-In 1990, Washington became the first state in the nation to pass a law allowing the state to hold sex offenders after they’ve served their prison sentence through a process called civil commitment.

-The law is entitled the Washington State Community Protection Act.

-Only those deemed a Sexually Violent Predator, as defined by law, are civilly committed after a trial and verdict from a jury.

-By law, the Special Commitment Center is a treatment facility, not a prison.  Therefore, those committed are residents as opposed to inmates and have many more liberties than a prison inmate.

-Residents must be offered sex offender treatment.  Only those considered by a court to have successfully completed the treatment and deemed safe to be in the community can be released.

-In 1991, Andre Brigham Young was the first sex offender to be civilly committed.

-In 1991, Resident Richard Turay of Des Moines, sued the state, claiming his constitutional rights were being violated.  Turay claimed the staff treated him more like a prisoner than a man with a mental illness and that the conditions of the center prevented him from getting the adequate mental-health treatment.

-In 1994 US District Judge William Dwyer ruled the Special Commitment Center was too much like a prison and not enough like a mental health facility.  He fined the state $11,000,000 for the center’s failures.  The fine was later dismissed.

-In 1999, the state was found in contempt of court for failing to meet some of the requirements for improvement mandated by the court.

-In 2004, the state spent $61,000,000 to build a facility on McNeil Island specifically for the civilly committed sex offenders.

-Prior to that, the residents were housed in a section of the prison in Monroe, and then in a section of the prison on McNeil Island.

-In 2005, the state opened two half-way houses for residents considered well enough to transition into the community.  One is located on McNeil Island, the other is in the SODO district of Seattle.

-In 2006, the first resident moved into the half-way house in the SODO district.

-In 2007, U.S. District Court Judge Ricardo Martinez lifted the injunction imposed by Judge Dwyer in 1994 against the Special Commitment Center.  This  ended 13 years of court oversight meant to force the state to improve the program. 

-Currently, 279 men and one woman reside at the Special Commitment Center.

-To date, approximately 20 residents have been granted release from the center with conditions placed on them by a judge.

-Two residents have been released into the community without any conditions at all.

-None of the residents who have been released has been arrested or charged with another sex crime.

-Since Washington passed the civil commitment law in 1990, 18 other states have followed suit by enacting similar laws.