2005/06/15 Council Agenda Packet

App. B / Adult Businesses assist local communities in developing an appropriate and effective defense. The first section of the report discusses evidence that sexually oriented businesses, and the materials from which they profit, have an adverse impact on the surrounding communities. It provides relevant evidence which local com- munities can use as part of their justification for reasonable regulation of sexually oriented businesses. The Working Group also discussed the relationship be- tween sexually oriented businesses and organized crime. Concerns about these broader effects of sexually oriented businesses underlie the Working Group's recommendations that obscenity should be prosecuted and the tools of obscen- ity seized when sexually oriented businesses break the law. The second section of this report describes strategies for regulating sexually oriented businesses and prosecuting ob- scenity. The report presents the principal alternatives, the recommendations of the Working Group and some of the legal issues to consider when these strategies are adopted. The goal of the Attorney General's Working Group in providing this report is to support and assist local communi- ties who are struggling against the blight of pornography. When citizens, police officers and city officials are concerned about crime and the deterioration of neighborhoods, each of us lives next door. No community stands alone. Summary The Attorney General's Working Group on the Regulation of Sexually Oriented Businesses makes the following recom- mendations to assist communities in protecting themselves from the adverse effects of sexually oriented businesses. Some or all of these recommendations may be needed in any given community. Each community must decide for itself the nature of the problems it faces and the proposed solutions which would be most fitting. Minnesota Attorney General's Report / App. d (1) City and county attorneys' offices in the Twin Citiesi metropolitan area should designate a prosecutor to pur-' sue obscenity prosecutions and support that prosecutor, with specialized training. (Z) The Legislature should consider funding a pilot program to demonstrate the efficacy of obscenity prosecution and should encourage the pooling of resources between urban and suburban prosecutor offices by making such cooperation a condition for receiving any such grant funds. (3) The Attorney General should provide informational re- sources for city and county attorneys .who prosecute obscenity crimes. (4) Obscenity prosecutions should begin with cases involy- Ing those materials which most flagrantly offend commu- nity standards. (5) The Legislature should amend the present forfeiture stat- ute to include as grounds for forfeiture all felonies and gross misdemeanors pertaining to solicitation, induce- ment, promotion or receiving profit from prostitution and operation of a 'disorderly house." (6) The Legislature should consider the potential for a RICO - like statute with an obscenity predicate. (7) Prosecutors should use the public naisance statute to enjoin operations of sexually oriented businesses which repeatedly violate laws pertaining to prostitution, gam- bling or operating a disorderly house. (8) Communities should document findings of adverse sec- ondary effects of sexually oriented businesses prior to enacting zoning regulations to control these uses so that such regulations can be upheld if challenged in court. (9) To reduce the adverse effects of sexually oriented busi- 380 1 381