BLAME GAME

With Liberty's contract set to expire June 30, the Florida Department of Children & Families - the agency that runs the program - has the difficult job of cleaning up a treatment center it allowed to deteriorate during the past seven years.

DCF lays most of the blame for the center's woes on its Pennsylvania-based contractor and has decided to manage the center until January 2007, when the international corrections company GEO Group is slated to take over the contract.

But Liberty, which holds similar contracts in four other states, says the agency's decisions and the state's refusal to adequately fund the program caused it to falter.

``[Now] that the Department of Children & Families has chosen to publicly denounce our company and turn Liberty into a scapegoat for a legacy of its own poor decisions, we are prepared to speak out,'' Sue Nayda, Liberty's vice president, wrote in a 9-page letter to The Miami Herald on June 9.

Liberty says that since the program began, the DCF ``abdicated its responsibilities to establish formal, fundamental administrative rules, regulations or standards to govern the program,'' leaving Liberty to fend for itself as it struggled to treat offenders with a shoestring staff.

CLASS-ACTION SUIT

Florida now faces a class-action lawsuit that claims the center is failing to provide constitutionally adequate care.

One other state with a similar program, Washington, has racked up $10 million in court fines after losing a similar class-action case in 1992 - and it spends twice as much per offender as Florida.

Already, the center in Northwest Florida lost one state case over its disciplinary methods.

Four offenders at the facility filed suit in DeSoto County Circuit Court in 2002, claiming the center violated their rights by placing them in confinement without telling them why or allowing them to contact lawyers.

Ruling in favor of the offenders, DeSoto County Circuit Court Judge Vincent T. Hall found the center not only broke rules governing mental health facilities, but also state prisons and standards set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Tucked in a corner of a rundown former prison compound, the Florida Civil Commitment Center's infirmary is a one-story brown building with filthy walls and water-stained ceilings. Inside, a meager nursing staff with little support and virtually no oversight is charged with treating a myriad of maladies.

The nurses work amid stacks of medical files that have been badly kept.

The shoddy medical records have contributed to inadequate care at the facility - a challenge the center still faces, and one the DCF acknowledges in its own reports.

Last year, one resident who complained of weight loss and rectal bleeding had no current weight in his file and no evidence of an examination, according to records.

Another man in the infirmary suffered from chronic lung disease and asthma but there was no documentation of follow-up for his conditions. He complained of blood in his stool, a lack of appetite, vomiting, blood and weight loss, but there was no record showing those symptoms had been explored, the DCF report stated.

Meanwhile, the man was prescribed a powerful antihistamine without documentation while the nurse on duty ``did not know why he was receiving the medication,'' the report said.

A review of nearly a dozen medical records by The Miami Herald found folders stuffed with loose leaf medical charts dating back years that were out of order and nearly impossible to follow.

Worse, the state knew records were incomplete, yet never bothered to ensure the system was fixed.

Five years after the center opened, DCF finally took a hard look, and found widespread problems, but two years later, medical care still remained ``a grave concern'' largely because of incomplete and inaccurate medical files, reports stated. Only three of 23 files examined met state standards.