Minnesota House Passes Notification Legislation for Sex Offenders
Minnesota Legislation Approved by the House
As reported on our news page yesterday, Minnesota lawmakers held a special meeting on Monday to address a gaping loophole in the State’s sex offender law. And after deliberating over the issue, the Minnesota House passed a bill on Monday to close that loophole in response to the upcoming provisional discharge of convicted predatory child molester, Clarence Opheim.
Prior to the passing of this bill, Minnesota State law required community notification whenever a sex offender moved into their neighborhood. However, communities were not notified if the offender moved to a halfway house, even though it is located within the same neighborhood. The approved legislation seeks to close this loophole and allow for the widest possible public notification upon a sex offender’s discharge into any “residence facility.”
The House approved the bill in a highly lopsided 127-1 vote after no debate was offered. Prior to the vote, however, they first took a two-thirds vote to declare an emergency suspension of rules and to accelerate the bill’s progress.
Opheim, 64, has admitted to engaging in sex acts with 29 children ages 8 to 17. He was admitted to the Minnesota Sex Offender Program in 1993, according to court documents. He will be the second person to receive a court-ordered provisional discharge to be released back into the community after being civilly committed to the Minnesota Sex Offender Program. The only other man who was discharged was returned to the program on a technical violation.
Opheim will be discharged from a Department of Human Services facility in St. Peter, where he has spent the last 19 years, to one of two possible halfway houses in the Twin Cities area. There, he will continue treatment and be tightly supervised with a GPS tracker, and will also undergo drug tests.
House Minority Leader Paul Thissen said last week that Democrats would not stand in the way of the Republican-backed bill.
“All Minnesotans are concerned about public safety. … I don’t think that’s a Democrat or Republican issue, I think that’s a Minnesota issue,” Thissen said, following the bill’s passage.
The Senate will soon take up similar legislation, and Governor Mark Dayton has said he will support the legislation, which would go into effect the day after it is signed into law.
To think that up until this point, that convicted child predators were able to reside in their neighborhoods without being notified of their presence, is definitely a loophole in the system that should have been addressed much sooner. However, the passing of this new legislation should not only provide greater clarification on the issue, but more importantly, greater peace of mind to parents of young children.
Source: ABC News 5 (St. Paul/Minneapolis)
Tags: Crime, GPS Tracking, GPS Tracking Device, laws, parents, prevention, Safety, security
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