Minnesota's Failed Civil Commitment Program For Sex Offenders

April 27, 2011

Minnesota's Failed Civil Commitment Program For Sex Offenders

A report from the Office of the Legislative Auditor released in March of 2011 points to massive problems with the civil commitment program, which was designed to rehabilitate sex offenders.

Some of the findings of the report:
-The number of civilly committed sex offenders in the Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP) nearly quadrupled during the last decade and is expected to nearly double over the next ten years.
-Minnesota is one of 20 states with civil commitment programs for sex offenders and, in 2010, had the highest number of civilly committed sex offenders per capita.
-MSOP's annual cost is $120,000 per offender, or about three times the cost of incarceration in Minnesota, but close to the average for other secure treatment facilities for civilly committed sex offenders.
-No sex offender has been discharged from MSOP since it was created in 1994. Without releases, Minnesota is susceptible to lawsuits challenging the adequacy of the treatment program.
-MSOP's treatment program has experienced frequent leadership changes and significant staff vacancies, and it has struggled to maintain the type of therapeutic environment necessary for treating high-risk sex offenders.

Constitutional Issues

The failure of the program to effectively "treat" any patient could prove its ultimate undoing. Civil commitment programs have been found constitutionally acceptable by the courts only because their primary purpose is to provide treatment rather than punishment.

In nearly every constitutional evaluation of civil commitments, the absence of punitive intent is a dispositive issue.

As the Minnesota Supreme Court stated: "the judiciary has a constitutional duty to intervene before civil commitment becomes the norm and criminal prosecution the exception."

Only One Way Out

As the auditor's report indicates, while it might not be the norm, it has clearly failed in its stated purpose, therapeutic rehabilitation. In 2008, a law review article commented:

In the fourteen years since Minnesota began committing sexually violent predators, "just 24 men have met what has proved to be the only acceptable standard for release. They died."

A former guard and counselor in the Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP) commented on this unwritten standard of release, stating, "[w]e would say, 'Another one completed treatment."'

Given the chaotic management (three executive directors, four executive clinical directors over the past seven years, and a 14-month vacancy in the top clinical position), hundreds of millions in costs, a quadrupling of inmates, and not a single released patient in 17 years, strongly points to the Legislature needing to fundamentally restructure the program. Before the courts force them.

Article provided by Rosengren Kohlmeyer Law Office
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