News

Rochester Post Bulletin
Thursday, April 29, 2004

 

Developmentally disabled offenders get treatment

Program starts without additional expense

 

Eleven local developmentally disabled sex offenders are receiving specialized treatment and support through a new local program.

 

Patty Rime, head of the sex offender unit for Dodge-Fillmore-Olmsted Community Corrections, calls the program one of the highlights of 2003. And, it was made possible without incurring additional costs.

 

In her annual department report to the DFO Advisory Board on Wednesday, she noted that the program is a collaborative effort between corrections, social services and the Twin Cities-based Safety Center Inc., which opened an office in Rochester last year.

 

Rime said the offenders live in two group homes in Rochester, are supervised 24 hours a day, get daily sex offender treatment and hold jobs. Staff members at the group homes and at businesses where the offenders work are trained to provide the necessary supervision.

 

“Anywhere they go in the community, they have staff with them,” Rime said of the offenders, whom she described as being in a lower functioning range and in need of special treatment.

 

Rime told board members that in the past, these offenders were out in the community with very little structure or support.

 

Another highlight for 2003 is the implementation of the Computer Cop and Spector programs aimed at keeping tight supervision over sex offender who have computers.

 

Any sex offender under probation to DFO and ho has a computer at home must purchase the software. Computer Cop monitor Internet activity on the computer and tells probation officers which Web sites the offender has visited.

 

“We have cases where offenders have met young girls on the Internet,” Rime said. The information helps in planning a treatment program, too, by helping personally understand the type of sexual fantasies the offender has.

 

Spector is a monitoring device that tells agents everything an offender does on the computer.

 

Revolving door

There are many challenges ahead, Rime told board members.

 

Rime said the new case activity for local probation agents increased 23 percent last year. She said that in 2002, agents supervised 225 adult sex offenders. Of that number, 215 carried over into 2003. In addition, 102 new cases were opened, compared to 83 new cases the previous year. Eighty-five cases were closed in 2003, but Rime said that many of those cases were closed when the offenders violated probation and returned to prison.

 

She said an offender might be out for only a day and returned to prison. Others violate after a longer time in the community and are sent back for chemical dependency treatment or sex offender treatment.

 

Then they come back out – sometimes in the same year. It’s what she cold the revolving door.

 

“We have guys going to prison, come out, have multiple violations and are not willing to change. They keep coming
out, getting into trouble. We supervise them very carefully and closely, and we catch their violations quicker.

 

The need, she said, is to come up with something to stop the revolving door.

 

“That is our challenge.” Rime said. “We are trying to see if there is anything we can do to slow this revolving door down.”

 

Rime told board members that every time an offender returns to prison and come back out, probation agents have to start all over helping them find jobs and housing.

 

Funding Cuts

Rime said she also is concerned about the effect of budget cuts. Last year, DFO lost state reimbursement for psychosexual evaluations done on all sex offenders. Those cost $600 per assessment and amount to an annual cost of $40,000 for DFO. Rime said the assessments are vital in determining treatment plans for offenders. The evaluation continues to be done, but she still hopes the Legislature will reimburse the funding.

 

Rime also is concerned that the DFO might not be ale to subsidize the cost of treatment for low-income offenders.

 

In DFO, sex offenders are required to pay for their treatment, but some simply don’t have the money, she said.

 

She points to one woman with what she described as “serious mental health issues,” living on assistance.

 

She doesn’t have the $0 to pay for weekly group therapy or $80 for individual counseling.

 

“She used a knife in her offense,” Rime said. “We watch her very closely, but she is very relation on her treatment.

 

Rime said the woman’s situation has stabilized; she is on mediation and is working.

 

“But I have a lot of worries about what will happen when she loses the support of her treatment and therapist,” Rime said, telling board members that the woman is one of the five offenders that need the subsidy to be in the treatment program.

 

Numbers on the rise

The DFO unit served 306 adult sex offenders last year. Of that number, 300 were male and six were female. That included five convicted of petty misdemeanors, 32 on probation for misdemeanor offenses, 28 on probation for gross misdemeanor offenses and 241 with the more serious felony convictions.

 

The number of high-risk sex offenders on intensive supervision increased from 28 in 2002 to 42 last year. That is because the local unit assumed supervision of all of the high-risk sex offenders released from prison and retuning to live in the Dodge, Fillmore and Olmsted counties. Previously, that was done by probation agents from the Minnesota Department of Corrections for the first year after the offenders’ prison release, Recently, the state resumed supervision of high risk offenders now being released from prison.

 

Rime said there also are 80 sex offenders on high supervision, 44 on medium supervision, 32 considered low risk, and 4 that were unclassified.