TOPEKA — Members of a task force charged with developing a plan for reforming the state’s Sexual Predator Treatment Program housed at Larned State Hospital held probably their last face-to-face meeting Tuesday and completed a rough draft of their recommendations.
Later this week, officials said, the draft would be e-mailed to task force members for suggested changes. The final version agreed to would then be delivered to Shawn Sullivan, secretary of the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services, the agency that oversees the predator program and Larned State Hospital.
“I’m guessing it’ll reach the secretary sometime in August, but it may be early September,” said Angela de Rocha, a KDADS spokesperson.
Late last year, Sullivan asked the task force to look for ways to rein in the program’s growth and costs without jeopardizing public safety.
“This group has done a good job,” said Bill Rein, chief counsel at the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services and a member of the task force.
 Between 2005 and 2013, the treatment program’s population increased from 136 to more than 220 residents, all of whom are kept in confinement. Spending on it has increased from $6.4 million to almost $17 million.
As of Wednesday, the program had 237 residents.
The program, created in 2004, is designed to block the release of people who have committed sex crimes, and have completed their prison sentences but are deemed likely to commit new sex crimes.
Most of the men have been diagnosed as pedophiles whose crimes met criteria for being considered especially heinous.
According to state reports, more than 250 men have entered the program in the last 18 years. Only four have been released, though at least 16 have died.
The task force has met eight times in the past eight months. Initially, its recommendations were due June 1.
Members attributed much of the delay to their willingness to listen to concerns raised by residents’ family members and having to wade through the various therapeutic, legal, and political issues that hold sway over the program’s operations.
 A sampling of the concerns raised by task force members Tuesday:
• “We can all disagree on whether there’s someone there who could or should be released, but that’s not our call,” Rein said. “That’s something the court will decide. It’s not up to us.”
• “There’s not much evidence of what’s best practice for this population,” said Randy Bowman, director of community based services at the Department of Corrections’ Division of Juvenile Services.
• “If the residents do not perceive that there’s a back door, that there’s truly a way to exit the program, everything falls apart,” said Gerald Snell, senior vice president of clinical services at EmberHope, formerly known as United Methodist Youthville.
Austin Deslauriers, the treatment program’s clinical director, said there might be a few but added that most of the residents resist treatment and are not hesitant to “spit in your face.”
The group’s recommendations are expected to include:
• Dividing the program in two with one site for those who accept treatment and another for those who do not;
• Creating an advisory board that would include patients’ family members;
• Encouraging community mental health centers to do more with sex offenders in their communities;
• Studying the release policies of the treatment programs in Arizona, Washington, California, Missouri, and Texas;
• Subjecting the program’s operations to an independent evaluation
Many of the recommendations are similar to those in a 2005 report from the Legislative Division of Post Audit.
The legislative auditors were due to release a study on safety and security issues at the program during a Sept. 11 meeting of the joint Legislative Post Audit Committee.
But Joe Lawhon, a principal auditor, said the division now hopes to have its report finished in time for the Sept. 3 special session, which is expected to run about two days.
“We’re trying to have it available during the special session so that the committee members won’t have to turn around and come back on Sept. 11,” Lawhon said.
Though the committee had initially asked the auditors to also study care and treatment concerns at the sex predator program, Lawhon said the focus of the new report would be limited to safety and security issues because the task force had taken on those having to do with care and treatment.
“We didn’t want to duplicate what the task force was doing,” Lawhon said.