As lawmakers across the country struggle to balance state budgets, a Minnesota inmate’s request for release has ignited a debate about the costs of locking up violent sex offenders beyond their prison sentences, and the legal wisdom of civil commitment programs for those same sex offenders.

When John Rydberg was finally ordered into sex-offender treatment, he already had a long string of offenses, including a 1975 assault in which he broke into a rural Wisconsin home and raped a young couple as their son slept upstairs. Four years later, during his second escape from treatment, he raped a Minnesota woman at knifepoint in front of her children. He has admitted to counselors that he committed more than 90 sex offenses, mostly involving voyeurism or exposing himself. Yet, today, the 68-year-old Rydberg will try to convince a judicial panel that he is a changed man who deserves release after nearly two decades in Minnesota’s sex offender treatment program.

The cost of treating growing populations of sex offenders is an issue around the country. According to an Associated Press analysis, 20 states with civil commitment programs spent nearly $500 million in 2010 to confine and treat 5,200 sex offenders considered too dangerous to release. The annual costs per offender averaged $96,000 a year. Currently, Minnesota’s program for sexual offenders houses 605 inmates at a cost of $67 million a year. Facing a $5 billion deficit, and treatment facilities approaching capacity, the state faces a stark choice.

Some states do release sex-offenders. Wisconsin has discharged more than 60 since 1995. California has put nearly 200 offenders back on the streets and New Jersey more than 120. But if Rydberg is released and follows the strict guidelines of his probation, he would become the first person permanently freed from the Minnesota’s civil commitment program for sex offenders since it began in 1994. The outcome could determine whether anyone committed to the program stands a realistic chance of ever getting out.

State and federal courts have ruled that indefinite civil commitments of sex offenders are constitutional if the confinement is meant to provide treatment. Historically in Minnesota, many legislators have said they have no problem with keeping sex offenders locked up, regardless of cost.

So the questions are, “Should political and financial factors affect recommendations as to who gets in and out of sex-offender treatment program, or should courts decide who gets out? And should violent sex-offenders ever be released?