Source: prisonlegalnews.org 1/1/24
“Very weighty interests are at stake when a state institutes a program of civil commitment for sex offenders who, though never tried for or convicted of a crime, are found too dangerous for release.” So began a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit on July 24, 2023, in a challenge to a lower court’s order mandating improvements in Illinois’ civil commitment program, operated under the state’s Sexually Dangerous Persons (SDP) Act. Unfortunately, those interests were not deemed weighty enough to convince the Court to uphold the lower court’s injunction.
James Howe, George Needs and Jacob Kallal were civilly committed and held at Illinois’ Big Muddy River Correctional Center in its four-phase SDP Program. They filed suit alleging the program “was being run in a constitutionally deficient manner” by Wexford Health Services, a for-profit company with a lengthy track record of inadequate medical care that holds the contract to provide healthcare for the state Department of Corrections (DOC).
Despite having a financial incentive in keeping the SDP program full, Wexford employees make release recommendations, relying heavily on prisoners’ past conduct. Plaintiffs’ expert witness, Dr. Dean Cauley, noted that Wexford had just three therapists for 170 detainees in Big Muddy’s SDP program. Group therapy was provided just one day a week for one hour, and some groups, including Victim Empathy and Substance Abuse, had been “indefinitely canceled.” Cauley noted this was contrary to practices at other civil commitment facilities, which provide substantially more therapy time. Following a bench trial in 2018, the federal court for the Southern District of Illinois granted injunctive relief in September 2021, finding the paltry amount of therapy constituted a constitutional violation.
The permanent injunction included requirements that civilly committed detainees receive at least 7.5 hours of core group therapy per week, with each session lasting at least 90 minutes. Further, discontinued groups must be reinstated and “independent evaluators other than Wexford [employees]” must conduct discharge evaluations. The state argued in response that the injunction was overbroad, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 3626(a)(l)(A).
Financial incentive should not be associated with a situation like this unless it is to graduate people out of it and back to the outside on realistic and reasonable timetables for each. Good on the 7th for doing this move.