Source: minnesotamonthly.com 4/19/21
Minnesota has the highest per-capita commitment rate of sex offenders nationwide, and one of the lowest release rates
The Minnesota Sex Offender Program housed at Moose Lake is tucked away in the woods, off State Highway 73, about 120 miles north of Minneapolis. The high-security facility surrounded by fences topped with razor wire is out of sight and out of mind for most Minnesotans, which leads those locked inside—some who already have served time and others who haven’t even been charged of a crime—to call it a shadow prison.
“This place is a secret—in a remote location, cut off from others,” says Duncan Brainard, 34, who was committed to the program in 2010 at age 21. “People don’t know this is happening in America.”
So when a group of about 15 people gathered outside the facility one day last summer and honked their car horns repeatedly to show support, the detainees inside found the action especially gratifying.
“The smiles on the guys’ faces spoke volumes,” says Daniel Wilson, 35, who was committed after serving almost three and a half years in prison for fourth-degree criminal sex conduct. “We are so used to not having contact with the public. [The honk-in] sends a message you’re not forgotten. We’re willing to give you another chance out here.”
The Minnesota Sex Offender Program and similar programs elsewhere resulted from a rash of state laws passed in the 1990s in the emotional aftermath of several heinous sex crimes. Yet it has become a problematic model. With 741 men in the sex offender program (most of them at Moose Lake, the rest at a facility in St. Peter), Minnesota has the highest per-capita commitment rate of sex offenders in the country and one of the lowest release rates.
Looks like a prison and not a rehabilitative facility. The gov is so full of it and they wipe their behinds on the constitution.
Eugenics and the Nazis — the California connection
Eugenics was the pseudoscience aimed at “improving” the human race. In its extreme, racist form, this meant wiping away all human beings deemed “unfit,” preserving only those who conformed to a Nordic stereotype. Elements of the philosophy were enshrined as national policy by forced sterilization and segregation laws, as well as marriage restrictions, enacted in 27 states. In 1909, California became the third state to adopt such laws. Ultimately, eugenics practitioners coercively sterilized some 60,000 Americans, barred the marriage of thousands, forcibly segregated thousands in “colonies,” and persecuted untold numbers in ways we are just learning. Before World War II, nearly half of coercive sterilizations were done in California, and even after the war, the state accounted for a third of all such surgeries.