What will the ACLU do now that Pawlenty is Trampling on Sex Offenders' "Right to watch TV"?
Tuesday, 20 October 2009 15:17
If you missed the front page story on the Star Tribune yesterday about the Moose Lake, Minnesota Sex Offender treatment facility installing TWENTY FOUR 50" flat screen plasma TVs, you missed a doozy.
From the article:
Sex offenders at Minnesota's newest treatment facility at Moose Lake can watch television on one of two dozen new, 50-inch flat-screen TVs, and more may be on the way.
The cost of the sports bar-type, plasma TVs -- $1,576 apiece, plus a $706 mounting bracket -- is a relatively small part of the state's multimillion-dollar effort to house and treat sex offenders.
Surprisingly, the loudest critics of the TVs may be the sex offenders. Two of them have complained to state legislators that the TVs mounted in common areas of the new 400-bed facility are a waste of money because most patients have small televisions in their rooms.
"I am appalled by the fact that there are children in school now that probably don't have schoolbooks, and that bridges are falling down, and old people are going without medicine, and we're sitting here in this 'white horse' bolting these huge sports bar televisions onto the walls," said Rodger Robb II, a sex offender living in the new $45 million complex that opened in July.
Robb maintains that the new TVs are watched mostly by security guards. "I just don't get it," he said.
and
....the TVs are located in common areas that are roughly 200 feet long, and are spaced at least 50 feet apart. Linked to a cable system, they give the sex offenders access to 62 networks such as the Disney Channel, ESPN, SPIKE TV, ABC Family and VH1.
"Could we have put up a 42-inch TV? I don't know," said Benson, who noted that the patients had access to TVs in their previous building. "Sex offenders are easy to hate ... I know what the public will say." Benson said there were "very clear clinical reasons" for purchasing the TVs and said observing a convicted sex offender reacting "to the stimuli of a 5-year-old on a television set" had potentially important clinical benefits.
Patients are watched by staff members to see how they respond to what is on TV -- a task made easier if TVs are located in an open area, said Janine Hebert, the program's clinical director. "TV is used as perhaps a social stimulus," said Hebert, who said a patient's treatment plan could be adjusted depending on how they reacted to an image on TV. Most patients have "a social interaction deficit at the simplest form," she said. "I'd rather have guys mingling, watching TV."
I have this huge outdated TV in my family room (we don't have any flat screens ourselves and we're "the wealthy")-- if the state would come pick it up, they can have it for free! Then maybe they can have a big group room where the perverts and criminals can watch "The Girls Next Door" and be "observed".
back to the article
In March, the state sex offender program came before legislators with an urgent request to cover a $16 million shortfall, which the Legislature filled.
and how about this,
Rep. Thomas Huntley, DFL-Duluth, who chairs the House Health Care and Human Services Finance Division Committee, said he was unaware of the TV purchase. "They certainly have a right to watch TV," he said. "I don't know if they need a big, flat screen. It has to be treated like a hospital -- it is not a prison."
Larry Schultz, another sex offender who complained to legislators that the TVs were unnecessary, said he doubted that television provided any clinical benefit. "I don't know what dream world [Benson] lives in," Schultz said. "Right now, one TV is on. Nobody even watches the [others]. It's just a waste of money."
I have to agree with the sex offender there.
The article also notes that 90% of the sex offenders already have TV's in their rooms. This is what happens when the government tries to take care of people.
The Strib doesn't mention the makeup of the facility-- it's apprently the civil treatment program for inmates who complete their 9 year average sentences for things like rape, kidnapping, murder and other acts of criminal sexual conduct.
I noticed the ACLU filed a complaint this summer about the treatment of the sex offenders at Moose Lake.
Detainees are subjected to potentially severe health risks due to inadequate sanitation in violation of their Eighth Amendment rights including:
- Communal showers and bathrooms are only cleaned once a day;
- Urine and fecal matter are frequently found on the bathroom floor or toilet seats;
- No sanitizer is readily available to disinfect the floors and toilet seats;
- Dining room tables are not adequately sanitized prior to serving each meal;
- Mops and brooms used to clean the bathrooms and showers are also used to clean cells, thereby spreading germs to their cells;
- Towels, blankets and cleaning rags are washed in one unit washer and the water does not reach a temperature needed to properly sanitize them.
Sounds like my house, except I don't have a flat screen TV yet.
Also from the complaint:
- Detainees who had purchased 20 inch televisions at the Annex had their property seized and were forced to send them out of the facility at their own expense to comply with a MNDOC rule allowing only 13 inch clear televisions on the Moose Lake prison property.
I wonder what the ACLU has to say about Governor Pawlenty pulling the plasmas today.
A right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and the right to watch a 20" TV in your cell if you rape someone. That's great.
If this hasn't hit the national news, it will.
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