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Secretary of Education
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Posted on 12/18/2003 8:23:56 AM PST by AreaMan
Pell grants aid confined sex offenders
David Depuy is a twice-convicted rapist who has been behind bars all but two of the last 31 years.
In prison, he turned to education, and the government helped. He began taking classes in 1973 and continued on and off until 1994, when politicians decided that giving criminals financial aid grants for college wasn't a good idea.
Then in 1999, Depuy finished his prison term and was ordered to the Florida Civil Commitment Center in Arcadia, where 426 of Florida's worst violent sexual offenders are held because they are deemed unfit to return to society.
There, Depuy resurrected his educational goals, obtaining some $15,000 in financial aid through Pell grants in the next four years. He is one course shy of an associate's degree in computer systems.
At a time when the federal Pell grant program has gone over budget by a billion dollars each of the last two years, civil commitment centers for sex offenders appear to be a loophole in the law designed to prevent incarcerated felons from getting a free ride.
In Florida, at least 54 committed sex offenders have obtained some $200,000 in Pell grants at taxpayer expense in the last year. Those figures come from South Florida Community College in Avon Park, near the commitment center, where the inmates take television courses, including American history, economics and psychology.
"I'm not sure it's a legal loophole," said Brian K. Fitzgerald, staff director for the Advisory Committee on Financial Assistance, which advises Congress and the secretary of education. "But I'm not sure it's consistent with the spirit of the prohibition."
Florida state Sen. Alex Villalobos, who sponsored the House version of the Jimmy Ryce Act that created the civil commitment center for sex offenders, says the top priority should be getting them treatment.
"If the federal government has a lot of money to spend, we're short on money to give them treatment as sexual predators," said Villalobos, R-Miami. "If the federal government is sending them money to put them through college, I suggest the federal government send them money to do what we're supposed to be doing there. . . . If they have extra cash, we could hire more medical people to supervise them."
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Depuy was an 18-year-old Marine attending aviation electronics school when he entered a convenience store in Jacksonville, placed an electrical cord around the 21-year-old clerk's neck and raped her in the store's back storeroom. He spent nine years behind bars.
Within two years of his release, he was arrested for raping another woman, this time in Pennsylvania. He served the next 15 years in prison there, finishing his sentence in 1999 only to be extradited back to Florida for violating his parole and sent to Florida's civil commitment center, originally in Martin County.
The center was born of Florida's Jimmy Ryce Act, named for a 9-year-old South Florida boy who was kidnapped, raped and murdered in 1995. After offenders serve their criminal sentences, they are subject to civil commitment if a jury deems them unfit to return to society. The law's aim is to hold sexual predators, who are likely to repeat their crimes, indefinitely for treatment. A survey revealed the average offender has eight felony convictions, three for sex crimes.
The Florida Civil Commitment Center opened in Arcadia in 2000, and Depuy and the other sex offenders were sent there. Now confined for four years, Depuy is awaiting trial to be officially committed.
He said he and another inmate, child molester Kevin Kinder, who was convicted in Hillsborough County, were the first two committed sex offenders to get Pell grants through Pensacola Junior College in 1999.
The center is owned by the Department of Corrections, administered by the Department of Children and Families and run by Liberty Behavioral Health Corp., a private company that gets $18.4-million for its operation. Liberty Behavioral then pursued a relationship with the nearby South Florida Community College beginning in fall 2001 to provide telecourses to the residents.
Typically, the college gets the Pell grant, which can amount to as much as $4,050 a year, and takes out money for courses and books; the remainder is sent to the offender for supplies.
"I send the actual balance left over to my father in Michigan and let him get me the things I need, because I can't go to Office Depot and get the pencils and other things I need," Depuy said.
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The $12-billion-a-year Pell grant program provides aid to 4.9-million lower-income students. Those who meet the income eligibility requirements get a grant as part of their college financial aid package.
But critics say proposed changes to the program for next year will cut some $270-million and mean thousands of students will get smaller grants. Pell grants cover only 41 percent of the annual costs to attend a public college, compared with some 84 percent 25 years ago.
Given these factors, some say it's wrong to give sex offenders money when so many needy students who haven't committed crimes are struggling to go to college.
"Once it is determined that you are a sexual deviant, you don't deserve to be treated the way every other person is," said Ron Book, a statewide advocate for victims' rights whose daughter was sexually assaulted by her nanny for several years. "It is in effect depriving others who need Pell grants where they could use their education in a more positive manner."
It was just such an argument that Congress used when it stopped state and federal prisoners from getting Pell grants in 1994. That and the fact that prisoners who had no chance of getting out of prison were becoming scholars at taxpayer expense. At the time, some 28,000 prisoners got about $36-million in Pell grants each year.
Depuy, 49, points out he's not a prisoner.
Yes, he raped two women. But he said he's paid his debt to society in the form of 24 years in prison. So why shouldn't he get help for his education?
"That I'm taking someone's spot that didn't commit a crime, and taking someone's ability to get their foot in the door and get an education, quite frankly I paid my debt to society in full," he said in a phone interview. "And if that is difficult for someone to accept, they should try some other country that doesn't govern by the rule of law and doesn't treat its citizens equally."
Sixteen states have some sort of civil commitment center for sex offenders. It's unclear if any of them have a situation similar to Florida's. But a sex offender commitment center in Washington state is seeking Pell grants for its residents, said superintendent Mark Seling.
Those who treat sex offenders say education helps them survive better on the outside and can keep them from committing the sexual crimes that got them there.
Steve Steurer, executive director of the Correctional Education Association in Lanham, Md., said just about every prison provides some form of high school equivalency or vocational education. There are some grants for prison inmates who are 25 or younger, who are eligible for release in five years.
"You should bring back Pell grants for prisoners," Steurer said.
He said studies have shown that about 20 percent of prisoners who educate themselves behind bars do not commit crimes again for more than three years after their release.
"Research shows quite clearly that they (reoffend) at much lower rates," Steurer said, "so it's a public safety issue. Forget about whether it's a good idea if they deserve it."
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Whether those confined to the Florida Civil Commitment Center retain their Pell grants depends a lot on the definition of the facility. Federal law says those incarcerated in a state or federal prison are not eligible for Pell grants.
When that law was passed in 1994, Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison told USA Today, "Pell grants were sold to help low- and moderate-income families send their kids to college. They were not sold for prison rehabilitation."
Federal officials, upon being questioned by the Times about the grants to the sex offenders, said they are looking into it.
"At this point it appears the school has awarded Pell grants to what we consider incarcerated students at a state penal institution, and we're waiting to see if we get any documentation to the contrary," said June Glickman, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Education.
Wanda Daymon, director of community relations for South Florida Community College, said eligibility for the grants is determined by the U.S. Department of Education, not the college.
Surrounded by coils of razor wire, the facility in Arcadia was converted from a former prison - the one where Depuy served his first rape sentence years ago. It is considered a rehabilitative facility but several of the "residents" confined there say it has all the trappings of a prison. Indeed, the Department of Corrections gets $2.3-million a year to provide security there. But only 155 of the 426 people confined at the center are receiving treatment, said Robert Brioty, executive director of the Florida Civil Commitment Center. Only 123 have been committed to the facility; the remaining 303 are in legal limbo, some waiting years for commitment trials and choosing not to get treatment because they worry it will be used against them in court.
"By definition, it's an involuntary mental health treatment facility," said Jill Levenson, professor of social work at Florida International University and president of the Florida chapter of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers. "That's what civil commitment is. It's run not by the Department of Corrections, but by the Department of Children and Families. It is not a prison. They've completed their sentence, and they're involuntarily detained."
Dr. Douglas Shadle, a Punta Gorda psychiatrist who treats 70 people at the center who are severely mentally ill, said not enough treatment is going on for it to be considered a true mental health facility.
"I don't disagree with the need for a secure facility for people who are violent sex offenders," he said. "But it's such a hybrid right now. It's stuck between a treatment facility and a prison kind of setting."
- Times researchers Caryn Baird and Kitty Bennett contributed to this report, which includes information from Times wires. Leonora LaPeter can be reached at 727 893-8640 or lapeter@sptimes.com
© Copyright 2003 St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved
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Secretary of Education
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