Violent sex offenders strain S.C. mental health agency

COLUMBIA — Violent sexual offenders are placing a growing burden on South Carolina’s mental health services.

“The sexual predator program, frankly, is getting out of hand,” S.C. Department of Mental Health director John Magill told a Senate subcommittee Wednesday.

When Sen. Thomas Alexander, R-Oconee, asked what lawmakers could do to address the problem, Magill pointed to other states’ programs, which allow offenders to receive mental health treatment during their prison sentence.

South Carolina’s Sexually Violent Predator Treatment Program, which began in 1998, is based in Columbia within the state prison system’s Broad River Road Correctional Institution. In South Carolina, when a violent sex offender has completed his prison sentence, he is committed to the mental health agency’s care until treatment providers believe he is unlikely to re-offend the public.

The mental health agency provides security and medical and mental health treatment for 103 violent sexual offenders at the Broad River Road prison, 32 others at the Columbia Regional Care Center in northeast Columbia, and has a growth rate of about two new offenders per month, according to agency staff.

The added volume brings added expense.

“The violent sexual predator program by the end of fiscal year 2013 will be at an expenditure level that will exceed the current direct line of appropriation by over $7 million,” said the agency chief.

“Somebody’s going to bear the cost, but we need to figure out a way to relieve this obligation, some of it,” said Alexander.

The agency’s latest annual accountability report, dated September of this year, says there are 3,990 full-time employees, of whom nearly 49 percent work in the community systems.

The agency also has 17 community mental health centers, including the Aiken-Barnwell MHC and Beaufort County’s Coastal Empire MHC, a handful of other facilities in Columbia, and others for veterans.

The agency received about $133 million in state appropriations and nearly $195 million in Medicaid dollars, according to Magill. He compared that with the funding from 25 years ago, when the state appropriation was about $130 million and Medicaid was accounted for about $22 million.

South Carolina’s Sexually Violent Predator Act requires the Department of Mental Health to kept all its civilly committed offenders in a secure facility away from other patients.

Reach Sarita Chourey at sarita.chourey@morris.com or 803-727-4257.