`USING PSYCHOLOGY'

Another difference: Other states allow offenders who progress far enough in treatment to return to the community under intense monitoring and therapy at out-patient facilities and half-way houses. Florida has no such program.

''Although civil commitment is there to treat offenders, it begins to look like we are using psychology to justify more punishment,'' said Fred Berlin, an associate professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University.

While the Supreme Court was careful to separate civil commitment from criminal punishment, the separation is not as clear in Florida as it appears in the law.

Kansas, along with other states including Minnesota, Washington, California and Wisconsin, runs its program out of a state hospital while Florida houses its program in a former prison, where the men sleep in cells, can be punished in solitary confinement and are severely restricted to when and where they can move inside the center.

That raises concerns from civil rights attorneys and sexual offender experts who point out that the facility is not supposed to be a prison.

''The U.S. Supreme Court upheld civil commitment, but they were very clear that this was not punishment and there needed to be the services in place to treat these people if you're going to commit them,'' said Jill Levenson, a professor of human services and sociology at Lynn University in Boca Raton.