of
the guard this week -- without changing many of the guards. A new
contractor, the GEO Group of Boca Raton, has taken over the operation of
the facility from the former contractor, Liberty of Philadelphia. But
GEO has hired 182 of Liberty's former employees, under a 90-day
probation agreement in which the employees have to prove themselves,
said Timothy Budz, GEO facility administrator. "We did that in three
days," Budz said Wednesday. "The transition has progressed very well."
Established by the Legislature's 1998 Jimmy Ryce Act, the center houses
some 545 violence sex offenders. It is located 10 miles east of Arcadia
in a former state prison.
June 19, 2006 Miami Herald
Holding the razor in his mouth, Ernest Contrillo ran the blade over
his right wrist seven times as blood flowed from the crooked wounds. It
wasn't the first time he mutilated himself inside the Florida Civil
Commitment Center. A year earlier in the center, Contrillo, 52, lost his
left arm to a gangrene infection he coaxed along by severing his flesh.
State records show that for four decades Contrillo had sought comfort in
pain, yet he managed to obtain razor blades and cut himself numerous
times in what's supposed to be a secure mental health facility for
Florida's most menacing sexual predators. Since it opened in 1999, the
center -- created to treat men for their sexual disorders after serving
prison terms -- has struggled to meet its most basic mission, let alone
deal with the medical needs of men like Contrillo. After his arm was
amputated, he spent 10 days in the hospital because caregivers did not
keep him on antibiotics. In fact, a four-month review of monitoring
reports, court cases and internal documents show so many breakdowns in
medical and mental care that drugs often were dispensed without doctors'
approval, men languished without treatment, and in some cases, those
with severe psychological disorders were forced into solitary
confinement -- some never getting treatment for sexual problems. Gaps in
care were often noted during state reviews, but problems continued. One
man was given a powerful antipsychotic drug even though he was not
diagnosed with a mental illness. Another was left in an infirmary for
days while urine in his bedpan collected mold. ''All I ever heard from
everybody was that they were sexual predators. But they're also human,''
said Beverly Babb, a former nurse who quit the center in 2004 after a
year. Said Douglas Shadle, a psychiatrist who left because of
conditions: ``This is an asylum-era institution that has no place in
this century.'' Despite problems, state lawmakers repeatedly refused
requests to adequately fund the center. But they waived laws that
require the civil commitment facility to meet state medical and mental
care standards. Seven years later, those decisions have exposed the
state to a class-action lawsuit that places the entire program in
jeopardy and exposes taxpayers to millions in potential court fines, a
Miami Herald investigation has found. Consider: • For years, medical
care has been plagued by shoddy record keeping, failure to provide basic
checkups, delayed treatment of serious illnesses and potential
violations of state and federal laws. • Crucial medications, such as
powerful psychotropic and cancer drugs, were often not available or
provided to residents without proper documentation. • Records show the
center's use of solitary confinement defies state and federal
guidelines. • As the facility began filling up with mentally ill men,
the private contractor hired to run the center, Liberty Behavioral
Health, asked the state five times for more money and staff to provide
psychiatric care. Each time, the state balked. • As the center's
population grew by more than 300 percent, its funding increased just 46
percent, leaving it to operate on a budget that's less than half of
those found at other mental health facilities in Florida. • The
facility's staffing levels are now less than half of similar programs in
other states. ''Anytime offenders are put in the position where they can
pretend to have the moral high ground, then we have done something very
stupid,'' said Don Ryce, the father of 9-year-old Jimmy Ryce, whose 1995
abduction, rape and murder led to the creation of Florida's civil
commitment law, known as the Jimmy Ryce Act. BLAME GAME With Liberty's
contract set to expire June 30, the Florida Department of Children &
Families -- the agency that runs the program -- has the difficult job of
cleaning up a treatment center it allowed to deteriorate during the past
seven years. DCF lays most of the blame for the center's woes on its
Pennsylvania-based contractor and has decided to manage the center until
January 2007, when the international corrections company GEO Group is
slated to take over the contract. But Liberty, which holds similar
contracts in four other states, says the agency's decisions and the
state's refusal to adequately fund the program caused it to falter.
''[Now] that the Department of Children & Families has chosen to
publicly denounce our company and turn Liberty into a scapegoat for a
legacy of its own poor decisions, we are prepared to speak out,'' Sue
Nayda, Liberty's vice president, wrote in a 9-page letter to The Miami
Herald on June 9. Liberty says that since the program began, the DCF
''abdicated its responsibilities to establish formal, fundamental
administrative rules, regulations or standards to govern the program,''
leaving Liberty to fend for itself as it struggled to treat offenders
with a shoestring staff. CLASS-ACTION SUIT Florida now faces a
class-action lawsuit that claims the center is failing to provide
constitutionally adequate care. One other state with a similar program,
Washington, has racked up $10 million in court fines after losing a
similar class-action case in 1992 -- and it spends twice as much per
offender as Florida. Already, the center in Northwest Florida lost one
state case over its disciplinary methods. Four offenders at the facility
filed suit in DeSoto County Circuit Court in 2002, claiming the center
violated their rights by placing them in confinement without telling
them why or allowing them to contact lawyers. Ruling in favor of the
offenders, DeSoto County Circuit Court Judge Vincent T. Hall found the
center not only broke rules governing mental health facilities, but also
state prisons and standards set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court.
June 2, 2006 Sun-Herald
When its contract expires June 30, the contractor operating a state
treatment center for sexually violent predators near Arcadia will be
shown the door. The Florida Department of Children and Families, which
manages the Florida Civil Commitment Center, will not retain Liberty
Behavioral Health to run the facility until a new contractor can be
hired, said Tim Bottcher, spokesman for the Florida Department of
Children and Families. The process to award a new contract and build a
new facility could take six months or more. To run the facility in the
interim, the state will assign perhaps dozens of Department of
Corrections officers from prisons in surrounding counties to provide
security. And a temporary employee service will provide other workers,
Bottcher indicated. Technically, Liberty is still in the running for the
new contract. But the DCF's inspector general in a past investigation
cited numerous incidents of violent assaults, drug abuse, alcohol
bootlegging and inappropriate behavior involving both residents and
staffers. "I don't think it's any secret we haven't been happy with
Liberty's performance as far as the current contract is concerned,"
Bottcher said. The change in center management has Liberty's local
employees worried about both their jobs and the treatment of the
residents, said John Brosnihan, a security supervisor for Liberty.
Liberty was the only bidder at the time the center was started. A
competing firm had declined to bid because of the facility proposed for
the center -- in a defunct state prison, an officer of the firm, Geo
Group, said in a past interview. In 2005, the Legislature passed a bill
that authorized the DCF to hire a contractor to both build and operate a
new 600-bed center. The DCF's bidding process was derailed, however,
after Liberty challenged the bid specifications for alleged bid-rigging.
That litigation was recently resolved and now the bidding selection
process will get under way, Bottcher said. Liberty and the Geo Group
have submitted bids. Bottcher said a site for the new facility has not
been identified, but it will likely be located within the Arcadia area.
Prison Health Services will be hired to provide health care and clinical
treatment until the contract is awarded. The DCF is still "in talks"
with a temporary employment service to fill other roles in the interim,
Bottcher said.
February 3, 2006 Sun Herald
Chronic problems with the way Florida deals with its sexually violent
predators by detaining them in a prison-like institution called the
Florida Civil Commitment Center have been reported to state officials,
lawmakers and the governor for years. So far, little has changed. But a
four-part series of articles about the center published this week by the
Miami Herald may change that, said Ken Dudding of Port Charlotte, a
former internal affairs investigator at the facility who is featured in
the series. Now, Dudding said he hopes the Herald's exposure of the
problems will spur Gov. Jeb. Bush and the Legislature to reform the
facility. Dudding cites a phone call he received Thursday morning from
the show "60 Minutes" to arrange an interview next week. "I mean, you
can report it to the governor, report it to the Legislature and nothing
happens," Dudding said. "All of a sudden, an article like this comes
out, and (state officials are) taking notice. At least they can't claim
ignorance." A spokesman for the program said "60 Minutes" does not
comment on stories it may or may not be doing. Dudding, a retired
Charlotte County sheriff's deputy, worked for Liberty Behavioral Health,
the company hired by the state to run the facility, for a year in
2004-05. Dudding resigned citing a lackadaisical response by Liberty's
administrators to his investigations. His investigations often found
that staffers turned a blind eye to incidents in which residents
committed physical assaults, stabbings, sexual assaults and drug and
alcohol abuse.
January 30, 2006 Miami Herald
For seven years, Florida taxpayers pumped more than $100 million into
the Florida Civil Commitment Center, a facility set up to treat the
mental disorders of the state's most dangerous sexual predators. What
taxpayers got: a place where child pornography arrived in the mail,
stashed inside transistor radios. Bags of marijuana came in care
packages, stuffed in the guts of peanut butter jars, and men brewed
gallons of homemade alcohol under the noses of a shoestring staff. The
cornerstone of a program named after a slain 9-year-old boy, the center
eroded into a place where boredom, violence and the fog of drugs and
alcohol became as common as group therapy sessions -- with one man dying
after a fight over a bag of Cheetos. Overcrowded and short-staffed, with
less than half of the men actually in treatment, the center lies at the
heart of what is wrong with the Jimmy Ryce Act, an investigation by The
Miami Herald found. ''It's a terribly, terribly run program,'' said
Kelly Summers, a former investigator for the Florida Department of
Children & Families, who uncovered a slew of problems at the center.
``Because no one wants to appear soft on sex offenders, no one wants to
address what's going on down there.''Among the newspaper's findings: •
Employees struggle to manage a facility plagued with fights, substance
abuse and suicide attempts. Guards have been caught covering up mistakes
by erasing security tapes and altering reports, while others have been
accused of selling drugs and having sex with offenders. • While the
state has sent more men to the center, staffing hasn't kept pace because
the Legislature refuses to provide enough funds -- creating a dangerous
disparity that reached an all-time high in the months before authorities
were forced to conduct a raid last February to restore order. • The
number of clinicians also has failed to keep pace with the ballooning
population. Since the facility opened seven years ago, psychologists'
caseloads have quadrupled, leaving hundreds of men pacing the yard,
dwelling in doldrums and stirring up trouble. • Nearly three dozen men
who suffer from severe mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and
bipolar disorder receive little or no specialized treatment -- let alone
therapy for their psychosexual disorders -- a direct violation of
federal law, several civil rights attorneys say. • Meanwhile, a
treatment center originally slated to house 460 men now holds more than
520, creating more tension. Liberty Behavioral Health, the private
company that runs the center, insists that security is now under control
and that problems at the center are no different from those found at any
institution of a ``correctional nature.'' ''To characterize the facility
as rife with trouble . . . is a gross exaggeration,'' the company wrote
in a response to The Miami Herald's findings. But the center never was
intended to be a correctional facility, according to the legislation. In
fact, the Department of Children & Families, which hired Liberty to
operate the center, told The Miami Herald that it has ''identified
numerous deficiencies in Liberty's performance,'' including inadequate
supervision and ''mismanagement'' of security. Several men recently
interviewed at the center by The Miami Herald said disruptions and
fights continue at the facility.The boredom and frustration felt by the
offenders boiled over on Feb. 9, 2005, when more than 300 officers clad
in riot gear and armed with billy clubs and pepper spray began to
assemble before dawn. At sunrise, they descended on the cluster of
concrete buildings tucked into the sprawling prison compound that houses
the treatment center. Their mission: Restore order. Conditions at the
center had deteriorated so badly that a lockdown was under way to force
the men to obey orders from the state fire marshal. Dozens of offenders
refused to leave the yard, where they dragged mattresses from their
dormitories and draped sheets on extension cords running from buildings
to television sets outside. Minutes after storming the center, police
confronted men who were brandishing broom handles. In one dorm, officers
had to call for reinforcements and shoot bursts of chemical agents into
the air to regain control. The raid was a culmination of events building
inside the facility for many years. By 2004, the men outnumbered
employees more than 2-1, a disparity so lopsided that many guards felt
inclined to let bad behavior pass, according to internal documents and
interviews with several workers. ''As long as they are happy, we let
them go,'' one staff member told corporate officers from Liberty
Behavioral Health during a tour of the facility in July 2004. According
to an internal memo obtained by The Miami Herald, Liberty's officers
described fights breaking out between drunken offenders, bikini posters
hanging in the rooms of sexual offenders, and a facility where
''residents appear to have the run of the cafeteria.'' In one packed
dorm, men outnumbered staff members 45-3. To this day, Liberty has had
difficulty attracting and keeping staff members because of stressful
working conditions and because Arcadia's labor pool is so small,
according to state investigators.The DCF had to pay the Department of
Corrections $2 million to ship in 300 officers and conduct a raid on the
center just to get the men to comply with orders from the state fire
marshal. During the raid, officers searched offenders' rooms and found
more than eight gallons of homemade alcohol and other contraband. After
the raid, the Legislature provided an additional $2.6 million last May
for more security at the center. But experts say that's not enough to
fix the center's woes. Last October, a man housed in the quad died after
a brawl over a bag of cheese curls. Daniel Donnelly, 38, sat at a table
in the bay area of F Dorm Quad 2 when Alfredo Roebuck, 48, called in
payment for two rolled cigarettes he had given to Donnelly earlier. Owed
to Roebuck: a bag of Cheetos. Donnelly, five feet four inches tall, 134
pounds, had a history of reneging on barters, common at a facility where
many men have no money. He refused to give the bag to Roebuck -- who was
five inches taller and nearly 100 pounds heavier. Offenders in F Dorm
say no guards were watching when Roebuck and Donnelly began to scuffle.
State reports say there was one staff member present, a 51-year-old
therapeutic assistant responsible for monitoring all four quads in the
dorm while most offenders were at lunch -- a deficiency noted in reports
conducted after Donnelly's death. After the altercation, Donnelly's
condition rapidly deteriorated. He later slipped into a coma. Paramedics
airlifted him to Lee Memorial Hospital, where he was placed on life
support. Donnelly died nine days later, after his family decided to
remove his feeding tube. Donnelly's death came as no surprise to Kenneth
Dudding, a former Washington, D.C., police detective, hired by the
center as an internal investigator in March 2004. During the next year,
he conducted investigations at a facility that had completely broken
down as an inadequate, untrained staff struggled to handle hundreds of
men. In one case, Jerome Wagner, an offender with severe mental illness,
was able to climb onto the roof of one of the buildings in April 2004.
Instead of trying to coax him into climbing down, staff members on duty
rushed him. So Wagner jumped off the roof and injured his left leg. He
was later treated by DeSoto County emergency medical workers. In another
case, a two-time sexual offender named Jorge Delgado stabbed offender
Marshal Watson 12 times, using a 10-inch metal shank with a white-taped
handle in October 2004. After the incident, staff members ordered
offenders in the dorm to clean up the crime scene with bleach, ruining
an investigation by the DeSoto County Sheriff's Office, according to an
internal report. In both cases, Dudding went back to review security
tapes and read reports of the incidents but found that they had been
erased or tampered with. ''During these investigations, staff
immediately began covering up what happened -- destroying tapes,
altering reports. I was being hampered,'' Dudding said. He said that
when he complained, he was told that he was being too aggressive. Fed up
after just two months on the job, Dudding blew the whistle on the
facility in May 2004. Investigators from the DCF's Office of Inspector
General spent the next four months picking the facility apart. Records
show that they corroborated nearly every problem outlined by Dudding:
widespread use of alcohol and drugs, sex among offenders and staff
members. There were also instances of tampering with security tapes and
incident reports and a general lack of control, the inspector general's
report stated. In addition, the investigators reported that marijuana
arrived in care packages, with some stashes stuffed in peanut butter
jars. Cocaine was found in one room but was flushed down a toilet by a
staff member. No one was charged. But after DCF investigator Summers and
her boss issued their report in September 2004, little changed at the
facility at first. ''When my supervisor and I sent up our preliminary
reports, we were surprised about the minimal attention it got,'' Summers
said. She said they pushed harder to help persuade the DCF to conduct
the raid in February, after offenders refused to comply with orders from
the state fire marshal. ''Part of the problem is that DCF is not
equipped to handle a facility that is responsible for violent
criminals,'' she said. The Legislature provided $2.6 million more for
additional staff members after the February raid, and the DCF says it
contracted with the DCF last October to monitor safety and security at
the center. But even with the additional money and oversight, problems
persist. Donnelly was killed four months after the increase, while
Delgado repeatedly stabbed another man with a metal shank in December.
''The program doesn't work because it's not designed to work,'' said
Dean Cauley, a former clinician at the center. ``This was a harebrained
idea and an expensive idea that really wasn't thought out very well, and
now we are seeing the result of it.''
December 15, 2005 Sun
Herald
It was 42-year-old George Williams' hobby to tend to a patch of flowers
outside his dormitory at the Florida Civil Commitment Center. But his
devotion to his flower garden nearly got Williams killed Friday.
Williams was stabbed seven times with a homemade knife. The stabbing
came after he got into a fight with another center resident when a
basketball bounced into his garden, according to a DeSoto County
Sheriff's Office report. Friday's stabbing fits a pattern indicating
that chronic understaffing and mismanagement by administrators have
created an insecure environment, according to Ken Dudding, a former
internal affairs investigator for Liberty Behavioral Health, the
contractor that runs the facility for the Florida Department of Children
and Families. "My point is, this (Delgado) is a guy that goes
around stabbing people -- and he can find a knife laying around
anyplace," Dudding said in a phone interview Tuesday. Located 10
miles east of Arcadia, the center houses 520 sex offenders who have
completed their prison terms but have been deemed by the state to still
pose a risk of re-offending. The center was established in a former
state prison under the Legislature's 1998 Jimmy Ryce Act. The act calls
for the civil commitment of sexual predators for "care, control and
treatment." Dudding resigned in January 2005 after a year with
Liberty. He said he investigated about 100 violent incidents involving
bodily harm, as well as other allegations of drug dealing, alcohol
smuggling and nepotism. Dudding claimed that his supervisors stymied
some of his investigations and failed to adequately discipline
misconduct by some of the staffers. Resident John Curry, who has filed
numerous complaints with the DCF and the courts on behalf of himself and
other residents, described the current atmosphere within the facility as
"a battle zone." "We're erupting because they're
tightening down the hatch intensely and there's no release, so we react
to the least little thing," Curry said. "What it boils down to
is we do not have adequate staff to operate this facility." Curry
said facility staffers often complain their ranks are understaffed to
the point they can't handle incidents effectively. Liberty's contract
requires 179 employees. The number of vacant positions could not be
obtained Tuesday.
April 8, 2005 St. Petersburg
Times
Sexual predators too violent to be released into society would get a new
600-bed, privately built facility under a plan the state Department of
Children and Families is quietly pitching in the Legislature. The
proposal, largely unnoticed until Democrats discovered it in the Senate
budget, comes six months after state officials discovered rampant
lawlessness at the Florida Civil Commitment Facility near Arcadia, a
facility run by Liberty Behavioral Health Corp. of Pennsylvania. A
February report by DCF's inspector general revealed that residents made
and abused homemade alcohol. It said fights between residents were
common. The report also found Liberty employees compromised an
investigation of a stabbing by ordering residents to clean up before law
enforcement arrived.
September 30, 2004 Sun-Herald
Florida's commitment center for sexually violent predators has serious
problems with employee nepotism, cover-ups of staff mismanagement,
marijuana smuggling, money laundering, and a lack of professional
response to violent incidents -- and the contractor that runs the
facility needs to do more to solve them. That's the conclusion of Sheryl
Steckler, inspector general for the Department of Children and Families,
the agency responsible for the Florida Civil Commitment Center. And the
department itself, headed by Luci D. Hadi, Interim Secretary, echoes
that conclusion, in a statement issued Wednesday by DCF spokesman Tim
Bottcher. "The performance of the contractor with regard to these
issues is unsatisfactory," the department stated. "The
residents of the Florida Civil Commitment Center are dangerous, and it
is vital that the facility be secure and safe at all times. The
inspector general concluded that facility safety director Tiffany Lane
failed to document incidents of alleged misconduct or mismanagement by
staff. In some cases, she also destroyed evidence, including erasing
videotapes. The DCF has hired Liberty Behavioral Health of Pennsylvania
to run the facility under a $50 million, three-year contract. Lane and
several staffers worked to cover up evidence or discard complaints to
thwart internal investigations into the handling of a half-dozen
incidents, the investigative report states. In several instances,
employees who complained of misconduct or mismanagement by Lane or
members of her clique were given demotions, suspensions and
terminations, the report indicates. The investigation "demonstrated
how Ms. Lane either failed to document or destroyed documents that she
felt were unfavorable toward or certain staff members, including her own
mother whom she supervised," wrote Summers. The report also cites
that a half-dozen employees have criminal records. Sworn statements from
residents also revealed that racial tensions had led to stabbings and
beatings. Also,
residents and employees told investigators that marijuana use inside the
facility is rampant. Since the investigation, the Florida Department of
Law Enforcement has opened an investigation into drug dealing and money
laundering. Also, the inspector general plans to investigate additional
allegations in a separate investigation, according to the report.
May
12, 2004 AP
Eight sexual predators detained under the Jimmy Ryce Act have sued the
state, claiming they are getting inadequate treatment for their mental
health problems, which leaves them with little chance of being released.
The suit filed in U.S. District Court in Fort Myers on Friday named the
Department of Children & Families and Liberty Behavioral Health
Corp., the company contracted to run the Florida Civil Commitment Center
in Arcadia.The suit claims Liberty Behavioral Health is short staffed
and fails to provide adequate, individualized treatment. Some detainees
spend as little as two hours per week in treatment, according to the
suit.
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