A new report shows that in the past eight years, 76 inmates who completed their sentences were kept in prison because of the state law that allows for “civil commitment” of sexually-violent predators.
Legislators drafted that 1998 law to keep people convicted of serious sex crimes from being released on parole if officials believed the inmates would commit another sex crime once outside prison walls. For the first five years, the inmates who were denied parole were sent to the state prison facility in Oakdale.
But since 2003 those sexually-violent prisoners have been transferred to the Mental Health Institute at Cherokee. A report from the Legislative Services Agency predicts the state will spend nearly five million dollars this budgeting year to keep those sexual predators under lock-and-key and another six-and-a-half million next year. As of December 1st, there were 67 such “patients” in the facility.