Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration scrapped the centerpiece of his sex offender proposals on Tuesday after deciding the post-prison “civil commitment” program would be too expensive, a health department spokeswoman said. Reported by the Daily Reveille.
Lauren Mendes, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Hospitals, said the proposal was dead for the current legislative session. “It is a concept that DHH and the governor’s office do support and will revisit when it’s more financially viable for Louisiana,” she said.
Rep. Fred Mills’ bill would have provided treatment for certain sex offenders after their release from prison. Mills said the program would require about $12 million over five years — for surveillance equipment, medication and psychiatric evaluations — an expensive price tag in a year of budget cuts. The idea was geared toward offenders deemed most likely to commit more crimes after being released …
Mills said initial estimates for the civil commitment program — $26,000 annually per sex offender — turned out to be low compared to a similar program in Texas. Most sex offenders in the program would also require the treatments for life, Mills said, compounding the future costs.
jakking Civil Commitment, Economic Issues, Louisiana, Sex Offenders
Iowa Gov. Chet Culver wants the Legislature to give the Iowa Board of Parole expanded authority to continue to hold soon-to-be-paroled child-sex offenders behind bars after they have served prison sentences. Reported by the Des Moines Register.
But the idea – crafted amid widespread public concern over the release of an offender who indicated he would molest children again if freed – is not likely constitutional, a spokesman for the Iowa attorney general’s office said Tuesday. One reason: Courts could deem that “preventive detention,” a concept that is illegal under state and federal law. “We are doubtful this kind of measure can pass constitutional muster,” spokesman Bob Brammer said.
Culver’s plan, unveiled by his spokesman, Troy Price, in an e-mail to The Des Moines Register, would give state corrections officials authority to revoke parole without first releasing sex offenders – and keep them in prison for up to two more years …
The idea to revoke parole without ever having released a sex offender appears to be unprecedented across the country, according to some tracking of state laws done by the National Conference of State Legislatures … [However, m]ost states already have enhanced or expanded criminal penalties, mandatory reporting laws, restrictions controlling offenders’ movement and global-positioning technology to track their whereabouts …
Iowa is one of more than 30 states that have civil commitment facilities for sex offenders, but most of the state’s more than 6,000 registered offenders are ineligible to be sent there. Before a person is civilly committed as a sexual predator, state law requires the state to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the person suffers from a mental abnormality that makes him likely to commit more sex crimes unless confined to a secure facility.
Legal experts say that’s a high legal burden to prove.
jakking Civil Commitment, Iowa, Parole, Sex Offenders
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