ST. PAUL - The arrest of a chronic sex offender in the disappearance of college student Dru Sjodin has helped lift crime and punishment to the top tier of issues this legislative session.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle generally favor tougher sentences for sex offenders, as well as increasing the number of prison beds and lowering the drunken driving threshold.

The last appears a certainty. Legislative leaders and Gov. Tim Pawlenty predict this is the year the legislators finally approve 0.08 percent as the legal limit for drunken driving.

It also seems clear that Pawlenty's desire to reinstate the death penalty in Minnesota is dead on arrival. The Democrat-led Senate is opposed and House Speaker Steve Sviggum, R-Kenyon, said this week that his caucus wouldn't "waste any time" with the issue because it doesn't have the votes to pass.

Working out changes to the state's sexual predator laws will be more difficult, even though many lawmakers are talking about getting tough in the wake of Sjodin's disappearance.

Sjodin, 22, of Pequot Lakes, disappeared from a Grand Forks, N.D., shopping mall parking lot in November. The suspect, Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., is a convicted rapist who had been freed six months earlier despite scoring high on a test of how likely he was to commit new sex crimes.

"I'm extremely sick and tired of the sexual predators," Sviggum said. "The worst of the worst … are going to be put in jail and they're going to be kept there."

Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson and Pawlenty also say they support life sentences without the chance of release for some sexual offenders who use a weapon during a rape, for instance, or those who assault children or vulnerable adults.

In the meantime, the only way the state can commit a sex predator indefinitely is if prosecutors prove that he or she has a history of harmful sexual behavior and has a mental illness or disorder that makes it likely he will strike again.

Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner said the state is meeting constitutional requirements surrounding civil commitments, but cautioned "there isn't a whole lot of room to make it easier."

Some 200 sex offenders are held at secure psychiatric facilities in Moose Lake and St. Peter. Each costs state taxpayers more than $300 per day - three times as much as an ordinary prison inmate.

The Legislature will struggle with who should make recommendations on commitments and whether some of those offenders might just serve longer jail terms in the future instead of being moved to hospitals.

Even as lawmakers talk about locking up sex offenders longer, the state prison system is running short of space.

Over the last decade or so, lawmakers have passed a series of laws that have put more people in prison and kept them there longer.

A relatively new DWI felony law, for instance, makes a fourth DWI a felony after three prior convictions within 10 years, meaning more people are ending up in prison.

While there won't be much cash to go around, Pawlenty has recommended the state borrow $112 million for more beds and other updates at state prisons and treatment facilities.

The most clear-cut of the public safety issues is whether to lower the drunken driving threshold from 0.10 percent blood alcohol content to 0.08 percent.

Minnesota is one of only five states that has not complied with a federal push to lower the legal limit.

For several years, lawmakers have resisted attempts to lower the limit, partly because it's a mandate from the federal government and partly because of potential costs.

An influx of people arrested under the lower standard would burden prosecutors, courts and jails. About 30,000 people are arrested each year in the state for driving while intoxicated.

The Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association supports the change, but executive director Bill Gillespie said law enforcement officials worry about the cost of arresting, prosecuting and jailing offenders.

In spite of the concerns, it looks as if this is the year the law will change. Pawlenty strongly backs it, and Johnson and Sviggum both predict it will pass.

One reason is that as much as $51 million in federal highway money could be withheld over the next few years if the state continues to resist. The House has extra incentive to pass it - every member of that chamber is up for election this fall.

That makes it a bad year to sacrifice federal highway money for the right to "put more drunks on the road," Sviggum said.

"I don't think that's a good brochure," he said.