If someone finishes a prison sentence for a violent sexual crime, but might still be dangerous, should he be released? How do you know if he’s dangerous? And when does it violate his rights to hold him?
On Monday, the Supreme Court is considering whether to hear a case that stems from these questions, a challenge to a Minnesota “civil commitment” program that holds people convicted of sexual crimes long after their sentences, ostensibly for treatment. Roughly 20 programs have arisen around the country since 1990, and at first they appeared similar to the hospitals for the mentally disabled on which they were modeled. When the Minnesota program was created in 1994, patients could bring their own computer or television or game console or aquarium, they could leave with a staff escort, visiting hours lasted eight hours a day, and if their families brought groceries, they could cook in the facility, according to the original lawsuit. In theory, once you completed treatment, you would be released.
But the laws governing the program were amended, and by 2012 the two Minnesota facilities, among others around the country, looked suspiciously like prisons. Surrounded by double-razor wire and bunked in two-man cells, more than 700 “patients,” as they were still called, now wore handcuffs and leg irons when transported. Visits were limited, personal computers and televisions were no longer allowed in, and strip searches became common.
This article points out what the task of SCOTUS is, and it isn’t just declare Minnesota’s commitment scheme unconstitutional.
They need to take this case not to declare civil commitment unconstitutional all over, but to set the precedent of what must be reasonably expected of these programs to remain constitutional in a declaration of the Minnesota program being way over on the unconstitutional side.
Similar to the Mendoza-Martinez factors that affect a law being punitive instead of regulatory, they need a standard set of question and benchmarks for civil commitment.
I’m guessing it will entail a reasonable rate of releasing treated offenders, though I’ll doubt they’ll put a number on it. They really can’t. One state may only put the worst of the worst in and really not be able to release many while a state that tosses in first time offenders better have a pretty high and quick release rate.
They also need to allow these people to be able to enjoy a majority of things a free person enjoys, and if it costs taxpayers more money than great. That money will force them to be more diligent about effective treatment and release options. Monitored internet, TV, first run movies, escorted off-site trips, monitored but frequent visitations, etc.
It is really mind boggling that a judge can claim that being locked up and deprived of your freedom isn’t considered to be a “fundamental liberty”. Come on, really. That kind of mentality is what is destroying this country. Either the judge is a complete ignoramus, or he is deliberately subverting the constitution.
The problem is calling one violent or predator is thrown around too easily. Molest a kid then youre a child molester, but commit the wrong sex act in said crime and youre labeled a sexually violent predator even if no threats pf violence were comitted. SCOTUS needs to force courts to come up with a better way to label someone a svp as well.
What I think will sink MN in this case is that they themselves say there are people they are holding who no belong there…and yet they keep them! How *any* court (are you listening 8th Circuit of Appeals??) can say that’s constitutional, is well beyond me. Also, how is it that MN is unable to rehabilitate and release, yet, per the article, NY and WI can and has? Explain that one, MN!
The element of s*x must be completely removed from all of it. The very word “s*x” must be completely removed from all of it. That would help reduce the thinking and actions being driven by emotions instead of facts.
It also makes sense. There is no reason to call someone a “violent predator” only if s*x was involved. Big government commits people for molesting children but not for shooting people?! That doesn’t make sense to anyone with a brain. And there is no reason to think that a person who commits a s*x offense needs “therapy”, polygraphs, etc. but a person who commits any other serious crime does not. That’s nothing but BS. Driven by U.S. citizens’ infantile and anti-factual obsession with s*x.
What registrants need is help and getting fair, positive treatment and have their confidentiality be maintained for their safety instead of malicious treatment programs that are used for incrimination. Registrants whose crime involves children couldn’t get help and they’re mal treated the worst, due to the conditioning and manipulation of the public through the media and egotistic minds to the myth of high recidivism and junk science as proof that “sex offenders” are evil, dangerous and incurable for the things they’ve done.