Minnesota’s Sex Offender policy has mushroomed into a full-fledged Constitutional crisis, if recent developments and about twenty years or more of political ping-pong are any indication. No crime – even murder without sex attached – strikes as heavy a cord in the dissonant upheaval over just what society should do about sex offenders – especially AFTER they’ve served their sentences.

There’s something extra violative and victimizing about sex offenses, it seems, and, if a killing occurs in connection with a sex violation, ripples of revenge often dictate the fate of the offender and the victim’s family understandably wants every book published thrown at that offender and every other offender who has ever been dragged through a courtroom.

Currently, Minnesota’s approach to all this is to find some way to hide these men – mostly men , of course, and labeled Level Three offenders meaning at highest risk among others to re-offend – away in some dark hole of obscurity – by instituting civil commitment procedures – almost always successful and with little or no legal representation accorded the offender – to put them back into a prison-like setting, either up north at Moose Lake Correctional Facility or south in St. Peter State Hospital’s Criminal Wing.

But, if these offenders have served their prison time, where in the Constitution does it allow that their further incarceration or imprisonment is actually anything but double jeopardy – forbidden by this nation’s rule of law. Our system of laws does not allow imprisonment based on a presumption that crime may be committed in the future. That’s because we have no assurance, no evidence whatsoever, that a US resident is going to commit a crime. Any assumption along that line is pure speculation and taking a person’s freedom away is Constitutionally verboten.

But, it’s happening anyway, and some courts have upheld what blatantly appears to be unconstitutional incarceration. Besides – this paranoia over sex offenses was born of just a few, highly visible and highly volatile sex crimes that led to the victims’ deaths, not at all based on the real numbers or the real facts surrounding most sex offenses, disgusting though they may be for all of us. Remember all the priests who, for generations and hundreds of years have been offending without real justice meted out. And, yet, even those offenses are not among the vast majority of sex crimes committed, admitted, punished and forgotten. In other words – most sex offenders know their victims and most offenders do not re-offend after serving their time behind bars or on probation.

And, yet, the treatment of sex offenders has become political blood sport for some segments of society and the legislature.

For those working within the system it’s a conundrum of major proportions. What to do with these guys? Can they ever be free? Do they deserve to be? What person who has served their time or paid their debt to society after conviction and imprisonment deserves to be automatically returned to custody simply because someone is afraid of the possibility of future behavior? You’ve heard of the police state? One of our guests calls this the Preventive State when we put people away anticipating bad behavior that may never occur. And how do victims and victim representatives look at this? What about those forced by law to sit in judgment and decide such fates?

Join TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL and MICHELLE ALIMORADI as we cover most of those bases and more in exploring the raging ethical dilemma and Constitutional questions around post-incarceration civil commitment of sex offenders – and only sex offenders. We talk with five of those players who confront the reality of Minnesota’s system and the dicey descriptions and dispositions Minnesota law levels against offenders who have been released.

What are the values embraced by those calling themselves “progressive?”  Can political activists help less active people define their values and develop a credo they live by and policies they can push into legislation? Which policies should they tackle? What are the priorities communities should set to address the persistent problems faced by a very economically and ethnically diverse set of subcommunities that make up our society? Can real equality exist without a redistribution of wealth so as to see a more evenly endowed city, state or country?

The organization known as Heartland Democracy has gathered a coalition of other progressive policy and public service advocates to present a Framework for Governing to the public and policymakers – and it starts with a subset of values underlying that framework. As part of the Framework’s roll-out, six member group representatives combined their cases for what ails us as a society and the values needing adoption in a open forum on May 18 at First Universalist Church in Minneapolis, then taking questions and comments from an audience of about 40 participants. Moderating was Heartland Fellow, Phyllis Stenerson.

TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL was there with Cameraman CRAIG STELLMACHER to record the proceedings for presentation on our Memorial Day edition of TruthToTell. The audio version will air “live” on KFAI Monday morning, the video version will go online a few days later.

One has to wonder why it’s at all necessary to explain “The Commons.”

Perhaps Jay Walljasper’s recent book title is more definitive than some convoluted dissertation. It is, simply, All That We Share. And that is what the Commons are all about.

That should be easy enough, except for one small item: the prevailing culture of the United States is and has been, increasingly over the last 60-65 years, focused on the concept of “self,” of looking out for number One, of individualism as the reigning value for our economic perspective, our environmental and political views. For at least three generations, we’ve been about dividing ourselves into tribal subsets – embracing values, policies, and politics that exclude others, rather than include all of our fellow citizens and that has, strangely enough, led a large percentage of Americans to vote against their own best interests, often swayed by rhetoric that makes so many of us feel that we have little in common with those people next door, or in that neighborhood or that town or region.

What we have increasingly seen, too, is the widest split in history between the haves and the have-nots, between wealth and poverty, and the middle class is actually disappearing – something the middle class refuses to believe but that all available data supports. The pressure builds to turn all of our public institutions into private enterprises, leaving our public sector in tatters, a public sector for which there is far greater support than we imagine, even with Tea Party Republicans dominating the dialogue. They only should really check out what has come of communities that switched their reliance on privatized education, corrections, public utilities and environmental institutions.

These divisions really date back to the founding of a country, despite our stated purpose and goal that all are created equal, actually rooted in enslavement of other humans for our economic gain and the continuance of that enslavement of our fellows in so many arenas of life. Economic stability, environmental integrity, electoral equality have remained only selectively available – leaving in its wake an erosion of the only core principle that can lead to a sustainable people-of-the-whole – the belief in our commonalities our shared values and willingness to embrace rather than reject all.

Jay Walljasper, who has spent a lifetime documenting the role of neighborhoods and in writing, editing and publishing on behalf of The Commons, has assembled into his most recent book an amalgam of writings –his own and others, photos, anecdotes, data, profiles in courage, many from all over the US – into what he calls a “Field Guide to the Commons” – All That We Share. Jay is a journalist, after all, once serving as editor of the esteemed Utne Reader and now serving as a fellow and editor for On the Commons.

TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL and MICHELLE ALIMORADI will talk with Walljasper and Prof. Tom O’Connell about Walljasper’s book, his premises and the what it all means in the larger scheme of American political life.