House approves crime bill aimed at sex offenders

04/29/2005

Conrad Defiebre, Star Tribune
April 29, 2005

Thousands of sex offenders would be imprisoned for life and some would be chemically or surgically castrated under a sweeping crime bill overwhelmingly approved Thursday by the House.

Additionally, the most dangerous sex offenders who are released would have to drive cars bearing special “predatory offender” license plates. They also would be barred from meetings called to notify neighbors of their presence in the community.

With memories of the November 2003 slaying of North Dakota college student Dru Sjodin still fresh, legislators spared practically no effort to crack down on those dubbed the “worst of the worst.”

Life sentences for serious sex offenders—without possibility of parole for rape with force, weapons or bodily harm—have been under consideration in the House for more than a year despite official projections that they could eventually double Minnesota’s inmate rolls and require construction of seven new prisons.

“It’s going to cost $100 million to $200 million a year,” said Rep. Michael Paymar, DFL-St. Paul. “Your children and your children’s children are going to pay for it.”

Short-term costs of the sentencing increases make up a relatively small portion of the entire $1.7 billion omnibus crime bill, which was approved on a vote of 123 to 10. But House sponsor Steve Smith, R-Mound, acknowledged that the tab for taxpayers will rise steeply in later years. “It’s an issue down the road,” he said. “The next session will have to face that.”

On Monday, the Senate will take up its own crime bill, which would also lock up sex offenders for life, but many fewer than in the House plan and all with a chance of parole. It’s expected that a conference committee will work out a compromise between the two positions.

Conferees probably also will have to deal with the castration and license-plate provisions that were adopted after they occupied much of the seven-hour debate. Both amendments came from freshman Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Delano.

“I apologize if it’s sensitive to some folks,” he said of the castration proposal, which would apply to a small group of child molesters, who would pay for the procedures out of their own pockets. “But the issue is, how do we help these people help themselves?” The amendment passed on a bipartisan vote of 80 to 54.

Bigger majorities approved Emmer’s twin amendments to mark license plates and drivers’ licenses of released Level 3 sex offenders with “predatory offender” markings. Offenders would pay a $10 surcharge for the special plates.

Critics said the markings would do little more than make it harder for ex-offenders to reenter society, but Emmer said they would “help police protect our kids.”

In other action on the bill, the House:

• Approved without debate an amendment from Rep. Dan Larson, DFL-Bloomington, to bar sex offenders from notification meetings about them. The move followed a recent meeting in Bloomington where an offender did show up.

• Rejected an amendment by Rep. Judy Soderstrom, R-Mora, to reinstitute a state parole board that could release nonviolent first offenders from prison after they had served only half their normal terms.

• Buried, on a vote of 20 to 111, an effort by Rep. Phil Krinkie, R-Shoreview, to strip out a 25-cents-a-month increase in telephone bills to pay for 911 emergency phone service. Krinkie called it a tax; supporters, including Gov. Tim Pawlenty, regard it as a fee that is vital to maintaining a backbone of public safety and homeland security efforts.