The state and its taxpayers spend $39,000 a year on average for each of the 300 sexual predators incarcerated on the island.
The state is in the unenviable position of having to pay the costs of prosecution and the costs of defense of the sexual offenders who are indigent.
It’s by far the biggest expense incurred at the center.
A recent report by a state courts agency suggests the $7 million the state spent on defending the indigent inmates each year could be reduced by about $1 million by changing the way it contracts with public defenders and other measures.
There simply must be a way to bring those costs down without infringing on the legal rights of those imprisoned.
Recall, the center is home to sexual offenders who have served their sentences but have been ruled by the courts to be unfit for release back into society.
Obviously, this is a unique set of inmates with very contentious legal issues. However, it’s incumbent upon the state to get a better handle on the legal costs, especially in this era of tight state budgets and demands for increased government efficiencies.
First of all, the state needs to improve cost accounting for legal services. Under the old billing system, the law firms defending the inmates didn’t provide to the state itemized bills for individual offenders. A new rule that calls for itemized bills should help.
Here’s another oddity in the program: Private attorneys assigned to defend the sexual predators are paid court-ordered rates of $85 per hour. Hourly billing is the exception, not the rule in most public defense cases. With more than 60 lawyers handling sexual offender cases, the costs pile up in a hurry.
A smaller, more specialized group of attorneys working on annual contracts instead of hourly rates would save the state money, according to the Office of Public Defense study.
A second option would be to hire a small group of public defenders as state employees to defend the indigent sexual predators.
Some defense attorneys have voiced objections to the proposal, suggesting hourly rates help maintain better representation. But their concerns are not gaining much attention from the Gregoire administration, which is working on a call for bids for legal services involving one or two law firms and capping the costs they could bill.
One way or another, the state needs to get a better grip on the costs of legal services for indigent sexual predators. The money saved could be spent on more pressing problems facing vulnerable populations of children and the elderly.
