Late last month, U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank finally saw the light regarding the Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP). He finally realized that some repeat offenders simply can't be cured — and must be forcibly prevented from committing further outrages.
Driven by selfish passions, these compulsive violators of basic standards don't deserve the customary protections of our constitutional system.
The habitual miscreants Judge Frank has finally cracked down on (in more courteous words than mine) are Minnesota's political leaders. Setting aside a few worthy dissenters, this unprincipled flock of cowards has for more than 20 years conspired across party lines to perpetuate in MSOP a crime against the rule of law.
Despite being "on notice of the program's deficiencies for many, many years," as Frank put it in last month's ruling, the state's leaders have repeatedly exploited fears of sexual predators for political gain and refused to reform what is likely the most unjust program of its kind in the country.
Faced with that, Frank has finally stopped trying to preserve the usual constitutional preference for judicial deference to elected officials on state criminal laws. He has acted by court order to ensure that elementary constitutional rights will be respected — even in Minnesota.
Twenty or so states have "civil commitment" programs, under which certain sex offenders are confined to treatment programs after completing prison sentences. But most other states with such programs (forward-thinking places like Texas) regularly review clients' cases and have developed less-restrictive forms of supervision for offenders who are less dangerous or who make progress in treatment.
Largely because of political hijackings of nearly every discussion of MSOP over the years, Minnesota has become the nation's pacesetter in this field, with America's largest per capita population of committed "clients" (more than 700) enduring prisonlike incarceration with no serious path toward success in "treatment" and release.
And basically, Frank has found, the state neither knows nor cares how many of those in its sex-offender dungeon actually pose a continuing threat to the public. State officials "have no meaningful idea … which of those persons continue to meet the criteria for commitment …," the judge wrote, but the state "knows" that some who pose little risk "continue to be confined."