Sex Offense Civil Commitment — Minnesota’s Failed Investment and the $100 Million Opportunity to Stop Sexual Violence
The Sex Offense Litigation and Policy Resource Center released a report challenging Minnesota’s allocation of sexual violence prevention resources, with a particular focus on the harms and missed opportunities caused by the extraordinarily disproportio …
Posted: April 16, 2024Sex Offender Civil Commitment: The Treatment Paradox
Twenty-one states and the federal government have civil commitment schemes that provide for the further confinement of sex offenders after they have completed their prison sentences. These schemes survive constitutional scrutiny on the grounds that they are not a second prison sentence, but rather serve the non-criminal ends of protecting society and helping treat violent sex offenders. The underlying legislation confirms the treatment objective by elaborating statutory guidelines for treatment programs. This Comment argues that treatment–although guaranteed by statute, legislative findings, case law, and the constitution–is an empty promise. Indeed, participation in treatment harms the very offender that it purports to help. This treatment paradox arises because successful treatment and relapse prevention require that an offender discuss his sexual fantasies and past transgressions; yet, unprotected by privilege or confidentiality, these cathartic admissions are utilized in civil commitment proceedings to secure further confinement. Because the prosecution heavily relies on treatment records to show that the offender continues to suffer from a mental abnormality and because the completion of treatment does not favorably impact an offender’s chance of release, offenders often elect to forgo treatment. This treatment disincentive effectively denies offenders the opportunity to heal and to obtain release from commitment through treatment, an opportunity envisioned by statute and by the civil commitment scheme’s constitutional underpinnings.
Sex Offender Civil Commitment to Prison Post-Kinglsey
Arielle W. Tolman, Sex Offender Civil Commitment to Prison Post-Kingsley, 113 Nw. U. L. Rev. 155 (2018) [Ed Note: This article is published as Arielle W. Tolman, Sex Offender Civil Commitment Post-Kingsley, 113 Nw. U. L. Rev. 155 (2018). The abs …
Beyond Strict Scrutiny: Forbidden Purpose and the “Civil Commitment” Power
Sex offender civil commitment (SOCC) is a massive deprivation of liberty as severe as penal incarceration. Because it eschews most of the “great safeguards” constraining the criminal power, SOCC demands careful constitutional scrutiny. Although the Supreme Court has clearly applied heightened scrutiny in judging civil commitment schemes, it has never actually specified where on the scrutiny spectrum its analysis falls. This article argues that standard three-tier scrutiny analysis is not the most coherent way to understand the Supreme Court’s civil commitment jurisprudence. Rather than a harm-balancing judgment typical of three-tier scrutiny, the Court’s civil commitment cases are best understood as forbidden purpose cases, a construct that is familiar in many areas of the Court’s constitutional analysis…
Assessing the Real Risk of Sexually Violent Predators: Doctor Padilla’s Dangerous Data [Law Review]
This Article uses internal memoranda and emails to describe the efforts of the California Department of Mental Health to suppress a serious and well-designed study that showed just 6.5% of untreated sexually violent predators were arrested for a new sex crime within 4.8 years of release from a locked mental facility. The Article begins by historically situating sexually violent predator laws and then explains the constitutionally critical role that prospective sexual dangerousness plays in justifying these laws. The Article next explains how the U.S. Supreme Court and the highest state courts have allowed these laws to exist without requir- ing any proof of actual danger. It then describes the California study and recon- ciles its findings with those of a well-known Washington study by explaining the preventive effects of increasing age. Finally, the Article explains how these results undermine the justification for indeterminate lifetime commitment of sex offenders.
Posted: June 29, 2018