Throwing Taxpayer Money Away!

Throwing Taxpayer Money Away!

Washington’s infrastructure, State ferries, hiways, schools and other public services are under financial stress or are failing in many areas. Yet, the State continues to throw taxpayer money away on a particular facility and program that is mismanaged, heavily litigated against, deeply corrupt and in violation of both federal and state laws as well as the Constitutional protections afforded American citizens. The S.C.C. is a ‘gulag’ about which the general public knows little or where the public, courts and media are spoon-fed disingenuous justifications for its existence.

Henry Richards, Ph.D., is a psychologist but by any objective measure is certainly not qualified to manage the Special Commitment Center, S.C.C., Washington Department of Social and Health Services, DSHS, on McNeil Island. The proof of this statement resides in a number of facts and factors. Keeping qualified clinical professionals, much less any real ‘professional’ at the S.C.C. is a near impossibility, based not only in the fact that the alleged mental health ‘program’ is not viable, but also on a significant lack found in leadership and management. The overall ‘attitude’ which impacts not only S.C.C. residents, but also S.C.C. staff, flows directly from the Superintendent, i.e. Dr. Henry Richards.

The S.C.C. budget is, in part, carefully hidden in the State General Fund, and exceeds, by conservative estimate, some Fifty (50) Million Taxpayer dollars a year. With an admitted budget in the area of Forty to Forty-Five Million dollars each year, the S.C.C. generally exceeds that budget by at least ten percent. This cost in taxpayer funds does not include the costs imposed upon the State and Courts by multiple and continuous lawsuits against the facility and Dr. Richards, and/or his staff, for violations of Constitutional and statute law, nor does it always include the costs of expensive medical procedures necessary on behalf of an aging S.C.C. population.

For some 280 “civil status’ men and one woman at the S.C.C., and based upon known expenditures of at least Fifty Million taxpayer dollars per year, the annual cost, per ‘civil status resident’ runs about $178, 500.00 more or less as compared to some $28,000 per year for a prison ‘inmate’. S.C.C. staff “turn-over” is high, due in part to a monumental lack of skilled management. S.C.C.’s ‘program’ has been repeatedly adjudged, in both State and federal courts, as inadequate and as not providing professional mental health care, which is one of the reasons given for S.C.C.’s existence.

Factually, the S.C.C. is nothing more than a warehouse, a continuation of a completed prison sentence for individuals who have paid their statutory “debt to society.” Out of the approximately 280 individuals held at the S.C.C., most do not meet the statutory criteria of RCW 71.09, the statute under which the S.C.C. operates. However, the State will tell ‘any lie to justify’ the continued existence of the S.C.C..

Superintendent Richards tells the media and politicians in Olympia that 80% or more of the S.C.C. residents are ‘in treatment’—but, the truth is otherwise and the average, since 1995, of those in ‘treatment’, is less than 20% who regularly attend the ‘whine’ sessions. There is no viable instruction and the ‘program’ has undergone a number of revisions over the years, but has released only one (1) person [in 2007] since 1990 based on the alleged ‘treatment’ program.

The S.C.C. is a monumental failure, an expensive waste of taxpayer funds when the State is in dire need of such funds and it is time this “White Elephant” is removed from the necks of state taxpayers.