Program keeps participants Safe at Home

Safe at Home is an address confidentiality program offered through the Minnesota Secretary of State’s office. It is available to people who fear for their safety and have an actual residential address in Minnesota.

Participants in the program are people who fear for their safety and need to keep their address confidential. Participants are victims of stalking, domestic violence, sexual assault and people working in a profession that brings safety concerns, said Stair.

Stair stressed that the program is not a witness protection or identity protection program.

About 1,000 people are a part of the program, and Stair said the majority are children and women. About 250 people are added to the program each year and she estimates that number will peak at about 3,500 participants.

“These are people all over the state, some are in small communities where they feel safer, and a majority of them are involved in domestic abuse situations,” she said.

Law officers, victims advocates and others involved in the court system can provide information about the program to people locally.

How it works

People in Safe at Home are assigned a post office box address that they can legally use as their address for all interactions.

Stair said 30 states have some form of an address confidentiality program which function similar to Minnesota’s.

However, she said only Minnesota’s program, under state law, requires all public and private entities to accept the address, which makes Minnesota’s program more comprehensive than others. Other states only require public entities to use the address.

 All Safe at Home participants share the same P.O. box in St. Paul. The program assigns each participant a lot number which is unique to them.

Mail sent to Safe at Home participants is hand sorted daily by program staff. Mail is placed in a brown envelope and sent to the physical address of the participant.

“If they are using the program effectively, they are only giving out their Safe at Home address,” Stair said.

The program is most effective for people whose address is already unknown or people preparing to or who have just moved to a new residence.

However, she said each situation is unique. In some cases, people who fear being located by someone who could do them harm have lived in the same location for a period of time and spent decades effectively hiding and the program works to help them keep their address secret.

But she said participants must remain vigilant in keeping their address private and added family and friends must do their part by not sharing that information. Participants are given a packet of information at enrollment that provides information on how to keep private their location.

In addition, Stair said participants must be aware of how data is shared, mailing lists are sold and what they put out on the Internet about themselves.

“Information is shared in ways not imagined,” she said.

Sharing information on social network sites, such as Facebook, can give away more information than intended. She said participants must be aware of what information they are sharing, consider their privacy settings and know what their children and other family members are posting about them. For example, she said someone who “likes” a number of restaurants in a specific community is giving clues to where they live or at least where they spend a lot of time.

Meanwhile, Stair said there are limitations to the program. It cannot forward magazines and newspapers because it is costly to the program that operates on a small, state-funded budget with few staff. It cannot, for safety reasons, forward packages unless they are clearly pharmaceuticals or from a government agency. “They could contain a tracking device, and again, we can’t afford to do that,” she said.

A benefit of the program is that participants may vote by absentee ballot.

“It’s really the only way they can vote and not have their information disclosed,” she said.