Mitchell Hamline’s Sex Offense Litigation & Policy Resource Center on April 24 issued a press release about a new report on Minnesota’s civil commitment system for sex offenders. The release is below:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 24, 2024
Media Contact: Eric S. Janus
Director
Sex Offense Litigation & Policy Resource Center
eric.janus@mitchellhamline.edu
(651) 290-6345
The Failure Of Minnesota’s “Outlier” Sex Offense Civil Commitment
Scheme & The $100 Million Opportunity To Reduce Sexual Violence
Minnesota’s massive investment in so-called “civil commitment” for people convicted of sex
offenses needlessly tramples civil and human rights, fails to meaningfully reduce sexual violence,
and deprives more effective sexual violence prevention strategies of critical resources, according
to a new report from the Sex Offense Litigation & Policy Resource Center SOLPRC at Mitchell
Hamline School of Law.
An accompanying letter signals a broad and growing consensus that Minnesota’s experiment with
sex offense civil commitment has failed. The letter from more than 50 leading legal scholars and
practitioners, mental health providers, policy experts, law enforcement members, criminal justice
reform groups, and human rights and civil rights organizations, among others, endorses the report’s
findings and policy recommendations, and asks state lawmakers to sunset the failed Sex Offense
Civil Commitment (SOCC) scheme and reinvest its $110 million annual budget into more
effective, evidence-based programs.
“This report details what we have long known to be true: Minnesota’s uniquely aggressive civil
commitment program threatens basic constitutional rights while exacerbating the very problem it
is intended to solve,” said SOLPRC’s Director Eric Janus. “Anyone who cares about reducing
sexual violence in our communities should demand state lawmakers dismantle our failed SOCC
scheme and reallocate its massive budget to programs that will prevent violence, support victims,
and hold people accountable in fair and equitable ways.”
The report’s key findings include:
• At over $100 million per year, Sex Offense Civil Commitment is by far the state’s most
expensive sexual violence prevention program — despite researchers finding that SOCC
has “no discernible impact” on reducing sex crimes.
• Conversely, the state’s support of primary prevention (interventions designed to prevent
sexual harm before it occurs), is less than 2% of SOCC’s funding.
• Minnesota is a national outlier: Most states do not use SOCC at all, yet Minnesota
commits the most people per capita among those that do.
• SOCC in Minnesota is effectively a life sentence without any finding of guilt or the
due process protections of the criminal justice system. As of September 1, 2023, only
21 of the 946 people committed to MSOP over its 30-year history have ever been fully
discharged, while at least 94 have died during their confinement. One is thus nearly five
times more likely to die in the program than to be discharged from it.
• Minnesota’s SOCC scheme has been repeatedly rebuked by federal and state courts,
academic studies, a state government task force, and the Office of the Legislative Auditor,
yet policy change has not followed, and the program’s failures persist.
“It has been over a decade since the Sex Offender Civil Commitment Advisory Task Force that I
chaired found unanimously failures in Minnesota’s civil commitment scheme, including that it was
dangerously overbroad, capturing too many people for too long in ways inconsistent with both
public safety and civil rights,” said Eric Magnuson, former Minnesota Chief Justice, and chair
of the 2013 bipartisan Task Force. “Today, this report shows in painstaking detail how those and
other problems have only worsened, and makes the urgent case for sunsetting Minnesota’s failed
experiment with Sex Offense Civil Commitment.”
***
In a joint statement, the Minnesota Coalition Against Sexual Assault (MNCASA) and Violence
Free Minnesota (VFMN) said that “the funding disparity illustrated in this report is alarming,”
and that, “based on the data in the report, the $100 million that the State spends on MSOP does
not effectively prevent sexual violence nor prioritize the needs of victims/survivors.” They added
that MSOP’s funding “stands in stark contrast to the less than $3 million spent on primary
prevention of sexual violence every year. Meanwhile, our member programs cannot afford to stay
open, despite record numbers of victims/survivors reaching out for services. The State must
adequately invest in primary sexual violence prevention and community-based crime victims’
services. We urgently need a robust and long-term investment in crime victims’ services across
our state.”
***
“This report’s critical findings underscore the necessity of adequately funded rehabilitation and
prevention services in the community,” said Ronda Disch, the Executive Director of Alpha
Emergence Behavioral Health. “As community-based treatment providers, we see daily the
profound gaps in funding that hinder our ability to support reentry and offer comprehensive
services effectively. Reallocating the substantial annual budget from civil commitment to
community programs could revolutionize our approach, enabling us to implement innovative,
evidence-based treatments and support systems for both survivors and individuals seeking
reintegration. This change is needed for the health and safety of our communities.”
About SOLPRC:
The Sex Offense Litigation and Policy Resource Center at Mitchell Hamline School of Law
collects and disseminates information about cases on issues of sexual violence policy, and
facilitates communication, sharing, and the development of strategies among the lawyers,
advocates and academics who seek a more sensible and effective public policy on sexual violence
prevention.
About the $100 Million Committee:
Key contributions to this report were made by members of the $100 Million Committee, which
seeks to reassess the role played by sex offense civil commitment in Minnesota and improve
Minnesota’s use of resources to address and reduce sexual violence. The Committee is composed
of detainee representatives, survivors of sexual harm, legal and policy professionals, reentry
specialists, families of detained persons, and mental health, human rights, restorative, and racial
justice advocates.