It's a Hoax. Part II

A few weeks ago, I responded to a Minneapolis Star Tribune series regarding Minnesota's Sex Offender Program (MSOP) which is located in Moose Lake.  The Strib says that the facts raise the question, "Is MSOP really mental health treatment, or just permanent incarceration?" This is a good question but I can think of some much better questions:

QUESTION 1 - Who gets "committed" to MSOP, and why?

• Eerily similar to Guantanamo, the Strib could only identify two-thirds of detainees.
  
• A couple, identified by the Strib, seem like pretty bad dudes:
  
• Dennis Linehan, famous enough that the Strib had a stock photo of him, bears, with missing teeth, a strikin resemblance to Hannibal Lechter.
  
• Lorenzo Sanchez raped and murdered a 12 year-old.  Why doesn't that deserve an old fashioned "life without parole" sentence to prison?

But others identified seem odd choices for a life sentence:

• 10 percent were juveniles when they committed their crime.
  
• Ben Alverson was in his early 20's when he had "consensual" sex with two girls ages 13 & 14. Where's the pathology here?  When I was 20, I was attracted to teenage girls who looked older than they really were.  Yes I understand there is no such thing as consensual sex between a 22 year old and a 13 year old (in this state) we have defined such acts as crimes (which is why I backed away when I found out how old the girls were).  But Alverson, now 32 years old, already served his prison sentence for said crime.
  
• Dwane Peterson was convicted of kidnapping an elderly man (the Strib didn't mention a motive, but it did not involve sex) and served his prison sentence for said crime.  Then, despite never having committed a sex crime, he was committed to MSOP because of fantasies he admitted to during therapy.
• Isaiah Swedeen was committed to MSOP after disclosing, during treatment, a vaguely homosexual incident from his past, unrelated to any crime he had been charged with.  And treatment officials admit that Swedeen doesn't respond to psycho-tropic meds - presumably because he doesn't have mental illness.

The legislature has the right, under the constitution to make kidnapping or sex with under age girls a capital offense.  But lets keep this debate in the criminal justice arena where it belongs.  Do we really want to live in a society where people can be confined indefinitely because of impure thoughts.  The Strib appropriately quoted Tom Paine on the subject, they could have just as easily quoted Solzhenitsyn.  

QUESTION 2 - Who Works at MSOP?

Stay tuned...