MOOSE LAKE, Minn. — Keeping sex offenders locked up in treatment after they finish their prison sentences emerged as a popular get-tough tactic in the 1990s, when states were flush with cash. But the costs have soared far beyond what anyone envisioned.
An Associated Press analysis found that the 20 states with so-called civil commitment programs will spend nearly $500 million this year alone to confine and treat 5,200 offenders still considered too dangerous to put back on the streets.
The annual costs per offender topped out at $175,000 in New York and $173,000 in California, and averaged $96,000 a year, about double what it would cost to send them to an Ivy League university. In some states, such as Minnesota, sex-offender treatment costs more than five times as much as keeping offenders in prison.
Colorado does not have a civil commitment program but manages offenders through intensive supervision, lie-detector tests, tracking devices and counseling.
The civil commitment programs have created a political quandary for lawmakers who desperately need to cut spending but don’t want to be seen as soft on rapists and child molesters.
“I’ve heard people in a lot of the states quietly say, ‘Oh, my God, I wish we’d never gotten this law,’ ” said W. Lawrence Fitch, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law.
The laws target sex offenders who are considered likely to strike again. When one of them is close to finishing a prison sentence, prosecutors file a civil case to prove that person still threatens the public and needs treatment. If the court agrees, the prisoner is committed in much the same way someone with a serious mental illness would be sent to an institution.
The heavy financial burden has left lawmakers with less money as they make agonizing cuts to such areas as education and health care.
“It’s easy to say, ‘Lock everybody up and throw away the key,”‘ said Minnesota state Rep. Michael Paymar, who heads a public safety budget panel. “But it’s just not practical.”
