Former Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Magnuson will lead a 15-member task force charged with recommending reforms for the troubled Minnesota Sex Offender Program. The panel stems from an order in a class-action lawsuit challenging the terms of confinement for more than 650 individuals who are indefinitely detained at facilities in Moose Lake and St. Peter.
The motion passed off the floor with near unanimous support on Monday, easily garnering the two-thirds majority need to suspend the rules. Current state law does not require any kind of neighborhood notification when a sex offender from the Minnesota Sex Offender program is released to a halfway house.
The pending release of civilly committed sex offender Clarence Opheim has provoked sparring between the GOP House leaders and Gov. Mark Dayton. On Wednesday legislators took up the charged issue in a committee hearing, but the dialogue was considerably less heated.
A proposal to overhaul Minnesota’s policies for dealing with dangerous sex offenders looks highly unlikely to gain any legislative traction this year. The politically contentious issue appears to be disappearing from the legislative radar despite months of work by key Republican leaders and officials with the departments of Corrections and Human Services.
Clarence Opheim is slated to become the first civilly committed sex offender in Minnesota to ever be released. Last week a special judicial panel ruled that he can be released to a halfway house in St. Paul under strict supervision.
The systemic problems of the Minnesota Sex Offender Program are causing legislators to consider a significant overhaul of the state’s policies for dealing with sex offenders.
by Charley Shaw
Published: August 31, 2011
Tags: bonding, David Hann, John Schadl, Larry Howes, Margaret Donahoe, Mark Dayton, Metropolitan Council, Michael Beard, Minnesota Sex Offender Program, MNSCU, Southwest Corridor
State agencies have submitted their preliminary requests for construction projects that they would like to see funded in preparation for a bonding bill during the 2012 legislative session
The cost of the Minnesota Sex Offender Program has grown dramatically in recent years. In 2004 the program for detaining the state’s most dangerous sex offenders cost just $20.4 million. By 2012 that figure is projected to rise above $70 million.
The Minnesota Sex Offender Program is slated to run out of space in 2013. That's in part because the civil commitment program for the state's most dangerous sexual predators has never successfully rehabilitated and released an offender.
Cal Ludeman, a former Gov. Tim Pawlenty appointee and current Secretary of the Senate, heavily edited a report to the Legislature on the state's sex-offender program, according to a report published Tuesday in the Star Tribune.
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