Source: cbsnews.com 2/1/24 The possible ripple effects of MN Supreme Court’s ruling on state sex offender program Or watch the video on cbsnews.com website
Read MoreSource: flaglerlive.com 9/21/22 Under Florida law, imprisonment does not depend only on proven guilt of a crime. It can also result from the possibility of a future crime. The imprisonment can be up to life. The offender has few avenues of appeal. The case is not even public. The documents on which it is based are sealed from public view. It is a little known but disquieting side of Florida law, permissible under the so-called Jimmy Ryce Act, which allows the “involuntary civil commitment” of sexually violent and dangerous predators…
Read More
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…
Read More
Source: everythinglubbock.com 4/11/22 LITTLEFIELD, Texas – Protestors gathered in front of the Civil Commitment Facility in Littlefield on Saturday morning to shine a light on the injustices they said are happening within the barbed-wire fences of the former prison. Texas created the Civil Commitment Program in 1999; like 20 other states, this kind of program allows state agencies to mandate sex offenders, who have already served their time in prison, to partake in treatment programs intended to mitigate possible reoffending in the future. In 2015, Governor Abbott reformed the program…
Read Moreposted on FAC website 3/18/22 April 9th, 10:30am Central Time, in front of the Texas Civil Commitment Center, 2600 S. Sunset Ave, Littlefield, Texas 79339 @ 10:30am Please join us for a public awareness event at the Texas Civil Commitment Program on Saturday, April 9 to rally against abuses within the program and call for a meaningful pathway to release. Our plan for those who will be coming into town Friday the 8th of April, (the day before) is to stay at the Best Western Inn located at 2600 Hall…
Read More
Source: Jim Grushack started this petition on Change.org to New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy The symbol above is associated with the legal system and the principles of fairness and equity. Then, why is it that the symbol of justice, is wearing a blind fold? Is it because the legal system only wants to see, what it wants to see? Plus, she is carrying a sword, to protect and to cut through to the truth. So what truth is she protecting, certainly not the accused sex offender? Eleanor Roosevelt once stated, “Justice…
Read MoreSource: ktvq.com 10/1/21 A man accused of sexually molesting young girls on the Crow Indian Reservation has been civilly committed as a sexually dangerous person under the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006. In a press release issued by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina, authorities said Oliver _____, 33, was ordered taken into custody. The United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina litigates all Adam Walsh Act cases for the entire country. All sexually dangerous persons…
Read More
Source: texansagainstcivilcommitment.com 8/29/21 MOOSE LAKE MN. Behind barbed wire fences a protest movement is swelling for an end to Minnesota’s Shadow Prisons, “treatment facilities” that detainees say are an unconstitutional death sentence. Nearly 800 people are held indefinitely outside of any criminal proceedings, after finishing prison sentences or without being convicted of a crime on civil allegations of being “mental ill” and “sexually dangerous”. Since Friday, and culminating in a protest led by detainees in walkers and wheelchairs this Monday, over a hundred detainees across racial lines have staged four…
Read More
Source: reason.com 8/12/21 The men must keep masturbation diaries, wear ankle monitors, and even use penile circumference gauges. Lenore Skenazy For many men serving time for committing sex offenses in Texas, their prison term never really ends—even if they complete their sentence. That’s because they’re required to enter a live-in mental health facility before returning to society. That facility—in Littlefield, Texas—is actually a former maximum security prison in the middle of a dirt field. “It comes as a surprise,” says Mary Sue Molnar, founder of Texas Voices for Reason and…
Read More
Source: womenagainstregistry.org 7/26/21 On Sunday, July 18, 2021, Women Against Registry joined anti-registry activists and anti-civil commitment activists representing five Midwestern states in an outdoor community rally at the Minnesota State Capitol Building in St. Paul. The event was compiled by the Voices of OCEAN, a coalition of family members and loved ones of those indefinitely detained at the Minnesota PreCrime Preventative Detention Facility (Also known as MSOP). About 75 persons were in attendance, including a brief visit from a Minnesota legislator and a speech from Minnesota Supreme Court candidate…
Read More
[msn.com – 6/2/21] Iowa’s sex offense treatment facility is facing questions over falsified time card records said to have netted an employee and her husband more than $52,000 in unearned income. For more than a year, the administrative assistant manipulated records to show her husband — a part-time employee of the facility — was working at times he wasn’t, according to an investigation released Wednesday by the state auditor’s office. Over about 18 months, Renae Rapp was able to orchestrate at least $52,618.19 in excessive pay for her husband, Adam,…
Read More[patch.com – 3/30/21] NAPA COUNTY, CA — As a result of a hearing Monday in San Francisco Superior Court, a convicted sexually violent predator living in Napa County must be transferred to San Francisco County, Napa County District Attorney Allison Haley announced in a news release. Charles Leroy _____, 76, was released in September 2020 to live at 4018 E. 3rd Ave. in Napa County, where for six months he lived in close proximity to two schools and within a one-mile radius of 62 children, the Napa County District Attorney’s…
Read More[yahoo.com – 2/24/21] A protracted case challenging the constitutionality of Minnesota’s system for treating sex offenders outside prison has gained new life after a federal appeals court in St. Louis ruled that claims contesting the program’s unusual conditions of confinement can move forward. In a decision released Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit determined that allegations that clients of the Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP) were subjected to improper punishment and inadequate treatment should proceed. The decision sets the stage for another…
Read More[houstonchronicle.com 2/11/21] Texas’s civil commitment program for sexually violent offenders has earned a reputation as an unforgiving place. Much of that is by design. Each of the 378 men in it has already served his full prison term, some 20 years or longer. After their sentences were up, Texas evaluated them as too likely to re-offend, however, so they were ordered kept locked up indefinitely until ready to rejoin the free world. Their average age is nearing 60. The program’s sole facility, a collection of low buildings and temporary trailers,…
Read More[reason.com – 2/10/21] The practice evades constitutional constraints by casting punishment and preventive detention as treatment. Jacob Sullum | 2.10.2021 12:01 AM “It was my understanding that I was to do the treatment, then be released,” says Mike Whipple, who recently participated in a 14-day hunger strike at the Minnesota Sex Offender Program’s facility in Moose Lake. “Twelve years later, I’m still here, doing the same thing, over and over and over.” So far the civil commitment program has incarcerated Whipple three times longer than the prison sentence he served.…
Read More[bringmethenews.com – 2/5/21] A group of men at the Minnesota Sex Offender Program’s Moose Lake facility have ended their hunger strike after nearly two weeks. The group went on strike Jan. 21, demanding a “clear path” for release from the program, which has facilities in Moose Lake and St. Peter, where “treatment is a death sentence” because despite serving their prison sentences, they’re remanded to the facilities for an unspecified amount of time, a news release says. The group of about a dozen men called off their hunger strike Wednesday…
Read More[stuff.co.nz – 2/2/21] A public safety law potentially amounting to a life sentence, was double-punishment for past crimes, the Court of Appeal has been told. A rare “full bench” of five judges was hearing a test case on Tuesday about the rights of mostly sex offenders who had finished their sentences but were still subject to restrictions, including three detained on prison grounds indefinitely under public protection orders. But the case was also about the hundreds of people under extended supervision orders after their sentences because they were believed to…
Read More[13newsnow.com – 1/28/21] RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia lawmakers have squashed a proposal to repeal a decades-old Virginia law that allows the state to hold certain sex offenders at a psychiatric facility after they complete their criminal sentences. Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday voted to send the bill to the Virginia State Crime Commission for a study, ending its chances of being passed this year. Democratic Sen. Joe Morrissey was the lead patron of the bill. He argued that the current system is unfair and punishes offenders twice…
Read More