LA Times exposes SVP boondoggle

Back in January, I reported (here) on California's costly and ineffective program for screening Sexually Violent Predators. On Sunday, the L.A. Times reported on how the program is enriching a handful of state psychologists to the tune of more than $1 million in some cases (in addition to their day jobs). The state's 79 evaluators earned a cumulative $24 million in 2007, a figure that is expected to rise in coming years even as funds for more essential public services disappear. It's a story that both the San Francisco Chronicle and the Contra Costa Times have also covered some time ago:

State pays millions for contract psychologists to keep up with Jessica's Law

A 2006 law intended to crack down on sex offenders has proved a bonanza for a small group of private psychologists and psychiatrists, 14 of whom billed California taxpayers last year for a half a million dollars or more each, a Times investigation found.

Among the 79 contractors hired by the state to evaluate sex offenders, the top earner was Robert Owen, a Central Coast psychologist who pulled in more than $1.5 million in 2007, according to state records reviewed by The Times.

That's equivalent to working 100 hours per week for 52 weeks at nearly $300 per hour -- top-scale in the private sector.

The No. 2 earner, psychologist Dawn Starr, billed the state $1.1 million in 2007, including $17,500 for a single day in April.

"It's been a boatload of money, to put it colloquially," psychologist Shoba Sreenivasan said during court testimony in November. Working only part time, she billed the state nearly $900,000 last year and at least $290,000 this year…

Dr. Michael First, editor of the American Psychiatric Assn. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the standard reference for mental disorders, said most reports require at least 30 hours.

Yet on a single day, Nov. 13, 2007, No. 2-earner Starr billed for five evaluations.On April 23, 2007, she billed more than 17 hours for a range of court-related work and still found time to complete an evaluation, according to her invoices, which were reviewed by The Times.

Dr. Mohan Nair, a psychiatrist with offices in Beverly Hills and Los Alamitos, earned nearly $1 million last year under the state program. He also saw private patients, provided forensic testimony and evaluation for other government agencies, directed a diagnostic lab and supervised residents at two medical centers.

Nair completed up to 20 sex-offender evaluations a month in 2007. Including time billed for legal matters, they comprised just 20% to 30% of his professional practice, he said.

Even at 100 hours per week, he would have had no more than six hours to complete each of five evaluations….

The State Personnel Board recently took up the issue, ruling that the use of contractors violated state law by failing to make an adequate effort to fill evaluator jobs with regular employees. The board ordered mental health officials to replace the contractors with civil servants. Despite an increase in pay to up to $110,000 annually, Mayberg said, just four jobs out of 80 have been filled.

Since then, the department and the union helped to craft a bill to permit the use of contract evaluators until January 2011.

The full story is here.

Hat tip: Daniel Murrie

N.Y. Law School offering online courses

Forensic topics - sex offenders, therapeutic jurisprudence

Professor Michael Perlin, a preeminent scholar in the field of psychology-law and author of an excellent new book on competency, is announcing an exciting array of online, distance learning courses this fall through the New York Law School.

"Courses combine streaming videos, readings, weekly synchronous chat rooms (meaning, class meets at 8:45 on Monday night, say, but you can be home in your pajamas or at a coffee shop, not in Room A 602), asynchronous message boards and two full day live face-to-face seminars (in which skills issues are always emphasized)," says Perlin.

The four courses being offered this fall are:

• Survey of Mental Disability Law (Monday, 8:45-10 pm)
• Sex Offenders (Tuesday, 8:45-10 pm)
• Therapeutic Jurisprudence (Wednesday, 8:45-10 pm)
• Americans with Disabilities Act: Law, Policy and Procedure (Thursday, 8:45-10 pm)

The courses are open to law students, attorneys (CLE is available), mental health professionals, graduate students in psychology and criminal justice, criminal justice professionals, human rights workers, medical students, forensic fellows, advocates, and activists.

More information on the online program in mental disability law, including registration information, is here. You can also directly email Liane Bass, Esq., senior administrator of the program.

Australia: "Circle sentencing" ineffective

Speaking of restorative justice . . .

A restorative justice approach that involves the Aboriginal community in sentencing of Aboriginal offenders has no effect on recidivism risk, according to a new study.

"There was enormous hope that if Aboriginal offenders were brought before members of their own community, they would sit up and take more notice than if they were brought before a white magistrate or a white judge," said Don Weatherburn of Australia's Bureau of Crime Research and Statistics.

More important to reducing crime, he said, are treatment programs for the endemic drug and alcohol problems facing the Aboriginal community.

Of course, as pointed out by Douglas Berman at Sentencing Law & Policy, "the value of community involvement in the sentencing process may have benefits that cannot be measure just through recidivism rates."

The study, "Does circle sentencing reduce Aboriginal offending?" by Jacqueline Fitzgerald, is online in the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Reseach publication Crime and Justice Bulletin. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation also has coverage.

British family man called pervert for photographing his children at park

"What is the world coming to?" asks father

From London's Daily Mail:

When Gary Crutchley started taking pictures of his children playing on an inflatable slide he thought they would be happy reminders of a family day out.

But the innocent snaps of seven-year-old Cory, and Miles, five, led to him being called a "pervert."

The woman running the slide at Wolverhampton Show asked him what he was doing and other families waiting in the queue demanded that he stop.

One even accused him of photographing youngsters to put the pictures on the internet.
Mr. Crutchley, 39, who had taken pictures only of his own children, was so enraged that he found two policemen who confirmed he had done nothing wrong.

Yesterday he said: "What is the world coming to when anybody seen with a camera is assumed to be doing things that they should not?" ...

His wife, a teaching aide and nurse, agreed: "It is very sad when every man with a camera enjoying a Sunday afternoon out in the park with his children is automatically assumed to be a pervert."

The story continues here.

California: More sex offender commitment mess

I've written several posts (listed here) on various controversies surrounding Coalinga State Hospital, California's costly boondoggle for civilly committed sex offenders.

Here is the latest buzz. (I am hearing all of this third-hand and I haven’t seen it reported in any official sources, so take it for what it’s worth.)

Due to a severe shortage of staff, the hospital is operating at full capacity with only about 700-some out of a maximum of 1,500 patients. That means that if a patient goes to court, he cannot return "home" until a bed opens up. Since the "hospital" is really a long-term detention facility from which few people are released, this can take many months. Meanwhile, the sex offender is housed in a county jail's protective custody unit, which is much more restrictive than general population housing.

Worse, if a patient is called as a witness in a fellow patient's civil commitment proceeding, he too can expect to lose his bed. It is hard to find willing witnesses when they've got to be willing to go to jail for you, for an indefinite period of time.

I'm told that the hospital has about 700-some patients. It could hold 1,500 if it had a full staff. But despite an intensive campaign, recruiters have found only 900 people so far who are willing to work there, or about 55 percent of the 1,600 they need in order to run all of the units and programs.

Meanwhile, I'm hearing that the expert witness panel of the state Department of Mental Health is being disbanded. Less expensive staff psychologists are replacing the contractors, some of whom were earning upwards of $1 million per year. The massive earnings were becoming a focal point for defense attorneys during cross-examinations of state witnesses. I'm told that jurors' eyes practically popped out of their heads when they heard about the "boatloads" of money, as one expert described her earnings.

If anyone finds published news on these topics I would be grateful if you posted them in the Comments section, so others can access them.

An L.A. Times article on the beleaguered hospital is here.

Postscript: On Aug. 10, 2008, the L.A. Times published an expose on the massive earnings of state SVP evaluators. The article is here; my post on it is here.

CNN features San Quentin education project

As part of its "Black in America" series, CNN has an upbeat story about education efforts in one of California's most famous prisons:

Lt. Sam Robinson, a 27-year veteran of San Quentin, gave a tour of 27 vocational programs run by about 3,000 volunteers as part of the Prison University Project, a nonprofit education program that offers many black men an opportunity to earn an associate of arts degree. It helps give those eligible for parole the intellectual tools to compete in a vastly changing job market.

Advocates say that many black men imprisoned across America, particularly nonviolent drug-related offenders, have enormous potential to become productive, law-abiding members of society through higher education in prison.

University of California at Berkeley professor Rebecca Carter volunteers as a biology instructor at San Quentin. During her first semester, she was startled by what she discovered. "I've been teaching on the Cal campus and teaching at the prison at the same time, and they were significantly more engaged when I was in the prison," Carter told CNN's Soledad O'Brien. "Not always more in command with the subject matter but more engaged, doing the homework, asking questions because they were passionate about learning."

The full CNN article is here, accompanied by video and photographic footage of the prison university.

Hat tip: Douglas A. Berman, Sentencing Law & Policy blog