Source: thecentersquare.com 6/28/23
On Monday, the Joint Legislative Audit Committee unanimously approved a request by California Senate Minority Leader Brian W. Jones (R-San Diego) to audit Liberty Healthcare.
“We are thankful that the bipartisan Legislative Audit Committee understands the need to further investigate Liberty Healthcare’s poor management of” sexually violent predators, Jones said.
Liberty Healthcare is a health and human services management company in Intellectual and Developmental Disability care and psychiatry. The east-coast based company has enjoyed an exclusive 20-year partnership with the Department of State Hospitals to manage the Sexually Violent Predator Conditional Release Program which requires the program to place released offenders within their county.
Jones revealed in a letter to the Chair of California Joint Legislative Audit Committee, Assemblyman David Alvarez, that several attempts to get answers from the department about sexually violent predator placement and operations through Liberty Health has been very difficult if not impossible.
“This troubles me because it seems that DSH has delegated their authority and responsibility to a private contractor,” Jones said.
Good old placement services but serving who? A plain example of private enterprise wrestling away that constitutional responsibility outlined in the articles left to the whole of the people within the jurisdiction. WI sent a man to a New Mexico to serve out his life sentence. WI uses neighbor states prisons too. Always by contract and sometimes with inmate approval but mostly not. Privatization of state responsibility is an abdication of Constitutional discipline and sworn duty but the Congressional practice runs amuck.
Some similar audits in WI were last undertaken by the Gov. Scott Walker (SB-21here:https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1697351-sb-21-scott-walkers-executive-budget-2015-2017) via an executive action the culminated in a thorough report. Part of the report examined Attorney fees paid on behalf of the State in litigation. All by contract. I do not recall any part that included information about placement services specifically, but names of firms always get listed when reports are ordered by Governors.
These activities are meant as a form of checks and balances. And public disclosure should be mandatory, but sometimes the lessor authority will omit that which should be included or summarize what should have detail. All expenditures are generally included, but again details matter. What such a summary looks like is posted above. CA is extremely large so the size of the document will astound most folks.