This editorial will appear in Monday’s print edition.

As state lawmakers grapple with how to close a $1 billion-plus budget gap, one place they’ve been looking for savings is the Special Commitment Center for violent sex predators on McNeil Island.

Some legislators want to save money by moving the SCC to a mainland site, cutting out the extra expense involved with ferrying to and from the island. But no community is clamoring to host 284 dangerous sex predators, and even if an existing facility could be found it likely would require expensive renovation and security upgrades.

A recent Seattle Times series suggests another strategy: Target the wasteful, uncontrolled legal costs associated with sex offenders either trying to avoid civil commitment to the SCC or to be released if they’re already there.
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This editorial will appear in Friday’s print edition.

Thanks, King County.

Prosecutors there have struck a deal with Andre Brigham Young, a violent sex offender who was convicted of raping six South Sound women over a 23-year period, to be released from the state’s Special Commitment Center on McNeil Island.

But he won’t be living in King County. He’s registered as a Level 3 sex offender (the class most likely to offend) at a Tacoma address: the 2100 block of South M Street.

Releasing Young to Pierce County isn’t the problem: This is considered his “county of origin” due to the fact that his first rape conviction, in 1963, was here. He also raped women in King and Thurston counties. Read more »