Title: $175,000 per offender? Get-tough sex predator 'treatment' busts state budgets - cleveland.com
Headings: $175,000 per offender? Get-tough sex predator 'treatment' busts state budgets
$175,000 per offender? Get-tough sex predator 'treatment' busts state budgets
'Lock everybody up'
No idea of the costs
Treatment only slightly lowers risk
Recommitting Dennis Linehan
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Content: $175,000 per offender? Get-tough sex predator 'treatment' busts state budgets - cleveland.com
U.S. News
$175,000 per offender? Get-tough sex predator 'treatment' busts state budgets
Updated Jan 12, 2019; Posted Jun 22, 2010
By Associated Press
View full size Associated Press In this photo taken Wednesday, June 16, 2010, Troy Ray watches television in his room, inside the Civil Commitment Unit for Sexual Offenders (CCUSO) unit that is part of the Cherokee Mental Health Institute in Cherokee, Iowa. MARTIGA LOHN, Associated Press Writer
MOOSE LAKE, Minnesota -- Keeping sex offenders locked up in treatment after they finish their prison sentences emerged as a popular get-tough tactic in the 1990s, when states were flush with cash. But the costs have soared far beyond what anyone envisioned. An Associated Press analysis found that the 20 states with so-called "civil commitment" programs will spend nearly $500 million this year alone to confine and treat 5,200 offenders still considered too dangerous to put back on the streets. The annual costs per offender topped out at $175,000 in New York and $173,000 in California, and averaged $96,000 a year, about double what it would cost to send them to an Ivy League university. In some states, like Minnesota, sex offender treatment costs more than five times more than keeping offenders in prison. And those estimates do not include the considerable legal expenses necessary to commit someone.