Civilly committing sexually violent predators protects the community by providing rehabilitation to individuals who would have been released to prey upon adults and children in our communities without any constraints of treatment or supervision. The Outpatient Civil Commitment program is significantly less expensive than the cost of a new crime, county jail housing, prosecution, defense, lengthy incarceration, medication, and treatment. Several studies conducted from the 1980’s through the 1990’s reported a cost range of $138,000 to $200,000 per case to prosecute a single case of child sexual abuse.
The outpatient Sex Offender Treatment/Supervision program is funded via an appropriation to the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. The 80th Legislature Regular Session House Bill 1 (General Appropriations Act) appropriated funds to the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts for the outpatient sex offender treatment and supervision program in the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts Judiciary Section’s 2008-2009 appropriation in Strategy D.1.9. An interagency contract between the two agencies defines the disbursements of the funds to DSHS. The total amount appropriated for FY 2008 is $2,840,656, and $3,039,193 is appropriated for FY 2009. The funds are located in DSHS strategy D.4.1.7, Sex Offender Treatment/Supervision. Fiscal year 2008 performance measures reflect that the outpatient Sex Offender Treatment/Supervision program cost the state an average of $26,371 per SVP per year. Comparatively, other states that have inpatient SVP treatment programs report costs between $70,000 and $166,000 per SVP per year. (Washington State Institute for Public Policy, 2006).
Of the approximate 3,493 SVPs nationally, 427 have been released from inpatient treatment, and forty-four (44) revoked since release. The average rate of civil commitment growth across the nation is twenty-three (23) clients per month.
In a statement about inpatient treatment, Larry Fitch of the National Association of State Mental Health Program acknowledged, “States are full of people coming in, and not many going out”. This realistically will result in escalating cost to the taxpayers in these states.