6-28-2011 Minnesota:
Critics say mistreatment and an overriding, unspoken directive to keep clients locked away make the state program unconstitutional
To many former employees at the Minnesota Sex Offender Program in Moose Lake, the unspoken reason that no client has ever been released is that’s the way state leaders and program administrators want it.
“They felt (the clients) couldn’t be cured,” said Nicci Trierweiler, a former security counselor at the facility and one of a dozen former employees who made similar comments to the News Tribune. “Most of the men that are in there will tell you, if you ask them, that they don’t think they’re going to get out of there. They will tell you that it’s a life sentence and they’ll be going out feet-first.”
“It’s a waste of taxpayer dollars,” said another former security counselor, Jeremy Jatkola. “I don’t think the patients there are getting the treatment they should be doing.”
“The overriding directive is not to progress patients,” he added.
MSOP senior administrators deny those claims. But if the allegations are true, it’s a problem.
While supporters of MSOP argue that public safety is served by locking up sex offenders deemed to be sexually psychopathic, sexually dangerous or both, the stated purpose of MSOP isn’t to incarcerate but to rehabilitate.
Nearly all the resident offenders have served their prison or juvenile sentences and are committed for treatment at the facility for potential reintegration into the community. The sex offenders aren’t called inmates but patients or clients.
State and federal courts have held that the program is legal only if adequate treatment is provided. If not, the program could be found unconstitutional, which is what happened in the state of Washington in 2000. A federal court judge ordered the state to revise its program after finding it provided a punitive treatment environment and inadequate treatment, staffing and staff training.
A review by both the legislative auditor and the Duluth News Tribune has found many similar problems at MSOP: The treatment environment is violent and punitive toward offenders. Treatment averages six hours a week, and the program has had trouble hiring and keeping qualified staff. Some clinicians and therapists don’t have the educational backgrounds necessary to treat sex offenders.
And, among both current and former employees, there is a history of infighting and troubling behavior.
Those problems, along with the fact that no one ever has been permanently released from the program since it began in 1994, raises questions about whether MSOP is constitutional, said Eric Janus, dean of the William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul.
When the program was created by the state Legislature and approved by the courts, Janus said, it was done with the understanding that offenders would eventually be treated and released.
“A legitimate program, among other things, releases people when they no longer need civil commitment, when they’re no longer dangerous enough to justify being locked up in a secure facility,” Janus said. “We know the program has not provided for that kind of a system.
“You have a picture, in my view, of an unconstitutional program,” he said. ..Source.. by Brandon Stahl, Duluth News Tribune
June 28, 2011
Is sex offender program illegal?
June 23, 2011
Sex offender gets settlement after rape
6-23-2011 Minnesota:
A patient who was raped in 2009 at the Minnesota Sex Offender Program's facility in Moose Lake has been awarded $130,000 in a settlement with the state Department of Human Services (DHS).
Philip Goldhammer, 35, alleged that he was raped by his roommate after staff ignored his requests to be transferred to another room. William Cardwell, Goldhammer's roommate, tried to commit suicide following his attack.
It took more than a year and a half after the rape before DHS issued a "client compatibility'' policy designed to protect patients from such threatening situations. Prior to the rape, Goldhammer, who weighs just over 140 pounds, described feeling intimidated by being housed with the 266-pound Cardwell.
Goldhammer will have his own room for 18 months to help recover from the assault under the settlement agreement.
Cardwell, 45, was convicted of assault with great bodily harm after the attack and sentenced to more than nine years in prison. ..Source.. by PAUL McENROE
April 25, 2011
Minn. Supreme Court excludes civil commitment proceedings from cameras-in-courts pilot project
4-25-2011 Minnesota:
MINNEAPOLIS — The Minnesota Supreme Court has added a restriction to a two-year pilot program allowing camera coverage of some trial court proceedings.
The high court decided in March to allow news cameras in civil proceedings with the consent of the judge starting July 1, but excluded criminal cases and certain kinds of civil cases.
In an order released Monday, the Supreme Court added civil commitment proceedings to the list of exclusions. Civil commitments can include cases of people suffering from mental illness, as well as predatory sex offenders.
The court had already excluded child custody, divorce, juvenile, child protection and paternity cases, and petitions for orders for protection.
News organizations are hoping the tryout in civil courts will show that camera and audio coverage won't be a problem at criminal trials. ..Source.. by The Republic
March 12, 2011
Audit: Sex offender program wastes money, is inconsistent
3-12-2011 Minnesota:
Legislative auditor calls for better therapy, cheaper alternatives.
Hundreds of sex offenders confined in state treatment facilities receive inadequate therapy from under-qualified staff at excessive cost, according to a report released Friday by Legislative Auditor James Nobles.
At the same time, many other offenders present such low risk to the public that they could safely be released to community group homes, saving taxpayers millions of dollars, the report said.
And in what they describe as a public safety paradox, auditors found that some sex offenders are held indefinitely, even though they pose less risk than dangerous felons in state prisons who are being released back to the streets.
The long-awaited report sets the stage for an emotionally charged debate over the 17-year-old Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP), which takes offenders into treatment under a judge's order after they have completed their prison sentences
The program's population has nearly quadrupled, to more than 575, over the past decade, and Minnesota now confines more sex offenders, per capita, than any other state. Because the program has never released an offender, even after years of treatment, it is impossible to say whether it is effective, and it is considered vulnerable to court challenges, audit manager John Yunker said.
"A major problem with Minnesota's commitment process is that it generally involves a choice between a high-security facility [or] release from prison with no supervision,'' the report stated.
Nobles strongly recommended a legislative task force to study the civil commitment process, including why outstate county attorneys are twice as likely to seek commitments as prosecutors in the Twin Cities or northeastern Minnesota.
Rep. Tony Cornish, R-Good Thunder, said Friday that he will likely offer legislation to do that within two weeks.
"Something's not right. But I understand the pressure on county attorneys," said Cornish, chairman of the Public Safety and Crime Prevention Committee. "All it takes is another horrendous [incident] ... and anybody involved in the release of the offender gets beat up."
Cornish also has introduced a bill to double prison sentences for first-degree sexual misconduct, which will be the focus of a hearing on Tuesday. "We know that steel bars'' are one way to keep offenders off the street, Cornish said.
Sen. Linda Berglin, DFL-Minneapolis, said a legislative task force examined many of the same issues last year "and we really know enough to act now." But she said a new task force may be required because the Legislature is now in Republican hands, with many new legislators.
Offenders sit idle
Looking behind the razor wire of secure facilities in Moose Lake and St. Peter, the auditor's team found a system where hundreds of mostly idle offenders watch television for hours on end and receive insufficient therapy -- at an annual cost of more than $78 million, or about $120,000 per offender. The yearly cost per offender is three times higher than for inmates of state prisons, they said, but on par with similar programs in most other states.
Auditors called on state officials to replace this "all or nothing'' system and develop a plan for low-cost alternatives, while spending more on treatment of the most dangerous offenders.
The state Department of Human Services, which oversees the MSOP, supports most of the auditor's recommendations and is working to increase treatment and improve the competency of its staff, Commissioner Lucinda Jesson wrote at the end of the report.
After interviewing administrators, the auditors concluded that the MSOP holds about 120 offenders -- elderly, disabled or low-functioning -- who could be housed at much lower cost in group homes or halfway houses with adequate security measures.
The program's offender population has soared since 2003, when the gruesome rape-murder of Dru Sjodin by a sex offender who had only served prison time prompted then-Gov. Tim Pawlenty to tighten the procedure for release.
Since then, nearly 440 offenders have been committed to a treatment pipeline that was unprepared and overwhelmed, the auditor found. As a result, the system spent millions of dollars on security, but not enough money to hire qualified staff to provide treatment and therapy.
Since 2008, MSOP administrators have required new clinicians to have master's degrees and be licensed, and have reduced the number of staff vacancies.
Failing to provide adequate therapy could make the state vulnerable to lawsuits by offenders who argue that the MSOP is merely prison by another name, the report said. ..Source.. PAUL McENROE and WARREN WOLFE, Star Tribune staff writers
March 9, 2011
Jack Rice: Sex offender program is unconstitutional
3-9-2011 Minnesota:
Eventually the courts will reach that judgment about what is essentially indefinite incarceration.
Commentary
What do you call a forced in-patient treatment program that has never successfully treated and released a patient?
Either it is a complete and utter failure, or you call it what it really is -- a prison.
That is the problem that Minnesota faces. It has 605 sex offender inmates who have no pending charges or convictions.
They are not on probation. In fact, all of these people have already been convicted and have served their debts to society.
However, some Minnesotans feel that is not enough. Rather, Minnesota is holding them for what they might do.
While both state and federal courts have called this dubious decision constitutional, they have done so only because it is "treatment."
Otherwise, the program would be considered unconstitutional. Which takes me back to my initial point.
If there has been no successful treatment, then it is nothing but incarceration.
You doubt me?
Minnesota started its Sex Offender Treatment Program in 1994. The number of inmates is growing by about 50 a year.
They are held at the Minnesota Security Hospital in St. Peter and at a facility in Moose Lake. However, both are running out of space.
St. Peter is looking to expand its facility by an additional 55 beds, while Moose Lake is seeking to expand by some 400 beds. At a cost of about $96,000 per inmate per year, this is not a cheap proposition.
And how successful has the treatment been? Not one person forced into the Sex Offender Treatment Program has ever been released.
I repeat: Not one!
As we speak, one man is trying to be the first person ever released from the program.
Admittedly, he has done some horrible things, but he has been held for decades and has done everything -- everything -- asked of him.
However, while the Special Review Board may go along with the release, state Human Services Commissioner Lucinda Jesson opposes the release. Frankly, she is a politician, and nobody would want an albatross like this around their neck if things went south.
But that is the ultimate problem. Again, these convicts have done some pretty terrible things.
As a result, the standard refrains seem to be "lock 'em up and throw away the key" or "shoot 'em out of a cannon." Of course, these arguments are irrelevant to the point at hand.
It is not about what one should do to those who commit these types of crimes in the first place.
If Minnesota thinks they should never see the light of day, the Legislature should consider that issue. This is about what we as a society should do once people have fulfilled their obligations.
If the state continues to do as it has done with this program for 16 years, the courts will see it for what it is: a prison.
When that happens, this entire system will be justifiably shut down.
Then what do we do? ..Source.. by Jack Rice is a criminal defense attorney , former prosecutor and former CIA officer. He also is the former host of the "Jack Rice Show" on WCCO Radio.
November 22, 2010
Minnesota Sex Offender Program: "No Men Will Be Released in 2010"
There is no way this can be said to be anything but further punishment, without further conduct. Minnesota has made this process a joke and criminal.11-22-2010 Minnesota:
Duluth, MN (Northland's NewsCenter) - In a follow up to our report on the Minnesota Sex Offender Program spokespeople say no men will be released in 2010.
Sex offenders who will be released must go before a court appointed panel after they've successfully completed treatment and because the court has not begun the process to release any men at this point no releases will be made before the end of the year.
Spokespeople say the final stage before any release is to transfer offenders to the facility in St. Peter.
No one has been transferred in preparation for release at this point. There are currently 587 sex offenders in the program and in the 15 years of Minnesota's Civil Commitment program no one has been successfully released. ..Source..
July 10, 2010
Sex offender treatment presents a political quandary
7-10-2010 Minnesota:
MOOSE LAKE, Minn. — Keeping sex offenders locked up in treatment after they finish their prison sentences emerged as a popular get-tough tactic in the 1990s, when states were flush with cash. But the costs have soared far beyond what anyone envisioned.
An Associated Press analysis found that the 20 states with so-called “civil commitment” programs will spend nearly $500 million this year alone to confine and treat 5,200 offenders still considered too dangerous to put back on the streets.
The annual costs per offender topped out at $175,000 in New York and $173,000 in California, and averaged $96,000 a year, about double what it would cost to send them to an Ivy League university. In some states, like Minnesota, sex offender treatment costs more than five times more than keeping offenders in prison. And those estimates do not include the considerable legal expenses necessary to commit someone.
The programs have created a political quandary for lawmakers who desperately need to cut spending in the midst of a recession but don’t want to be seen as soft on rapists and child molesters.
“I’ve heard people in a lot of the states quietly say, ‘Oh, my God, I wish we’d never gotten this law,’” said W. Lawrence Fitch, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law. “No one would ever dare offer repeal because it’s just untenable.”
Preventing repeat offenses
The laws target sex offenders who are considered likely to strike again. When one of them is close to finishing a prison sentence, prosecutors file a civil case to prove that person still threatens the public and needs treatment. If the court agrees, the prisoner is committed in much the same way that someone with a serious mental illness would be sent to an institution.
The heavy financial burden of treating confined sex offenders has left lawmakers with less money as they make agonizing cuts to areas such as education and health care. Politicians who spent years cracking down on sex crimes now struggle to pay for their tougher laws.
“It’s easy to say, ‘Lock everybody up and throw away the key,’” said state Rep. Michael Paymar, a St. Paul Democrat who heads a public safety budget panel. “But it’s just not practical.”
The laws have withstood legal challenges all the way to the Supreme Court. They are considered constitutional as long as their purpose is treatment, not detention. But living up to that standard can cost far more than traditional prison. And the costs persist for years because most inmates will never be released.
Costly treatment
The programs have given rise to new and bigger treatment centers: California opened a 1,500-bed facility for sexual predators in 2005. Minnesota opened a 400-bed building last year and plans another expansion at Moose Lake, 110 miles north of the Twin Cities.
The Moose Lake complex, located just off the highway leading to this woodsy Minnesota town, looks like a medium-security prison, with layers of secure doors and guards monitoring cell blocks of patients.
More than 400 men live there behind tall fences topped with razor wire. They spend their days shuffling between meals, group therapy sessions and activities such as painting state park signs.
The confinement is costly mainly because of the need to hire behavioral therapists, social workers, psychologists and psychiatrists.
For every 25 to 50 offenders, there is a five- to six-member treatment team. Parts of the facility resemble a community college campus, with chairs arranged around the edges of rooms for group therapy sessions. There is a separate unit for about 8 percent of the sex offenders who refuse to participate in treatment, and another one for aging clients, some of whom use wheelchairs and walkers.
“They had no idea 10 years ago, seven years ago, what this program was going to cost,” said Dennis Benson, a former prison warden who now oversees Minnesota’s civilly committed sex offenders.
Minnesota already spends $65 million a year to house and treat sex offenders. State lawmakers usually don’t complain about the costs, but they balked when Gov. Tim Pawlenty asked to borrow $90 million to complete the expansion of the Moose Lake facility. They eventually gave him slightly more than half that amount, despite a growing deficit of $1 billion.
“We have to cut something else to pay for it,” said Sen. Linda Berglin, a Minneapolis Democrat who supervises the budget for civil-commitment cases as head of a health and welfare spending panel.
In most states, the number of confined sex offenders has steadily increased, requiring ever-greater spending.
Iowa spends nearly $7 million to confine 80 offenders, almost double 2005’s $3.6 million budget for 48 patients. Virginia’s program has swelled from 45 patients five years ago to more than 200 this year, with annual costs climbing from $10 million to almost $16 million.
Some states have steered clear of the civil-commitment system, partly because of financial reasons. In Louisiana, legislation died last year after top lawmakers questioned the cost and constitutional issues. Vermont legislators rejected a similar proposal.
Unnecessary treatment?
There is also the continuing debate about whether psychological treatment of sex offenders has any real effect on making predators less threatening.
Fitch, the Maryland expert, said research suggests that treatment lowers their risk of committing more sex crimes only slightly, something like less than 20 percent. He said states without civil commitment for sex offenders tend to focus on controlling behavior more than psychology. Colorado, for example, manages them through intensive supervision, lie-detector tests, tracking devices and counseling.
Not all civil commitment programs are financially strained. The cost of Arizona’s system actually dropped slightly in the last five years. In Wisconsin, the Sand Ridge center has expanded gradually without any outcry about the money involved.
Wisconsin has released 61 sex offenders since adopting a civil-commitment system in 1994.
But in Minnesota, no one has ever gotten out. One man was released provisionally but got pulled back for a technical violation and later died in confinement.
“Are Minnesota sex offenders that much more dangerous than Wisconsin sex offenders? Why can’t we do that?” asked Eric Janus, an expert on civil commitment who heads William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul.
Missouri and Pennsylvania have released one patient each. Nebraska has released just one person since 2006. Texas has yet to release anyone from its outpatient program.
That compares with states like California, which has put nearly 200 offenders back into the community, and New Jersey, where 123 have been let go.
At least 62 sex offenders have died while confined in six states that tracked such deaths.
Minnesota’s law was passed in 1994 after the state Supreme Court overturned the commitment of Dennis Linehan, a repeat sex offender who had served 27 years in prison for kidnapping a 14-year-old babysitter found strangled in 1965.
After public outrage, Gov. Arne Carlson called the Legislature into a one-day special session to broaden the civil commitment statute. Linehan was swiftly recommitted.
Sjodin connection
The program grew steadily over the next decade, then exploded after the 2003 abduction and slaying of Dru Sjodin, a 22-year-old UND student, by a Minnesota sex offender. The suspect, Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., had been freed after finishing a 23-year sentence for an attempted abduction. Prison authorities did not recommend civil commitment.
After Sjodin’s murder, state prison authorities began referring all high-risk sex offenders for commitment. The program’s population jumped from 167 in 2000 to 565 this year. It is projected to reach 1,000 in six or seven years.
Paymar, the St. Paul lawmaker, said he would like to see the state move toward a system of indeterminate criminal sentences for sex crimes, giving prison authorities more discretion over when to release sex offenders who might otherwise be candidates for civil commitment.
Even as he questioned Minnesota’s spending, Paymar chose his words carefully.
“No one wants to be — certainly here in this body — perceived to be soft on sex offenders,” he said.
In California, Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher echoed that sentiment, saying public safety trumps any discussion of the expense of civil commitment. Fletcher, a Republican, represents a San Diego district where 17-year-old Chelsea King was raped and murdered by a convicted child molester in February. The offender, John Albert Gardner III, also raped and murdered Amber Dubois, 14, near Fletcher’s district.
“At the end of the day,” Fletcher said, “you have to keep them incarcerated whatever the cost.” ..Source.. Martiga Lohn
April 22, 2010
At Moose Lake, a facility some say is more prison than therapy
The last sentence says it all -civil commitment will be a never ending process for anyone confined in it-.4-22-2010 Minnesota:
Moose Lake, Minn. — Three fences topped with razor wire line the perimeter of the state sex offender facility.
Inside are two steel and concrete buildings that house more than 400 men who have completed sentences for sex crimes. The men are still behind bars because county judges found they were too dangerous to return to communities and placed them under civil commitment.
After weeks of debate, state lawmakers agreed in March to allot $45.7 million for an expansion of the Moose Lake facility that officials say is vital for treatment. It will allow the program to keep pace with Minnesota's growing population of people under civil commitment. Taxpayers will have to spend more in two years, and at regular intervals afterward, to stay at that pace.
As the expansion gets underway, advocates for the offenders are questioning the treatment program's true purpose -- and the conditions under which the patients are kept. The ACLU of Minnesota represents men at Moose Lake who allege it is more like a prison than a treatment center.
The Moose Lake facility houses more than 400 men who have completed sentences for sex crimes. Each man costs the state $328 a day.
Dennis Benson, director of the state's sex offender treatment program, said the men at Moose Lake are patients, not inmates. Each man spends between six and ten hours a week in therapy -- mostly group discussion sessions, he said.
"Treatment goes way beyond the two hours of group that they spend everyday," Benson said. "We're documenting how they interact when they go to their work portion of the day. We document if we see something in the visiting room. Clinical staff will tell you someone can do fine in a treatment room but can they carry that behavior over to the gym? That approach is very different to even a sex offender treatment program at a prison."
At Moose Lake, men walk through the halls in street clothes. A few stand in groups, talking quietly.
But County courts considered them too dangerous to put back in communities. Judges placed them under civil commitment, allowing the state to hold the men in treatment indefinitely.
Every patient has to take responsibility for their crimes. Therapists check if they're telling the truth with regular polygraph tests, Benson said.
But the state has no authority to force sex offenders into treatment. About 90 refuse to participate.
Among them is Wallace Beaulieu. He was in pre-treatment therapy at Moose Lake but stopped participating.
"Anybody can say they're providing treatment, but if you're never giving anybody the opportunity to be released, what's the treatment then?" asks Beaulieu, 38.
Beaulieu said he was convicted twice for a forced sexual encounter -- one of a woman, in 1990, and 1992, a teenage girl. He said he spent four years in prison and was released in 1996.
Beaulieu said he did not register as a sex offender and was sent back to prison. When he finished that sentence, a Cass County judge ruled he was still a danger to the community and civilly committed him.
Beaulieu complains that Moose Lake is designed not to release patients.
"The treatment program right now is so vague," Beaulieu said. "They don't really talk about any sex offender issues that a person should be addressing.
"You go sit in there and tell them what's on your mind and all they do is write stuff down."
Whether Beaulieu and others at Moose Lake are in treatment is key part of their lawsuit. The U.S. and Minnesota Supreme courts have ruled that civil commitment is legal, as long as those committed are in treatment.
"It is a question of whether or not these conditions are reasonably related to therapeutic goals. We argue they are not," said Teresa Nelson, legal counsel for the ACLU.
"Depending on what the court rules in our case, that will have an impact on whether or not the program is found constitutional."
Instead of treatment, Beaulieu spends most of his days reading books checked out from the library or watching TV.
"We spend a lot of time in our unit," he said. "There's not a lot of activities made available for us.
"Once you serve your prison sentence you'd think you be treated better than we are here," he said. "It's like being back in prison."
As an example, Beaulieu points to his room, which he calls a cell. He said it looks just like the ones he had while in prison.
Most cells in Moose Lake are shared by two men. There are either 68 or 98 cells in each living unit.
There's a living unit for patients under 20 and another for elderly or infirmed patients.
Patients are locked in their rooms from 9:45 at night to 6:25 in the morning. The cells are largely made of welded steel, with two windows about five inches wide and four feet high. Patients double bunk and share a single toilet. They have a writing surface.
"They can have what they can put in two foot lockers," Benson said. "They can have a TV. They pay for their cable charge. They pay for the TV too."
Outside the cell is a large two-tier open space with metal chairs, tables, a ping pong table, and a row of payphones. Showers are on each side.
"So this is kind of their life," Benson said. "So we have to occupy their time. You can see some of them put puzzles together, some of them play chess. This becomes their world."
The new money approved by the legislature will fund a 100,000-square-foot addition to the Moose Lake treatment facility. It will include a new dining area, additional treatment rooms, and security offices.
The improvements will allow Moose Lake keep pace with a growing population of sex offenders. Officials figure it will give them the room they need to provide treatment -- but just for two years.
Benson said about half of patients participated in treatment a few years ago, but today 90 percent do.
In part that is because patients can make progress by graduating to St. Peter, the state's other sex offender treatment facility, he said. It offers a new treatment stage that prepares patients for release.
"That's the final stage of treatment," Benson said. "We now have five people that the courts have placed in that program and that's brand new in the last two years. ... So I think that's given a lot of hope to these folks.
No one knows when or if someone in the treatment program will be released. Until that happens, the population of civilly committed people will only grow. And the cost to taxpayers will grow with it. ..Source.. Rupa Shenoy, Minnesota Public Radio
April 20, 2010
Studying Minnesota's sex offender program
4-20-2010 Minnesota:
Legislative Auditor Jim Nobles said Tuesday that a detailed look at Minnesota's controversial sex offender program would hopefully answer many questions, but may not reach a definitive conclusion on whether it "either works or doesn't work."
Nobles acknowledged that the study, which he said his office would finish early next year, was tackling a topic that has created many headlines and much debate at the Legislature and would explore whether the program is effectively managed and provided "adequate treatment with reasonable opportunities" for patients to be discharged.
But Nobles said the study also needed to take a longer view of the program, looking at the costs of incarcerating a sex offender versus the costs of releasing them into society and running the risk of having them commit other sex crimes. "Sometimes, it's impossible to calculate," he said.
The state's sex offender program, which has grown from 149 patients in 2000 to 552 this year, has created political tension between Gov. Tim Pawlenty and DFL legislators over whether its costs can be contained and how much more should be spent without a thorough review of whether it is working. The governor and DFLers clashed earlier this year over Pawlenty's proposal to build a new facility in Moose Lake to accommodate the program's growth.
Convicted sex offenders are sent into the program using civil commitments after they finish serving their prison terms, but state officials acknowledge that no patient has yet been successfully treated. The program came to the forefront after the widely-publicized abduction and murder of Dru Sjodin by a convicted sex offender early in the governor's administration.
"This is an incredibly important topic," said Rep. Tina Liebling, DFL-Rochester, who attended Tuesday's hearing to discuss the study's details. ..Source.. Mike Kaszuba
March 4, 2010
Legal scholar warns about Minnesota Sex Offender Program’s failures
3-4-2010 Minnesota:
In 1996, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that the state’s law permitting the indeterminate commitment of sexual predators was constitutional. In reaching that determination, then-Chief Justice A.M. “Sandy” Keith stressed that the program was primarily therapeutic rather than punitive.
Specifically, he cited evidence that patients enrolled in the state’s sex offender program could complete the four phases of treatment in a mere 32 months before being released back into society. Keith concluded that the appellant in the case, Dennis Linehan, had not offered any evidence that the treatment program “is a sham, or even that such treatment is ineffective.”
More than 13 years later, there would seem to be abundant evidence that the state’s therapeutic regime is a sham — or at least a failure. Despite the state’s assurance that patients could complete the therapy program in less than three years, not a single person has been released from what eventually became known as the Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP).
Consequently, the number of individuals civilly committed at facilities in Moose Lake and St. Peter has skyrocketed. In 2000, there were 149 sex offenders enrolled in the program, according to the Department of Human Services, which runs the MSOP. By the end of 2009, the population had risen above 500. Within six years there are expected to be nearly 1,000 individuals committed by the state as sexual predators.
The costs associated with the program have grown almost as quickly. Since 2004, the budget for the MSOP has more than tripled, from $20.4 million to $64.8 million. It costs more than four times as much to house someone at the sex offender lock-up as it does to keep them in prison.
The continuous growth of the MSOP has become a point of contentious debate during the current legislative session. Gov. Tim Pawlenty wants $89 million for a planned expansion of the Moose Lake facility, which is expected to run out of beds within three years. Some Democrats have questioned the wisdom of continuing to pour money into a program that’s failed to produce any results, and the DFL-controlled Legislature didn’t include funding for the projects in the $1 billion bonding bill passed by the House and Senate last month. Pawlenty vowed to veto the measure, in part owing to the lack of funding for the sex offender facility. Democratic House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher used a parliamentary move to keep the bonding bill from reaching Pawlenty, hoping that a “cooling off period” would restart negotiations.
This latest funding debate over the MSOP once again raises questions about the program’s constitutional soundness. If the civil commitment statute was originally approved by the courts based on the premise that it was designed to rehabilitate the state’s most dangerous sexual predators, what happens if it’s unequivocally shown that the state has failed to follow through on that mission?
“We don’t know whether it has been able to rehabilitate anyone, because no one’s had the opportunity to try it,” says Eric Janus, dean of William Mitchell College of Law, who has spent more than a decade contesting Minnesota’s civil commitment statute in the courts. “What does that tell us about the real, true underlying purpose of the law?”
Most politicians — and more importantly, their constituents — aren’t particularly concerned about the constitutional rights of the state’s most heinous sex offenders. But the continuing failure of the MSOP to successfully rehabilitate individuals enrolled in the program raises the specter that the courts could eventually intervene. Ultimately that could threaten the very ability to indeterminately detain violent sexual predators.
“I think there’s some danger that, if the matter is presented properly, a court could now say that the constitutional foundation has crumbled,” says Janus.
There is some evidence that courts in Minnesota are growing skeptical of the sex offender program. Olmsted County District Court Judge Kevin Lund has repeatedly questioned the therapeutic intentions of the program. Two years ago he refused to commit a convicted sex offender on grounds that the MSOP had demonstrated no ability to rehabilitate individuals.
“These facilities are nothing more than detention facilities,” Lund wrote at the time.
Last year, the Olmsted County judge similarly granted an appeal in the case of Jesus Travis. Janus was enlisted to write a legal brief on the sex offender’s behalf. The gist of his argument was that the state had failed to follow through on promises to treat individuals enrolled in the MSOP.
“Travis now claims that the promises are bankrupt — systematically, pervasively, and intentionally,” Janus wrote. “Just as the courts inferred a non-punitive purpose from these fulsome promises, so now should the courts infer a punitive purpose from their betrayal.”
The Minnesota Court of Appeals was unmoved by this legal argument. In June, the court rejected Travis’ appeal and sent the case back to Olmsted County.
There’s also been some recent legal heat for the MSOP in federal courts. Wallace Beaulieu, who is involuntarily enrolled in the program, originally filed a pro se lawsuit in 2007 arguing that his civil rights were being violated and that conditions at Moose Lake were tantamount to imprisonment. Among Beaulieu’s specific complaints: full-body strip searches and confinement in shackles. After a federal judge determined that Beaulieu’s complaints might have merit, the Minnesota chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was enlisted to recruit lawyers for the case.
“We’re not saying shut the program down,” says Teresa Nelson, an attorney with the ACLU. “We’re not saying release the plaintiffs. It’s not a challenge to the overall program. It’s a conditions challenge.”
Despite these recent legal tremors, the MSOP is highly unlikely to be invalidated by the courts anytime soon. Judges are no more eager than other public officials to stick their necks out for sexual predators, and there is abundant case law backing the legal soundness of civil commitment programs. In 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a Kansas statute passed constitutional muster, and it has ratified that viewpoint in multiple ensuing cases.
“It will have to be raised in the right context and at a time when the court feels receptive to re-examining its earlier decisions,” says Janus. “I don’t know when, if ever, that will be. There’s a huge amount of resistance to opening that can of worms.”
Another impediment to challenging the bedrock constitutionality of the civil commitment statute is cost. Such a legal battle would likely take years and is unlikely to look particularly enticing for an attorney working pro bono.
“It would be a very expensive undertaking,” says Nelson. “It would be very difficult. It’s going to require a lot of expert witnesses to fully review the program and the treatment that’s offered.” ..Source.. Paul Demko
September 4, 2009
MN- Building sought for sex offenders
9-4-2009 Minnesota:
The administration of Gov. Tim Pawlenty is to decide in the next several months whether to seek $300,000 in funding to design a new residential facility that aims to help certain court-committed sex offenders at the St. Peter Regional Treatment Center to reintegrate into the community.
The money is being sought by the Department of Human Services in anticipation of a growing number of sex offenders gaining approval for participation in the Community Preparation Services (CPS) program.
If Pawlenty includes the request in his list of bonding proposals, and the Minnesota Legislature approves it, construction funding of $3 million would be sought in 2012. The funding would construct a residential facility on the treatment center campus but outside the secured perimeter of the Minnesota Sex Offender Program.
The CPS program began early this year but currently houses just two Minnesota Sex Offender Program residents who have been approved to begin the process of reintegration into the community. A Special Review Board decides whether sex offenders have made sufficient progress to participate in the reintegration program.
“MSOP anticipates that the Special Review Board will grant approval for approximately 18-25 residents over the next 6 years,” according to documents submitted with the request for design money.
The two residents currently in the program are being housed in the century-old Halverson House on the treatment center’s northeast corner, but that house is licensed for just five residents. The new larger facility would be located on the treatment center’s west side.
The Minnesota Sex Offender Program attempts to provide treatment to people committed by courts as sexual psychopathic personalities or sexually dangerous persons. They typically are committed as they near the end of a prison term following a criminal conviction.
Participants in the CPS program are the ones “who have completed primary treatment requirements and have demonstrated meaningful change” and who receive the approval of the Special Review Board.
“The CPS program is designed to assist with the reintegration of MSOP residents from a secure setting on campus to a more homelike setting located outside the secure perimeter,” according to the documents. “... The CPS program will provide specialized programming to prepare residents for successful community reintegration.”
Staff will monitor patients in a number of ways, including “electronic monitoring, intermittent staff surveillance, GPS tracking and drug and alcohol screening.” Residents who make adequate progress would eventually have opportunities to work in the community and have “other community involvement.”
Whether or not the design funding will make the cut will be decided by the Pawlenty administration as it prioritizes hundreds of requests for funding through the bonding bill, which typically provides for approximately $1billion in construction around the state.
“It is important to note that none of the requests have been approved by the Governor’s Office or Minnesota Management and Budget ...,” said Bonnie Martin, project information manager at the Department of Human Services. ..Source.. by Mark Fischenich, Free Press Staff Writer
February 1, 2009
MN- State hospital patient faces felony charge
Is it any wonder aman knowing his life is being illegally cut short, would not resort to conduct such as this.
2-1-2009 Minnesota:
ST. PETER — A 25-year old patient with the Minnesota Sex Offender Progam (MSOP) who is housed at the St. Peter Regional Treatment Center has been charged with a felony for allegedly punching a security counselor with a fist.
Dustin Kenneth Lee Nelson has been charged in Nicollet County District Court with felony fourth degree assault (secured treatment facility personnel). If convicted, he could face a maximum penalty of two years in jail and a $4,000 fine.
Court records show St. Peter Police were notified on December 29 by an MSOP investigative supervisor of an assault involving Nelson which happened at the Regional Treatment Center on November 26.
The report indicated that day Nelson had become verbally abusive to staff in his unit and was in the process of being restrained to be taken into protective isolation when he punched a security counselor with a closed fist in the left cheek and eyebrow area.
The officer observed the victim’s face to be red and swollen and the victim was later treated at River’s Edge Hospital for minor head trauma injuries.
Since the incident, Nelson has been returned to the Minnesota Correctional Facility in St. Cloud.
He had served a seven-year prison sentence for a felony third degree sexual assault in Ramsey County as well 15 months for an assault conviction in Chisago County in 2005. He was in the process of being civilly committed as a sexually dangerous person when the most recent incident occurred and was eventually transferred out of the St. Peter facility. ..News Source..
June 9, 2008
MN- Locked in limbo - Part-4
6-9-2008 Minnesota:
Treatment, or shadow prison system?
Project aims to raise questions about Minnesota's program for sexual predators.
Larry Oakes, our longtime northern Minnesota correspondent, regularly drives through Moose Lake, home to one of the state's treatment centers for sexual offenders. He has seen the place grow over time, and he became curious about who was in there and why.
That curiosity led to a three-part series, starting today, exploring why Minnesota has become the nation's leader in civil commitments of men who have completed their prison sentences but have been judged to pose an ongoing risk for sexual violence. On a per capita basis, Minnesota has more offenders in its Sex Offender Program (MSOP) than any other state and is second in raw numbers only to California, which has six times the population.
One major reason: Unlike other states with similar systems, no one in Minnesota has been released from treatment.
That raises some important questions about whether this is really a treatment program or a shadow prison system.
This project was not particularly popular in our newsroom. No one wants to see another case like that of Dru Sjodin, who was murdered in 2003 by a recently released sex offender. Her case resulted in a surge in the number of offenders sent to the program. Earlier that year, controversy over the possibility of someday easing certain offenders back into the community prompted Gov. Tim Pawlenty to issue an order that no one be released unless required by law or by a court. That order still stands, and Pawlenty declined to answer questions about the system.
"There's a justifiable reaction to these crimes from the public and state officials -- never again," said Tom Buckingham, a senior editor who worked on this project. "But if the MSOP is supposed to be the answer to 'never again,' it has to have accountability and some demonstrable success. Otherwise, the courts could rule at some point that it's merely a parallel prison system that must be disbanded.''
I urge readers to put aside their emotional responses to the question of sex offenders -- I respond that way myself -- and read these stories to get a true understanding of what is happening here. If our society wants to throw away the key, lawmakers and judges have that power. But in Minnesota, prisoners are being committed based on a consensus of psychologists. They are treated, with the stated goal of allowing them to reenter society, but never released. Meanwhile, the costs to taxpayers are staggering.
"We're questioning whether this is a smart way of dealing with sexual offenders," Oakes said. "Everyone knows sexual violence needs to be dealt with, but a lot of people who examine this program come away with pointed questions. The MSOP costs three times more than treatment given in prisons. So far, the treatment has never ended for anyone in the MSOP except when they die. It puts the taxpayer on the hook forever."
Oakes spent many months reporting this story. He faced difficulty getting information on the residents of the MSOP, because the state took the position that they were patients and thus their records were private. He had to go directly to the patients and ask them to release their records.
Last month -- after nearly two years of trying -- he was allowed to tour one of these facilities.
Many of the patients you will read about over these three days committed terrible crimes. None of us would want to see them on the streets again unless they receive successful treatment. But the parameters under which commitment is allowed are expanding, raising the prospect of an ever-widening population locked up indefinitely.
Some patients have been detained, first in prison and then in the MSOP, since they were juveniles. And two didn't actually commit a sex crime -- they are there for sexual obsession and stalking and the fear that they could rape or molest someone.
Oakes has covered some heinous crimes involving sexual offenders -- he knows the danger they create for society. "I've seen the damage that predators can do. ... I don't feel sympathetic to them. It's the system that needed examination, not because it is treating sex offenders poorly, but because of the effect on taxpayers and because of the legal template it creates. It can grow into something larger."
Everyone fears that someone released from the MSOP could commit a new crime. Our role in reporting this project is not to suggest that this fear is unfounded; it's to raise questions about the way the state has responded to it. ..News Source.. by Nancy Barnes, Editor, Star Tribune
MN- Locked in limbo - Part-3
6-9-2008 Minnesota:
How sex offenders are civilly committed in Minnesota
Under Minnesota law, two categories of sex offenders may be committed:
A "sexual psychopathic personality" is someone who, because of a mental or emotional condition:
1. Engaged in a habitual course of misconduct in sexual matters.
2. Has an utter lack of power to control his or her sexual impulses.
3. As a result, is dangerous to others.
A "sexually dangerous person" is someone who:
1. Engaged in a course of harmful sexual conduct, creating a substantial likelihood of serious physical or emotional harm to someone.
2. Has a sexual, personality or mental disorder
3. Is likely to engage in harmful sexual conduct in the future.
How the commitment process works:
1. As the date of an offender's prison release approaches, or in some cases after he (nearly all are men) has been conditionally released, a Department of Corrections committee and attorney decide whether to recommend civil commitment.
2. Recommendations to commit go to the county attorney who prosecuted the offender criminally. He or she decides whether to petition a court for commitment. The state attorney general's office assists many counties.
3. A petition leads to a trial in which a judge hears testimony from the offender, court-appointed psychologists (including one chosen by the offender, if requested) and others. The offender's attorney can call and cross-examine witnesses.
4. The judge decides whether to provisionally commit the offender for treatment as a sexual psychopathic personality, sexually dangerous person or both. After 60 to 90 days, the judge decides whether to make the commitment indefinite.
5. During treatment, the patient, his attorney or the facility may petition for release to a Special Review Board appointed by the Human Services commissioner. The board's decision may be appealed to a state Supreme Court appeal panel. The panel's decision may be appealed to the state Court of Appeals and state Supreme Court.
Sources: Minnesota Department of Human Services, Department of Corrections, Minnesota statutes, Minnesota Office of the Ombudsman for Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities, various legal journals and studies. ..News Source.. by
MN- Locked in limbo - Part-2
Minnesota has civilly committed 554 men and one woman to the Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP), designed to treat paroled sex offenders until they are no longer dangerous. The 2003 killing of Dru Sjodin triggered a surge of commitments. But the system's spiraling cost and lack of measurable success are causing growing unease. Twenty four offenders have died, but no one has been permanently released.
6-9-2008 Minnesota:
'They're all close calls now'
PINE CITY, MINN -- Isaiah Swedeen's future hung in the balance as deputies escorted him into the courtroom. ¶ The 20-year-old already had been through a series of treatment and detention centers after disclosing that he had raped his two sisters. Now officials were asking Judge James Reuter to confine Swedeen indefinitely, to prevent him from victimizing someone again. ¶ Swedeen's history of mental disorders, difficulties controlling himself and resistance to treatment meant that he fit the legal definition of a sexually dangerous person, prosecutors from Pine County and the Minnesota attorney general's office argued.
They asked Reuter to commit Swedeen to the Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP). Created in 1994 to treat offenders until they are no longer dangerous, the MSOP has never released anyone committed to it.
Swedeen's case illustrates the difficulty judges face in deciding sex-offender civil commitments in Minnesota. They are being asked to commit an ever greater variety of offenders to indefinite, prison-like confinement, based on the educated guesses of a small group of psychologists paid to employ the fallible science of risk assessment. Even some judges say the applicable law is so broad that it can be used to send almost anyone with a sex-crime conviction to the MSOP.
"I can't remember the last time I had a slam-dunk" sex-offender commitment, said Minneapolis psychologist Roger Sweet, a 30-year veteran of various kinds of commitment cases. "They're all close calls now."
'The net is wider," agreed psychologist Gerald Henkel-Johnson of Esko, who has done violence risk assessments for the courts for 13 years.
Judges' decisions are made even more difficult by the MSOP's track record.
"Nobody involved at our level wants this to be a system where we are actually locking people up for life under the pretext of treating them," said Hennepin County District Judge Peter Albrecht.
The stakes are highest for young offenders like Swedeen. He is one of about 60 men in the MSOP - about 11 percent of the total - sent there based solely on their records as juveniles, according to the Department of Human Services.
A 'slippery slope'
Like many offenders, Swedeen was sexually abused as a child, at the hands of his drug-addicted birth parents, their friends, and child pornographers in Washington state. He was found to have genital herpes at age 4, when authorities took custody of him and his sisters, who were similarly abused.
Keefe and Holly Swedeen eventually adopted the children and raised them in Hinckley, Minn. By the time Isaiah was 14, the Swedeens had trouble controlling him, and they sent him to a series of treatment centers for troubled adolescents.
At one center he revealed to counselors that he'd been raping his sisters, who are one and three years younger. In 2002, a judge sentenced him to sex offender treatment in prison. But he kept getting kicked out of treatment because of angry outbursts or sexual misconduct with other inmates.
In 2005, Pine County started proceedings to commit him to the MSOP but gave him another chance to complete treatment, this time at an inpatient program in Minneapolis called Alpha House. Again he failed, and authorities returned him to Reuter's courtroom in the summer of 2006 for a civil commitment trial.
Swedeen's adoptive parents dreaded the outcome as they took seats in the front row of the Pine City courtroom.
"What he did to his sisters stemmed from his own abuse," Keefe Swedeen said. "He wanted help, and he admitted what he did. Now he's being thrown to the wolves."
Reuter invited three court-appointed psychologists from the Twin Cities to sit in the empty jury box. (Minnesota is one of only three states that don't allow jury trials for such commitments.) The prosecution and defense had picked the psychologists from lists kept by the attorney general's office and many counties. The lists have names of psychologists with experience in evaluating and assigning risk levels to defendants, prisoners and people rendered potentially dangerous by mental illness.
About two dozen of these psychologists, who are called forensic examiners by the courts, have supplied the foundation for most of Minnesota's sex offender commitments.
For taxpayer-funded fees now approaching $10,000 per case per examiner, they administer tests devised by behavioral scientists, diagnose personality disorders, consult actuarial tables and predict whether an offender is likely to re-offend.
Their participation is controversial within the mental health profession.
The American Psychiatric Association, National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors and other groups have objected to civil commitment of criminals. They argue that most aren't mentally ill and that using mental health systems in this way discredits both psychiatry and the justice system.
The problem, critics say, is that disorders such as antisocial or narcissistic personality, which have been used under the Sexually Dangerous Persons Act to justify commitments of offenders, are prevalent in any group of criminals and not unheard-of in non-criminals.
"Using that standard, you could commit a lot of bank robbers," said Dr. Fred Berlin, founder of the Sexual Disorders Clinic at Johns Hopkins University and a critic of civilly committing sex offenders. "It can be a slippery slope."
Critics also question whether mental health professionals should render opinions on whether a criminal qualifies for unscientific legal designations such as "sexual psychopathic personality" or "sexually dangerous person," which are needed in order to be committed in Minnesota.
"Those terms are not in the diagnostic manual," said Dr. Jeffrey Hardwig, president of the Minnesota Psychiatric Society. "What psychiatry objects to is the use of civil commitment to prolong somebody's sentence. Defining mental illness purely based on criminal behavior is not a place we want to go."
Tools are fallible
In predicting risk, examiners rely on established actuarial tools -- worksheets developed by social scientists -- to compile facts such as the offender's age, number of victims, degree of violence used and other characteristics.
The offender's "score" is compared with databases of offenders to see whether he (almost all are men) falls into a group that re-offended - a statistical approach much like the one insurance companies use to assign risk.
Some examiners readily acknowledge the fallibility of their tools.
"In general, these instruments are about 70 percent accurate; thus they're wrong 30 percent of the time," said psychologist John Austin of St. Paul, who has testified in commitment cases since 1979.
Scientists who examined the validity of two popular risk-assessment tools reported last year in the British Journal of Psychiatry that at best "professionals should be extremely cautious," and at worst "should avoid using [such tools] altogether, as the predictive accuracy of these tests may be too low [for] high-stakes decisions about individuals."
Dr. Michael Farnsworth, the state's former forensic psychiatrist, designed the MSOP and still evaluates offenders for the courts. But he doesn't place much confidence in actuarial tools.
"They still have a high rate of false positives and a pretty good rate of false negatives," Farnsworth said. "With the false negatives, there will still be people who offend against the community, and the public will feel betrayed. Conversely, with the false positives, we lock up the wrong people,'' at a cost of $134,000 each a year.
In contrast, Austin, Minn., psychologist Rosemary Linderman, an evaluator in commitment cases since 1992, has few qualms about the civil commitment process and her role in it.
While acknowledging that "all [risk assessment] tools have some limitations," she said examiners weigh the results against their professional judgment, based on their experience and extensive reviews of the offender's history.
Linderman said she's not concerned about the dramatic rise in commitment petitions that followed the 2003 rape and killing of Dru Sjodin by paroled rapist Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., who was sentenced to death.
"I think our world is a different world than it used to be, and that we need to pay attention to high-risk sex offenders to protect our communities," Linderman said.
But Austin said the spike is troubling. "I am unaware of any data that indicates that sex offenders released since 2003 are at a greater risk to re-offend sexually," said Austin, adding that a 2007 Minnesota Department of Corrections study "seems to indicate the opposite, in fact."
The study checked for new criminal activity among 3,166 sex offenders released from Minnesota prisons between 1990 and 2002. After an average of 8.4 years, 10 percent had been convicted of a new sex offense. Significantly, those released earlier were much more likely to be reconvicted within three years than those released later -- 17 percent in 1990 vs. 3 percent by 2002.
"The reduction in sexual recidivism since 1990 is likely due, in part, to the longer and more intense post-release supervision of sex offenders," the study concluded.
A 'deeply troubled' judge
No one knows whether Isaiah Swedeen will molest or rape again. The court system paid the psychologists to make their best guesses. Those guesses carried the weight of verdicts.
When first retained by the state to review Swedeen's history in 2005, psychologist James Gilbertson said that Swedeen arguably met the legal criteria for commitment as both a sexual psychopathic personality and a sexually dangerous person.
Psychologist Mary Kenning, testifying at the same hearing, said Swedeen didn't seem to fit those criteria but may have been committable as mentally ill and dangerous, a separate legal designation under another law.
After interviewing and testing Swedeen, both Kenning and a third psychologist, James Alsdurf, said Swedeen needed treatment but not indefinite confinement.
But after Swedeen washed out of the program at Alpha House, all three experts supported committing him when they reconvened in June 2006.
"Since November 2005, what's changed?" asked Dan Bina, Swedeen's attorney.
"I gave him the benefit of the doubt in 2005, and I probably shouldn't have," Alsdurf answered, adding that Swedeen "completely bombed" in his chance to avoid commitment.
Alsdurf and Kenning testified that they also were persuaded by Swedeen's additional disclosure during treatment that he had inappropriately touched a neighbor boy when they wrestled as children. Statistically, offenses against both sexes increase the risk of re-offending.
During a break in the hearing, Bina, Swedeen's attorney, paced the hallway. "I'd rather have a murder case than one of these," he said. "With murder, there's a set period of time."
Three months later, on Sept. 15, 2006, Judge Reuter preliminarily committed Swedeen to the MSOP as a sexually dangerous person.
In early 2007, deputies returned him to Pine City for a required hearing to decide whether that commitment should be "indeterminate."
Bina leaned toward his client and asked: "Do you understand that it may be a year, and it may be 50 years?"
With youthful bravado Swedeen replied, "I'll be out in 10 years, guaranteed."
Bina asked that the commitment be reconsidered because Swedeen's behavior in the MSOP improved after he refused to take psychiatric medications. Bina noted that an MSOP psychiatrist had filed a report saying that Swedeen didn't appear to need the drugs and that his behavior was more consistent with a personality disorder than a major mental illness.
Noah Cashman, the assistant attorney general arguing the state's case, countered that Swedeen had had angry outbursts and at least eight rule violations. His condition remained much the same, Cashman argued.
Judge Reuter said he was disappointed with the MSOP's 60-day report. "It was perfunctory, redundant," he said.
Cashman replied: "With the 60-day review, the information will be limited," adding that "it takes years" to effectively treat someone with Swedeen's problems.
Reuter said he'd decide within a few weeks, then adjourned. "Mr. Swedeen, take care of yourself now, OK?" the judge said. Swedeen nodded toward the judge as he was led away.
Seventeen days later, Reuter signed an order for "indeterminate commitment." The order said there was no appropriate place for Swedeen in Minnesota besides the MSOP.
But Reuter also wrote that he was "deeply troubled" that Swedeen apparently hadn't received any treatment while his final commitment was pending.
"He has just reached 21 years of age," Reuter wrote. Given the MSOP's history, he added, an indefinite commitment "is analogous to a life sentence without the chance of parole." ..News Source.. by LARRY OAKES, Star Tribune
MN- Locked in limbo - Part-1
6-9-2008 Minnesota:
Minnesota commits a greater proportion of sex offenders to treatment lock-ups after prison than any other state. No one has been released, costs are mounting, and questions are increasing.
MOOSE LAKE -- In the 14 years since Minnesota's Sexually Dangerous Persons Act cleared the way for the state to detain hundreds of paroled sex offenders in prison-like treatment centers, just 24 men have met what has proved to be the only acceptable standard for release. They died.
"We would say, 'Another one completed treatment,'" said Andrew Babcock, a former guard and counselor in the Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP).
Minnesota now has 544 men and one woman behind razor wire as a result of sex-offender civil commitments -- nearly one of every seven nationwide, and the most nationally per-capita.
Most have completed their prison sentences. They are being detained for the stated purpose of treating them until they are no longer dangerous.
Only Washington state preceded Minnesota in handling paroled offenders this way. Now, 19 states and the federal government, which last year began its own commitment system, are detaining a total of nearly 4,000 former prison inmates for indefinite treatment.
The MSOP began with support from the public and legislators angered that paroled rapists had murdered several young women in the late 1980s. The 2003 killing of college student Dru Sjodin by newly released rapist Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. prompted a new surge of commitments of all types of sex criminals, from rapists to nonviolent molesters.
"This is a very unique group that goes after vulnerable victims," said former state Sen. Wes Skoglund, DFL-Minneapolis, who helped draft the Sexually Dangerous Persons law. "Society has a constitutional and moral obligation to keep people from hurting others."
Pam Poirier, the mother of Katie Poirier, who was murdered by released rapist Donald Blom in 1999, said she would be content if no one in the MSOP is ever released. "You can't even call these men animals," Poirier said. "I say build more prisons and put them out in the desert somewhere."
But the MSOP's rising cost -- now $67 million a year -- and lack of measurable success are causing growing unease among legislators, victim advocates, judges and even the program's designers.
The financial burdens imposed by the program raise compelling questions:
• Taxpayers have spent at least a half-billion dollars on the MSOP and the commitment system feeding it, but the program can't point to the successful treatment of a single offender.
• Each "patient" costs taxpayers $134,000 a year -- three times the amount state prisons spend to treat sex offenders. Yet the state has only about 300 adult treatment beds in prison, while the MSOP has plans to double its 400-bed capacity.
• The MSOP deals with less than 3 percent of Minnesota's 20,000 predatory offenders but consumes more than half of what the state spends yearly to control and track them.
• The MSOP's budget, which has tripled since 2004, is more than seven times the amount the state spends to monitor the 3,500 sex offenders on probation. The state spends less to keep 31 offenders on electronic home monitoring each year than it does to keep just one offender in the MSOP.
"It's just an awful lot of taxpayer money for what we're getting,'' said Sen. Linda Berglin, DFL-Minneapolis, chair of the budget division of the Health and Human Services Committee, which oversees the program's funding. "We've cut everything else in God's green Earth, but we've spent a lot of new resources on this group. They go in but they don't come out."
Ratcheting up
The MSOP was created to treat small numbers of the state's worst sex criminals. But the killing of Sjodin prompted officials to begin committing soon-to-be-released prisoners at a much higher rate, from an average of 15 per year before 2003 to 50 per year since.
That same year, Gov. Tim Pawlenty prohibited releases not required by law or court order. His order came after then-Attorney General and eventual gubernatorial candidate Mike Hatch accused the administration of planning releases to save money.
Pawlenty declined to discuss the program with the Star Tribune. The governor's order barring releases remains in effect, Pawlenty spokesman Brian McClung said late last month.
The MSOP's population surged past all similar programs except California's, which has 703 hospitalized offenders in a state with a population six times greater than Minnesota's. An 800-bed, $131 million expansion is underway at the MSOP's Moose Lake facility to handle the influx.
"It's kind of gotten way out of control. ... We're filling these treatment facilities as fast as we can build them," said Sen. Don Betzold, DFL-Fridley, who cosponsored the Sexually Dangerous Persons law. "Rodriguez ratcheted everything up. No one wants to be blamed for letting anybody slip through the cracks."
And no one wants to release someone who might reoffend -- although 13 other states have released a total of more than 250. Experts say the MSOP's lack of discharges increases the odds that the courts will declare the program unconstitutional and order the detainees released.
"At some point a federal judge might say all you're doing is incarcerating people after their prison sentences," Betzold said. "At some point you have to show some result."
Some state judges have already reached that point. In February, Olmsted County District Judge Kevin Lund refused to commit rapist Robert Tolbert, even as he ruled that Tolbert, 30, is a sexually dangerous person.
Instead, the judge ordered Tolbert back to prison for treatment or until the end of his sentence in 2012.
"Since no patient has ever been discharged," Lund wrote, "... the [MSOP] is not a treatment program, and [MSOP] facilities are not treatment facilities. These facilities are nothing more than detention facilities."
The county, joined by the state Corrections Department, has appealed.
Wes Kooistra, assistant commissioner of the Department of Human Services, which runs the MSOP, said the lack of releases "deserves public discussion." But he added that the bar for release should be high.
"That's why they're in our program -- because they have victimized innocent people," he said.
Most molested children
The patients, as the program refers to its residents, range from 19 to 81 years old. While state officials refused to release their names, citing privacy laws, the Star Tribune obtained names and other information on about 350 of them through other means, including their commitment papers and other public records.
Of the 350, seven are convicted killers, and a few dozen have histories of violent rape. The majority molested children, usually by means of coercion or manipulation. Many victimized their own children or other relatives. About one in 10 have only juvenile records.
Many were molested themselves as children.
Their histories are disturbing but don't all fit the violent predator stereotype. Here are four examples:
• Christopher Welin, 29, was committed on his 19th birthday. He spent most of his teens in juvenile detention after being declared delinquent at 12 for molesting and raping his little brother and other children.His prison release was approaching in 1992 when authorities committed him as a "psychopathic personality." The state Supreme Court overturned the decision, saying he didn't have an "utter lack" of control over his sexual impulses, the standard required by Minnesota's 1939 Psychopathic Personality law. The Legislature responded by passing the Sexually Dangerous Persons Act, allowing the recommitment of Linehan and lowering the standard. Judges can now commit any offender deemed by psychologists to have a mental or personality disorder and likely to reoffend.
• Dr. James Poole, 69, was convicted in 1991 of molesting female patients and imprisoned for eight years. He also admits sexually abusing a 6-year-old girl and several teens, including his daughter. He was committed in 1999.
• Ben Alverson, 32, had sexual relationships with two girls, ages 13 and 14, while he was in his early 20s. was imprisoned three years and committed in 2005 after violating probation.
• Dwane Peterson, 28, is one of two patients with no sex crime on his record. Peterson, however, had sexual fantasies about children and wrote to them. He also kidnapped an elderly man. He was committed based on his history of sexual obsession and stalking, and the risk that he might offend.
Then there is Dennis Linehan, 67, who calls himself the MSOP's "poster child" and whose history is a parent's worst nightmare. Imprisoned for killing 14-year-old Barbara Iversen in 1965 during an attempted rape, he escaped in 1975 and was caught while trying to assault a 12-year-old girl.
In 1995, the state opened the $20 million, 100-bed Sexual Psychopathic Personality Treatment Center in Moose Lake. As the program grew, it divided offenders primarily between Moose Lake and another site in St. Peter, though about 100 of the 545 inmates now are housed elsewhere and typically not reported as part of the population. Sixty-three of the about 100 were sent back to prison for release violations, to be returned to the MSOP afterward. An additional 37 who are developmentally disabled or elderly are in different facilities, including three in a state nursing home.
More treatment in prison
Both prison-based treatment and the MSOP provide group therapy, classes and other meetings. But the MSOP provides less treatment at a higher cost. According to prison officials, it costs about $100 a day to treat and house a sex offender in prison. In the MSOP, it costs more than $350 a day.
While the state says MSOP residents get five to 18 hours of treatment weekly, treatment records released by patients show that many got only five to six hours. Margretta Dwyer, former director of a sex offender outpatient program at the University of Minnesota and a volunteer adviser to MSOP residents, surveyed patients and came to the same conclusion.
"It averaged out around 5 1/2 hours per week, which makes it more like outpatient treatment,'' said Dwyer, a critic of the program. In contrast, Lino Lakes prison offers a minimum of 12 treatment hours weekly, according to the Corrections Department and former inmates.
The disparity widens when breaks are factored in. The MSOP has monthlong breaks between "trimesters," each of which contains its own weeklong break. That adds up to almost four months a year without treatment -- a deficiency cited by the Department of Human Services' own Licensing Division.
In contrast, Lino Lakes prison has four weeks of breaks a year.
A 2005 report by the Vermont Legislative Council concluded that Minnesota "is essentially warehousing sex offenders in mental health facilities at a cost far higher than that to incarcerate them in prison."
In most ways the MSOP is indistinguishable from prison, with cell blocks and lockdowns for searches. Residents earn modest wages cleaning bathrooms or making signs for state office buildings. They can also work out in the gym, read in the library and visit a computer room, though it lacks Internet access.
The MSOP counts work, classes and exercise as treatment because each is therapeutic, said assistant commissioner Kooistra, who added that the number of breaks is something "we're going to look at." But he said that the breaks are more than the term implies.
"What's going on during that time is a lot of assessment, a lot of team meetings," Kooistra said. "There's an increase in patient activities," such as work and recreation. "It's not like everybody's watching TV."
Administrators say that constant supervision also is part of their treatment, done mostly by "security counselors" trained to guard patients and document day-to-day behavior.
Growing uneasiness
Last year, the MSOP published a mission statement: "To promote public safety by providing a safe and secure environment in which civilly committed sex offenders are offered the opportunity to participate in high-quality treatment programs that enhance the success of their re-entry into society."
In theory, then, eventual releases from the program are a given. But in February, Ann LaValley-Wood, the assistant clinical director, wrote in a memo to a patient that "the focus of the program is not completion. It is consistent demonstration of behavioral change."
As the program grows older and larger, so too, critics say, grows the distance between its promise and what it delivers.
Dr. Michael Farnsworth, the psychiatrist who helped design the program, quit his post after the 2003 exchange between Pawlenty and Hatch, saying the MSOP was "mired in politics.'' Farnsworth said the state has a dilemma: "How do you release somebody after building them up as monsters?"
The MSOP's rapid growth has forced the Legislature to appropriate additional money for it in every bonding bill since 2003. Berglin said that meanwhile the state has cut millions from programs for at-risk kids -- the pool from which experts say many sex offenders emerge.
"You'd have to conclude that the only people we're concerned about in the state of Minnesota during the past four years are [committed] sex offenders,'' Berglin complained during one hearing. Other legislators have asked why treatment costs so much less in prison, where 83 offenders have completed the two- to three-year program since 2002.
Last fall, Dennis Benson, then deputy commissioner of corrections, told a House-Senate subcommittee that the prison system offers better "economy of scale" -- larger facilities and more inmates to spread out the costs.
Benson said corrections officials were castigated after the Sjodin killing for referring too few offenders for possible civil commitment -- only eight in 2001. He said employees "were accused of saving money -- all kinds of what I think are ridiculous accusations." After Sjodin, he said, "we tried to tighten it up," jumping to 170 referrals in 2004.
"We are trying to put the right people through the process so that we don't have another tragedy," he said.
Berglin replied: "When it was eight or 13, I said it wasn't enough. But I didn't think that meant we'd get 150." In an interview, she added: "The vast majority of sex offenders in this state are not committed. They're living out in the community, and for the most part successfully. ... You know, it's very possible that some of the people who have been committed would have been in that [group]."
This spring the state appointed Benson to head the MSOP. Almost immediately he and some legislators toured Wisconsin's program for civilly committed sex offenders. The program has discharged 14 people after what was deemed successful treatment. An additional 19 won release in legal challenges or risk reassessments, according to director Steve Watters.
Of those 33, only two have reoffended sexually, which Watters attributes partly to the close tabs kept on those transitioning to freedom.
Benson said he'd like to model more of the MSOP after Wisconsin's program.
A 'Pandora's box'?
In 2006 the MSOP's citizen review board observed that the program "is beginning to look like a black hole. ... There has to be a way to assuage the public's fear while providing a genuine therapeutic intervention.''
A former member of that board, retired state District Judge Linn Slattengren, said that "the system is so restricted by political pressures that some offenders are effectively imprisoned for life" after committing crimes that wouldn't merit that sentence in criminal court.
Slattengren said the system fails to distinguish between those who belong there and those who don't.
"There were a large number of patients who ought to be restrained indefinitely. There were a small number who should never have been sent there in the first place, and some who society no longer needed to restrain in an institution," Slattengren said.
Testifying to Berglin's committee, Eric Janus, president of William Mitchell College of Law, argued that the civil commitment of criminals is a "Pandora's box" that could reach beyond sex offenders.
"We as a society will be locking people up for years, based not on a crime that they committed ... but because they pose a risk, and we think they might [someday] commit some undefined, unspecified crime," said Janus, author of "Failure to Protect -- America's Sexual Predator Laws and the Rise of the Preventive State."
Some experts say the emotion evoked by sex crimes makes it hard to craft policies that recognize differences among offenders or the pervasiveness of sexual violence.
"We can't incarcerate and punish our way out of this problem; it doesn't get at the root causes," said Nancy Sabin, director of the Jacob Wetterling Foundation, named for the St. Joseph, Minn., boy who was abducted in 1989 and never seen again.
"Where are these guys coming from? They're coming from our own homes," Sabin said. We have to own the problem so we learn how to get past the hysteria in order to find better solutions." ..News Source.. by LARRY OAKES, Star Tribune
