08/10/2011
By Gordon Severson
The cost of keeping the most dangerous sex offenders locked up is now costing local counties more money.
It's part of new legislation passed in Minnesota that lawmakers say will save the state cash.
- It can't cost more money and save money at the same time!
Currently there are more than 600 sex criminals incarcerated in Minnesota's sex offender treatment program.
Each of these offenders costs an estimated $120,000 a year to hold.
- So that is a total of $72,000,000 per year. Like we've said before, prison and the sex offender hysteria is a cash cow, and those profiting from it, don't want it to go away anytime soon.
Up until recently the state had been paying 90 percent of that with counties paying 10 percent.
Under the new formula that percentage will be bumped up to 25 percent.
It's a cost shift that legislators argue, will save the state more than $2 million a year.
"It's three hundred and some dollars a day is what they're saying it costs for this particular civil commitments. That's where they're trying to save the money," Lt. Craig Anderson of the Rochester Police Department said.
Lt. Anderson deals with sex offenders almost on a daily basis. Many of them are level two or three offenders, but those in this program are considered even more dangerous.
"They end up in the Civil Commitment Program after they're released from prison. They've done their criminal time but they're civilly committed at that point," Anderson explained.
- Punished twice for the same crime! If they are so dangerous, they should've been sentenced to longer in prison!
Those extreme cases are handled by county attorneys like Mark Ostrem. He argues the bill was passed by the legislature as a way to decrease the number of people committed and also force counties to make careful decisions.
"We scrutinize these very carefully every time. It's a big deal to send someone away potentially for the rest of their life. It's not going to make us scrutinize it any more," Olmsted County Attorney Mark Ostrem said.
- So, at least you admit it may be for life, so why send them to prison, then when that is done, send them to another prison under the guise of "civil commitment?"
Currently in Olmsted County, 28 sex offenders are incarcerated in this program. Current cases won't be affected by this cost shift, but new cases will. It is estimated that the shift will cost the county an estimated $72,000 a year.
"Both chemical dependency services and sex offender treatment services are mandated. Every time we pay more for that out of the dollars we have, we have to reduce some place else," Director of Olmsted County Adult Services Jim Behrends said.
Services that could be affected include elderly, behavioral health, chemical dependency and many more.
Alone, the sex offender payment shift isn't a huge strain on the county's budget, but when teamed with various other shifts and cuts, officials say it will force them to make some tough decisions in the future.
