No one should be punished for what they might do in the future. All persons in our society should be treated equally and with dignity. Laws that lock people in cages for imaginary future crimes are anathema to the basic American values of liberty and due process. They are also anti-science and ineffective: It is impossible to accurately predict human behavior.

In 1994, Minnesota launched a dystopian experiment in pre-crime preventative detention. The aim was to keep people locked up indefinitely even after they had completed their prison sentences. Like most bad laws, this was a knee jerk reaction by lawmakers driven by hysteria and focused on sensationalized media coverage of a deeply tragic but incredibly rare individual case. A quarter century later it is time for Minnesota to rethink this panic failed experiment and realign state policy with the values of restoration and reintegration, grounded in research and evidence.

To conceal this transparently unconstitutional practice from judicial scrutiny, Minnesota disguised its approach to warehousing people after prison as “civil” — likening it to the hospitalization of persons suffering from acute mental illness under the traditional medical model of involuntary psychiatric commitment. This claim has always been openly fraudulent.

In 1998, the American Psychiatric Association concluded that these laws are a “misuse of psychiatry” and a bastardization of the medical model of civil commitment. The diagnoses are pretextual. The treatment is a sham. The true intent is to indefinitely detain the person — the rest is just an excuse:

“In the opinion of the Task Force, the sexual predator commitment laws establish a nonmedical definition of what purports to be a clinical condition without regard to scientific and clinical knowledge. In doing so, legislators have used psychiatric commitment to effect nonmedical societal ends that can not be openly avowed. In the opinion of the Task Force, this represents an unacceptable misuse of psychiatry.”

The cost of these laws — in terms of human lives, capital, and the rule of law — are inexcusable.

Over the last 25 years of Minnesota's system more than 70 men have died while imprisoned in this “treatment” facility — for them, this was a life sentence. Only 9 people have ever been fully released. For the 731 people languishing in these prisons masquerading as “treatment” facilities (at the beginning of 2020), they are 8 times more likely to die in Minnesota’s gulag than they are to ever be released.

Minnesota is spending $110 million per year on this failed experiment. Systems of pre-crime preventative detention are an enormous waste of taxpayer money. This approach is the most expensive way to incarcerate someone, because the state has to pretend to provide treatment. And incarceration is always the most expensive way to address the problems confronting society. As the growing movement against mass incarceration in the United States has shown, we can’t incarcerate our way out of our problems. A 2011 study funded by the National Institute of Justice concluded:

“Even among this highest risk group (those highly considered for SVP commitment), detected rates of sexual recidivism were still quite low. Given the exceptionally high cost of SVP commitment and the fact that most new sexual offenses are not committed by known offenders, policymakers should be encouraged to better balance estimated crime prevention associated with SVP commitment with that of primary prevention techniques that may cast a wider net in terms of reducing sexual violence in the community. Increased focus on primary prevention relative to SVP commitment would in turn increase focus on the trends and factors known to be behind the extensive majority of sexual abuse cases.”

Victim organizations dedicated to ending sexual abuse such as the Wetterling Foundation have also advocated for state policy that focuses on primary prevention rather than wasting precious resources on persons who have already repaid their debt to society.

Thirty states have recognized these laws don’t create safer communities and no new state has adopted a pre-crime preventative detention scheme since 2007. Sexual violence rates in the 30 states without these laws are the same as the 20 states dumping hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into these programs — which begs the question what exactly are these pre-crime states paying for?

Systems of pre-crime preventative detention threaten not only individual liberty and lives, but the most essential principles of the American legal system. These laws create a parallel (or shadow) legal system outside the customary protections of the criminal law. If we allow a de facto constitution free zone for one disfavored group the same exceptional approach can be applied to the rest of us. The result is a state empowered to imprison citizens prospectively, for what they might do in the future — so long as the state pays an expert to label them “dangerous” and “deviant.”

Minnesota’s Department of Human Services (DHS) is currently ignoring state law explicitly requiring DHS to “assess the... mental condition of every patient... not less often than annually.” As a result, Minnesota is warehousing 731 souls under the guise of involuntary psychiatric treatment while refusing to actually give them psychiatric examinations necessary to determine their present mental condition or “the medical necessity of continued care” — in a locked facility against their will. Minnesota has grown so emboldened and complacent that it isn’t even bothering to pretend to run a bona fide civil commitment system anymore.

It is in your power to immediately begin to dismantle Minnesota’s system of pre-crime preventative detention. Start by requiring DHS to comply with state law giving annual psychiatric examinations to every person subject to involuntary psychiatric commitment in Minnesota. This will result in the identification of a majority of Minnesota’s shadow prisoners who do not meet the basic medical threshold for involuntary psychiatric commitment and should be released immediately. Your administration should simultaneously institute a moratorium on new admissions to Minnesota’s failed experiment in pre-crime preventative detention and convene a blue ribbon commission of psychiatrists (not psychologists) to formulate a plan to deinstitutionalize every person who is not presently mentally ill and therefore does not qualify for involuntary psychiatric commitment under the traditional medical model of civil commitment.

Pre-crime preventative detention laws in the United States have been called a “flagrant denial” of international human rights standards. More than 12 fugitives have successfully evaded the american justice system because British courts have refused to extradite them, citing pre-crime preventative detention laws — specifically the Minnesota statute — as a violation of Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The legacy of your administration will be your leadership in recognizing the dignity and equality of all persons in Minnesota — including those persons painted as pariahs whose human rights and basic humanity have been denied for the last 25 years. Stand on the right side of history.

Abolish pre-crime in Minnesota!