By Keith Matheny
USA TODAY
DESERT CENTER, Calif. — The clean, new mobile home looks out of place in this remote stretch of desert. The nearest buildings are a vacant, boarded-up shack and a dusty, empty storefront.
It is here in this tiny unincorporated town of 300 between Los Angeles and Phoenix that the state of California is paying about $2,000 a month in rent, utilities, food and water for a sexually violent predator to live, according to Nancy Kincaid, assistant director of the California Department of Mental Health.
Steven Willett, 57, has a criminal record that includes four felony convictions for sex crimes: rape and two instances of attempted rape involving adult women, and lewd and lascivious acts with a 13-year-old girl.
After Willett’s last prison stint ended in 1997, he was declared a sexually violent predator by a judge and committed to a state mental health hospital under California’s Sexually Violent Predator Law, which allows for civil commitment for sex offenders found to pose extreme danger to society after their release from prison.
His relocation last September to housing in this remote area -- after both a doctor and then a judge in 2007 determined Willett would not be a danger to others while under supervision and treatment in the community -- has generated anger in the community and is an example of the issues states face as they pass or refine laws regarding released sex offenders and where they can live.
‘The worst of the worst’
At the Desert Center Cafe, less than a half-mile from Willett’s home, bring up his name and the outrage rises in waitress and nearby resident Cheryl Magsam’s voice. “We have girls that work the nighttime shift alone,” she says. Sheriff’s officials informed residents of Willett’s impending arrival last summer, she says, but by then it was a done deal. “They dumped him on the desert.”
California is one of 20 states to allow civil commitment of violent sexual offenders determined to have mental disorders likely to cause them to strike again.
Only a small group of convicted sex criminals meet the criteria -- “The worst of the worst,” says Riverside County, Calif., District Attorney Rod Pacheco.
A study of state programs by psychologist Adam Deming, executive director of Indiana’s Sex Offender Management and Monitoring Program, published in the fall 2008 Journal of Psychiatry & Law, showed there were fewer than 3,700 civilly committed sexually violent predators nationally.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled civil commitments are legal, as the purported goal is treatment and not a second round of punishment. But use of the commitment statutes also means judges in some states can allow those deemed predators to continue treatment outside of a secure hospital.
That frequently runs headlong into a fearful, angry public.
“Something about the process is causing a problem, clearly. Every time they place someone in a community, there’s uproar,” says Monica Williams, a graduate student at the University of California-Davis, who is studying how communities respond to the placement of sexually violent predators for her dissertation.
Few who are committed as sexually violent predators nationwide are allowed to continue their treatment back in society, a USA TODAY review of data provided by civil commitment states showed.
Willett is one of only 19 men committed under California’s program who have ever been granted conditional release, according to the California Department of Mental Health.
Some states with civil commitment programs, including Florida, South Carolina and Massachusetts, have no provisions for conditional release. Predators in those states either stay in a hospital or are released outright.
“It is politically very, very hot and difficult,” says Eric Janus, dean of the William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minn., and author of the book Failure to Protect: America’s Sexual Predator Laws and the Rise of the Preventive State.
Many restrictions
Willett wears a Global Positioning System ankle bracelet. He has no Internet access and must take regular polygraph tests to help ensure he is following the provisions of his release, Kincaid says.
His days are mostly spent alone in his mobile home, where he has satellite television, she says. He has no car and, in these early months as a conditionally released predator, no job, Kincaid says. His excursions consist of trips for treatment and the occasional accompanied outing to a store, she says. Willett declined to comment for this story.
Over the course of the first year, the costs associated with Willett’s conditional release are expected to total about $126,000, including ongoing treatment at $2,000 a month, about $34,000 spent to prepare the property for a mobile home and about $44,000 for around-the-clock security guards that were used in the first eight weeks, Kincaid says.
That figure does not including travel expenses for treatment, which she says are higher than usual because of his remote placement. By comparison, individual in-patient state facility treatment costs about $185,000 per year, Kincaid says.
Matheny reports for The (Palm Springs, Calif.) Desert Sun
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