Law Commons^™

Sex Offender Commitments: Debunking The Official Narrative And Revealing The Rules-In-Use, Eric S. Janus

Faculty Scholarship

Sex offender commitment laws present courts with a difficult choice: either allow creative efforts to prevent sexual violence or enforce traditional constitutional safeguards constraining the power of the state to deprive citizens of their Iiberty. Three state supreme courts have deflected this hard choice while upholding sex offender commitment schemes. As part of their ""official narrative"" that legitimizes sex offender commitments, the courts claim that society can have prevention and still maintain the primacy of the criminal justice system. This narrative neutralizes the conflict in values by claiming that sex offender commitments are just like mental illness commitments, a small, …