The Constitution guides how the state sex-offender program is run.

When crafting the civil commitment legislation, Florida lawmakers tried to distinguish it from criminal punishment, so they could hold offenders well beyond their prison sentences, without violating the Constitution's ban on punishing people twice for the same crime.

That's why the men at the Florida Civil Commitment Center are referred to as ''residents,'' and not prisoners, why the program is run through the Department of Children & Families instead of the Department of Corrections and why commitment trials are based on civil court procedures.

AFTER KANSAS

Florida legislators tailored the Jimmy Ryce Act after a Kansas statute, largely because the U.S. Supreme Court upheld that law in 1997 after a pedophile named LeRoy Hendricks challenged it on constitutional grounds.

The court found the Kansas law passed muster because it did not call for imposing additional punishment and set clear guidelines for confining only those whose mental disorders made them likely to reoffend.

But the vote was narrow, a 5-4 decision focused solely on Hendricks, a pedophile with eight convictions dating back 40 years.

Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas found Hendricks was an admitted sex offender, with a history of priors and that his confinement for treatment was ``not subject to the more restrictive conditions placed on state prisoners.''

But there are several areas that separate the Kansas law from Florida's program.

Thomas' opinion noted that Kansas provided more than 31 hours of therapy a week. Florida averages less than eight hours of treatment a week, with most offenders receiving no treatment at all.