This is in response to the June 29 Associated Press article, "UK won't extradite man accused of rape to Minn."
Preventative imprisonment has been used in the U.S. for generations. This manipulation of the legal system and medical profession was created in the 1940s to lock up homosexuals that the state wanted off the streets. It morphed over the past 30 years into a real profit center for those in the industry. Check out the Moose Lake prison/hospital. And it has become a political home run for politicians who run campaigns on the fear of "those kinds of people."
When we can't hold individuals in prison because their sentence has expired, we go into a kangaroo-style court and declare them mentally ill and lock them up for the remainders of their lives. We are told the official purpose is to lock them up until they're "well," but the system takes the position they never can be made well, so we perpetuate the game. And, in the process, we pay about $300 a day to pretend they are in a hospital when, in fact, they are in a more intolerable living situation than the notorious Stillwater state prison.
It was interesting to read the response on the United Kingdom's ruling from Hennepin County Attorney General Mike Freeman. "I think it's way beyond reasonableness for them to interfere in how we conduct business," he said. Britain's high court refused to extradite a man accused of a crime in the U.S. because of the potential imposing of the federal and state policies of preventative imprisonment.
The Brits got it right; immoral actions of the U.S. should not be tolerated or ignored any more than we tolerated or ignored using hospitals and prisons as punishment in the Iron Curtain countries during the Cold War.
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Hats off to the courage of the U.K. And shame on Freeman.
David Peterson
Duluth
