AUSTIN – Six repeat sex offenders that Texas has deemed among its most dangerous are due to be freed from prison in the next month, and a state program designed to keep them off the streets is full The problem promises to get worse: More than three dozen violent offenders are slated for release in coming months, and four halfway houses where more than 100 are confined have served notice they want them out by the end of August, officials confirmed Thursday. Full Article
Read MoreTag: Civil Commitment
NY: NY may need to free sex offenders
State mental health officials are trying to decide whether they will have to release civilly confined sex offenders because of a recent ruling from New York’s highest court. The odds are some of the offenders will be freed. The more pressing question may be: How many? Full Article
Read MoreMN: Millions in legal costs trigger belt-tightening at Minn. human services agency
The Minnesota Department of Human Services, a giant agency with 6,628 employees and a biennial budget of $28.2 billion, is imposing limits on everything from filling vacant positions to out-of-state travel. The belt-tightening became necessary to bring the agency back on fiscal track after it racked up more than $4 million in costs from litigation over the treatment of sex offenders and the alleged abuse of people with disabilities, among other costs. Full Article
Read MoreMN: Few options for female sex offender
Twenty states and the District of Columbia have laws that allow for sexually dangerous people to be committed civilly. An Associated Press survey of those programs found that ____ is one of only nine committed female sex offenders, and the only one living in an all-male unit, which experts called shocking. Full Article
Read MoreMN: Mankato attorney steeped in sex offender controversy
MANKATO — As an attorney for dozens of sex offenders and a member of a high-profile panel to guide lawmakers and the courts, Ryan Magnus has a unique view of Minnesota’s sex offender quandary. When Magnus, a defense attorney with Mankato-based Jones and Magnus, looks at the Minnesota Sex Offender Program, he doesn’t only see the worst of the worst. He sees people who only committed crimes as juveniles, before they mentally matured. It’s too soon to reliably guess if they’ll re-offend as adults. The poster child for these cases…
Read MoreNY: Non-Sex Crime May Trigger Management, Panel Says
The state may initiate civil management proceedings against a sex offender who, while on supervised release, committed a non-sex crime, a state appeals panel has held. Full Article
Read MoreNY: Housing Restrictions Keep Sex Offenders in Prison Beyond Release Dates
Dozens of sex offenders who have satisfied their sentences in New York State are being held in prison beyond their release dates because of a new interpretation of a state law that governs where they can live. The law, which has been in effect since 2005, restricts many sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of a school. Those unable to find such accommodations often end up in homeless shelters. Full Article
Read MoreMN: The Minnesota Sex Offender Program, explained
Last week, inside a federal courtroom in St. Paul, U.S. District Court Judge Donovan Frank heard several days of testimony from a team of experts appointed to review how the state administers its Minnesota Sex Offender Program — the subject of a class action lawsuit that has raised numerous questions about the program’s constitutionality. Full Article
Read MoreMN: Federal panel moves on sex offenders release
____ ____ celebrated his 19th birthday by checking into Minnesota’s treatment program for sex offenders. ____ had been in and out of therapy and juvenile detention in Anoka County since he was 12, when his family discovered that he’d sexually abused other children, including his younger step-brother. Even at that age, ____ said, he was having almost daily sexual interactions with his peers. Full Article
Read MoreMN: Sex offender’s case gets review board hearing
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Federal hearings in July will focus on whether one man in the Minnesota Sex Offender Program should be released. U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank and U.S. Magistrate Jeffrey Keyes put the man’s case on a fast track after attorney Dan Gustafson argued that every day his client is still confined is a violation of his rights. Full Article
Read MoreMA: Most sex convicts do not win release
Despite the release of a convicted sex offender who is now accused of raping and beating a woman at knifepoint Sunday, state courts are much more likely than not to keep convicted sex offenders locked up indefinitely after they finish their prison sentences. Between 2010 and 2012, juries and judges sent 57 of the 83 convicts who sought release back to detention, even though their sentences were up, according to statistics kept by the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association. Full Article
Read MoreTX: Catch 22 on civil commitment housing: ‘Outpatient treatment’ a cruel farce
There have recently been a spate of stories about housing for “civilly committed” sex offenders, people who’ve completed their sentences but been kept under supervision through civil proceedings, culminating in the resignation of the board chair at Texas’ Office of Violent Sex Offender Management. But until yesterday’s Houston Chronicle article (“For sex offenders who’ve completed their sentences, ‘the only way out appears to be to die’,” April 26), the focus of discussion had been on demonizing the agency for housing too many such offenders in a handful of neighborhoods. The…
Read MoreFL: Florida becomes the harshest state for sex offenders
Aljazeera America: Florida toughens laws detaining sex offenders indefinitely for crimes they haven’t yet committed In Arcadia, a town of 6,000 east of Sarasota, there’s a facility wrapped in sky-high barbed wire, where no one can choose to get in or out. This isn’t a prison, and its residents aren’t serving a sentence. It’s the Florida Civil Commitment Center, home to 650 men whom the state fears could molest, assault or rape again if released. Full Article (with video)
Read MoreDA plans rare strategy to try to keep sex offender in Atascadero State Hospital
The San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s Office plans to present victims from decades-old crimes to a jury in an effort to keep a convicted sex offender with an intriguing past off the streets. But a defense attorney says ___ ___ has served his time and does not pose a threat to the public. Full Article
Read MoreAppellate court rejects “past as prelude” myth
In a strongly worded ruling, a federal appellate panel has ordered that a Native American man be freed from civil confinement due to evidence of his rehabilitation while in prison. Both a judge and an expert witness had downplayed this evidence, condemning the man as a future risk based on long-ago transgressions, the Fourth Circuit panel concluded. Byron Neil Antone, a 41-year-old member of the Tohono O’odham Nation of Arizona, was intoxicated when he committed a series of sexual assaults during his early adulthood. Over the course of 14 years…
Read MoreMN: Federal judge calls Minnesota civil commitment program “draconian”
Three weeks ago, a federal judge issued his long-awaited ruling in a civil rights case brought by civil detainees over the constitutionality of the Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP). Although stopping short, for now, of declaring the program unconstitutional, the judge ordered new procedures to make release attainable for the 700 detainees. He warned that he may ultimately find the program to be unconstitutional if he determines that it is essentially punitive or if it confines men who are no longer dangerous. “The time for legislative action is now,” wrote US District Judge Donovan Frank.…
Read MoreMN: As Sex Offender Program Marches On, Rising Costs
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Minnesota lawmakers are getting nowhere over how to resolve constitutional questions about the state’s sex offender treatment program, but the same can’t be said about the program’s costs. They’re going somewhere — up. Full Article
Read MoreMN: Judge lets Minnesota sex offender suit proceed
A federal judge allowed a constitutional challenge to Minnesota’s sex-offender program to proceed Thursday and issued a strongly worded challenge to the Legislature to step in and fix “a system that is clearly broken.” U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank didn’t rule on the merits of the constitutional claims brought by participants in the Minnesota Sex Offender Program, but he ordered a panel of court-appointed experts to gather further evidence and indicated that if plaintiffs’ claims hold up, the program is likely in serious constitutional trouble. Full Article
Read More