Cost might curb sex offender tracking proposals

03/17/2006

Proponents say they might have to wait

BY RACHEL E. STASSEN-BERGER
Pioneer Press

Two high-profile proposals to track Minnesota sex offenders may be scaled back because of high costs.

An effort to use satellite tracking on hundreds of sex offenders would cost more than $35 million over the next three years, according to finance officials, far above its sponsor’s original estimates of no more than $3 million.

And a proposal to assign risk levels to all sex offenders, which would include offenders sentenced to probation but not prison, would cost almost $5 million over the next three years. That cost does not include a new burden to local governments.

Minnesota already spends at least $117 million per year to house, treat and monitor sex offenders. The two proposals discussed Wednesday by the House Public Safety and Finance Committee would add to those costs.

Although backers of the new measures said they believe their proposals would be worth the expense, they also said they understand that this year might not be the right time to add hefty expenses to the state’s budget.

Lawmakers set the state’s two-year budget during odd-numbered years. This year the state has a small surplus with only limited money available for new spending initiatives.

Still, Rep. Jeff Johnson, R-Plymouth, said he thinks the cost of his measure to require GPS tracking of all Level 2 and Level 3 sex offenders, those considered most likely to commit another sex crime, would be worth it this year.

The GPS devices would allow corrections officials to track where offenders are as long as they are on probation and if they enter areas — such as schools — where they should not be. Some of the most dangerous offenders would wear the GPS devices for life.

“I don’t think there is any greater obligation of government than to protect our citizens,” Johnson said. But, he added, he understands that this is not the year for expensive legislative proposals.

So, in the House committee Wednesday, he suggested that if the state lacks funds to pay for the full GPS proposal, he would consider a pilot project to require homeless sex offenders who had failed to check in with authorities on a regular basis to wear the monitors. St. Paul officials already said in January that they want to use GPS devices to track the city’s three homeless sex offenders.

Rep. Joe Atkins, DFL-Inver Grove Heights, said his proposal to make sure risk levels are assigned to all sex offenders who go through the court system is also “scalable.”

“I know that there are budget constraints,” Atkins said.

His first preference, he said, would be that such levels would be assigned to all future, current and former sex offenders who were sentenced to probation. But if that proposal is too costly to absorb this year, the measure could apply only to future sex offenders.

“Most important to me is that we not continue with this huge loophole in the law,” Atkins said.

Right now only offenders who have left prison are assigned risk levels. That leaves about 10,000 offenders without such assignments; therefore, the public doesn’t get notices about their whereabouts.

“There’s kind of a false security,” said Atkins.