[JURIST] The US District Court for the District of Minnesota [official website] on Wednesday ruled [opinion, PDF] that Minnesota’s sex offender program and civil commitment statutes are unconstitutional, but has chosen to await further proceedings on a remedy before taking any immediate action. The civil commitment [LII backgrounder] program allows the state to detain individuals with “acute symptoms of severe mental illness,” and rarely ever releases them. Over 700 sex offenders have been indefinitely detained because of this. The justification is that these are individuals who may commit a crime in the future, and that society is better with them off the streets. However, the court noted that “[i]t is fundamental to our notions of a free society that we do not imprison citizens because we fear that they might commit a crime in the future.” The court said these programs constitute a form of “preventative detention” that is prohibited in the justice system except in very limited circumstances, not met in this case.

In other countries, controversial laws pertaining to the preventative detention of prisoners deemed a threat to public safety have also come under fire. Last month, rights groups called for reform [JURIST report] of a Kashmir law they allege is being used to detain people despite the absence of sufficient evidence for a trial. Last year, the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit [official website] ruled [opinion, PDF] unanimously that, unlike Minnesota’s finding, a federal law allowing for the indefinite detention of mentally ill sex offenders was constitutional [JURIST report].