News Releases for July 2005
July 25, 2005
For further information, please Contact the
Governor's Office
Hoeven Calls Sexual Offender Task Force Meeting to Review Next Steps
BISMARCK, N.D. - Gov. John Hoeven will hold a meeting of the Governor’s Task Force on Violent and Sexual Offenders to review progress made in recent legislation and evaluate ways to further strengthen North Dakota’s sexual offender laws. The task force will also review a demonstration of a GPS monitoring system.
The meeting will be held on Wednesday, July 27 at 2 p.m. in the Workforce Safety and Insurance Board Room at 1600 Century Ave.
Among the topics the governor will raise are mandatory minimum sentencing and lifetime monitoring of offenders.
“Last session we made real progress in strengthening and tightening North Dakota’s sexual offender laws, but we can always find ways to strengthen them further,” Hoeven said. “At this meeting, we will review our new laws, report on their implementation and determine the next steps in our efforts to make our laws as strong as possible.”
Major provisions of the new laws passed last legislative session include:
- Strengthened sentencing:
- Mandatory life without the possibility of parole for the most heinous gross sexual imposition cases resulting in death.
- Life in prison sentences for offenses that involve serious bodily injury; force or threats; a victim under the age of 15; or a habitually abused minor.
- A doubling of prison terms for all other sex offenses.
- Following release from prison, mandatory supervision of sex offenders for at least five years, including supervised probation and GPS monitoring.
- A comprehensive civil commitment program that continues inpatient commitments and adds GPS monitoring for those not committed to inpatient treatment.
- Expanded enforcement of North Dakota's tougher standards to include not only offenders convicted in North Dakota, but also those who relocate here from other states.
- Open records for the public pertaining to evidence presented at commitment proceedings of sexually dangerous individuals. (Attorney General’s legislation.)
- Mandatory DNA samples from all sex offenders who enter the state.
- Additionally, a civil commitment procedure for predatory sex offenders has been in place since 1997, and was expanded by executive policy last year to include all high-risk offenders.
- As a matter of policy, if a sex offender who warrants civil commitment leaves our corrections system for another state, North Dakota notifies the other state of the risk.
The Governor’s Task Force on Violent and Sexual Offenders consists of legislators, judges, state’s attorneys, the Office of the Attorney General, county sheriffs, city police departments, the North Dakota State Hospital, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, individuals representing crime victims’ advocates and the public at large.
E-mail comments to the Governor
