By Brian Bakst
Associated Press
ST. PAUL, Minn. — Minnesota is awaiting word from a federal judge on how it must change its restrictive program for sex offenders, a long-awaited step for more than 700 offenders who alleged the facilities were more like prisons.
Judge Donovan Frank ruled the civil confinement program unconstitutional this spring but stopped short of requiring the state to step in or shutting it down altogether, opting to lay out several options to bring the program into good standing. But those changes didn’t come, as lawmakers fearful of appearing soft on crime declined to put up money for less-restrictive facilities.
Frank has said he intends to rule before the end of October how the state must fix it. The lead attorney for the plaintiffs, who are put in the program after they complete any prison sentences, said he expected an order Thursday.
“A lot of eyes are on this one and it is quite likely that other challenges will emerge in the wake of this one,” University of Kansas law professor Corey Rayburn Yung, who has studied legal issues surrounding sex offender programs, said earlier this year.
Minnesota’s treatment of sex offenders stands out among the 20 such programs across the nation. The state has the highest per capita lockup rate, and just a handful of offenders have been provisionally released to community-based settings in its 20-plus-year history. While offenders in California, Wisconsin, New Jersey and other states are allowed to re-enter society after completing treatment, no one has been fully discharged in Minnesota.
That’s created an expensive program — $120,000 annually per detainee — and a constitutional problem of effectively creating life sentences for people who have fulfilled their criminal punishment.
In a class-action lawsuit filed more than four years ago, offenders likened their time at the two Minnesota facilities to a second prison sentence rather than the treatment programs they were designed to be.
Frank’s ruling will undoubtedly set the stage for an appeal by state officials and lawyers, who argue they are properly holding dangerous sex offenders. Gov. Mark Dayton has repeatedly called on Frank to allow the state to appeal the decision even as his administration laid out its own ideas for how to bring the program into good standing. An appeal could leave offenders in legal limbo for months.
In his June ruling, Frank said it’s clear many offenders still held at the facilities clearly meet the criteria for release.
“The stark reality is that there is something very wrong with the state’s method of dealing with sex offenders in a program that has never fully discharged anyone,” Frank wrote.
The more than 700 offenders confined by court order in secure hospitals in Moose Lake and St. Peter that are ringed by razor wire. Each was deemed a “sexually dangerous person” prone to committing new offenses. In the program’s 21-year history, just four people have been granted provisional release, according to the Department of Human Services.
Dan Gustafson, the lead attorney for the offenders, has urged Frank to require more-frequent risk evaluations and less-restrictive settings for offenders showing progress in controlling sexual impulses, including treatment outside of the razor wire ringing the Moose Lake and St. Peter facilities.
Sex offender programs in Missouri and Washington have also come under federal court scrutiny for failing to adequately move people toward release.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press