Law Commons^™

Dangerous Diagnoses, Risky Assumptions, And The Failed Experiment Of “Sexually Violent Predator” Commitment, Deirdre M. Smith

Oklahoma Law Review

In its 1997 opinion, Kansas v. Hendricks, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a law that reflected a new model of civil commitment. The targets of this new commitment law were dubbed “Sexually Violent Predators” (SVPs), and the Court upheld indefinite detention of these individuals on the assumption that there is a psychiatrically distinct class of individuals who, unlike typical recidivists, have a mental condition that impairs their ability to refrain from violent sexual behavior. And, more specifically, the Court assumed that the justice system could reliably identify the true “predators,” those for whom this unusual and extraordinary deprivation of liberty …

Throwing Away The Key: Has The Adam Walsh Act Lowered The Threshold For Sexually Violent Predator Commitments Too Far?, Tamara Rice Lave

Articles

No abstract provided.

A Crooked Picture: Re-Framing The Problem Of Child Sexual Abuse, Eric S. Janus

Faculty Scholarship

This article discusses the problem of ending child sexual abuse using an allegory explaining that certain types of punitive solutions as solving the river "downstream", or in problem-solving mode, as opposed to "upstream", or in prospective problem avoidance. The thesis of this brief article is that our public policy is focused too far downstream. We rightly condemn child sexual abuse, but our public discourse frames the issue in a way that misdirects our public policy towards downstream solutions. If we truly want to protect our children from sexual abuse and end the cycle of violence, we need to reframe the …

Sexually Violent Predator Legislation And The Sexual Psychopath Act: Will New York "Police" Their Sexual Predators Via Civil Commitment?, Stephanie M. Adduci, M.A.

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Forecasting Harm: The Law And Science Of Risk Assessment Among Prisoners, Predators, And Patients, John Monahan

ExpressO

Scientifically valid instruments are being used for the first time to assess an individual’s risk of violence in criminal sentencing and in the civil commitment of mental patients and sexual predators. Risk factors on these instruments pertain to what the person is (e.g., gender), what the person has (e.g., personality disorder), what the person has done (e.g., past violence), and what has been done to the person (e.g., past victimization). In this Article, I argue that in criminal law, with its emphasis on blameworthiness for actions taken, the admissibility of scientifically valid risk factors is properly constrained to those that …

Substantive Due Process And The Involuntary Confinement Of Sexually Violent Predators, Wayne A. Logan, Eric S. Janus

Scholarly Publications

Over the past fifty years the Supreme Court has been repeatedly asked to address the constitutionality of civil commitment laws, including laws specifically targeting sexually violent predators (SVPs). The SVP laws have withstood challenge, in each instance redeemed by their putative civil purpose. Today, however, roughly 13 years after the first modern SVP law was enacted by the State of Washington, serious concern exists over whether the laws are fulfilling their civil purpose, or are merely serving as vehicles for impermissible preventive detention.

This Article addresses this question, in the process exploring the viability of the major remaining constitutional basis …

The Ex Post Facto Clause And The Jurisprudence Of Punishment, Wayne A. Logan

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Washington's Sexually Violent Predators Statute: Law Or Lottery? A Response To Professor Brooks, John Q. La Fond

Seattle University Law Review

In this Symposium Article, the author responds to Alexander D. Brooks, The Constitutionality and Morality of Civilly Committing Violent Sexual Predators, article.

Washington's Sexually Violent Predator Law: A Deliberate Misuse Of The Therapeutic State For Social Control, John Q. La Fond

Seattle University Law Review

This Article will demonstrate that the Washington legislature deliberately chose to abuse the medical model of involuntary commitment for treatment in order to achieve lifetime preventive detention. In so doing, the legislature violated fundamental constitutional principles that underlie our system of social care and control and safeguard individual liberty.

Editor's Preface: Predators And Politics: The Dichotomies Of Translation In The Washington Sexually Violent Predators Statute, Nancy Watkins Anderson, Kenneth W. Masters

Seattle University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Keynote Address: Predators And Politics, Norval Morris

Seattle University Law Review

The following article is a transcription of portions of Mr. Morris's keynote address presented at the Predators and Politics Symposium on March 9, 1992 at the University of Puget Sound School of Law.

Cognitive Restructuring Through Law: A Therapeutic Jurisprudence Approach To Sex Offenders And The Plea Process, Jeffrey A. Klotz, David B. Wexler, Bruce D. Sales, Judith V. Becker

Seattle University Law Review

At the University of Arizona, we hope to develop a series of studies that will ultimately examine a variety of empirical issues relating to the law and plea process with respect to sex offenders. These studies arise from one particular therapeutic jurisprudence application proposed by David Wexler and Bruce Winick. This Article summarizes the empirical questions raised by Wexler and Winick's theory and suggests how those questions might be empirically analyzed.

Confronting Violence: In The Act And In The Word, David Boerner

Seattle University Law Review

In this Symposium Article, the author narrates his experience as a member of the Task Force to create Washington’s Sexually Violent Predator Civil Commitment Law.

The Constitutionality And Morality Of Civilly Committing Violent Sexual Predators, Alexander D. Brooks

Seattle University Law Review

This Article will address four major substantive constitutional and moral challenges to the Washington Sexually Violent Predator statute. The first is that the statute provides for unacceptable preventive detention contrary to American tradition and law. The second is that the terminology used to identify the mental condition of sexually violent predators is vague and meaningless, resulting in inaccurate and unfair applications and lacking in uniformity. The third objection is that the treatment program necessarily relies on a false assumption that efficacious treatment is available and argues that without efficacious treatment the statute must fail. Fourth, the confinement involved, which theoretically …

The Community Protection Act And The Sexually Violent Predators Statute, Norm Maleng

Seattle University Law Review

In this Symposium Article, former prosecutor Norm Maleng discusses his experience with The Community Protection Act and Washington’s Sexually Violent Predator Law.

The Politics Of Sexual Psychopathy: Washington State's Sexual Predator Legislation, Stuart Scheingold, Toska Olson, Jana Pershing

Seattle University Law Review

What are the principles that guide this return to indeterminacy? Taken at face value, rehabilitation would seem to be the goal of the civil commitment provisions that make avail- able a treatment program to cure and reintegrate sexual offenders. Of course, rehabilitation was unequivocally rejected by determinate sentencing reformers, who considered it both discriminatory and ineffective.6 An alternative interpretation is that the sexual predator provisions lead in an incapacitative direction-that is, they are designed to predict which offenders are so dangerous that they must be more or less permanently institutionalized to protect the society. Either way, the sexual predator legislation …

Sexual Predator Law—The Nightmare In The Halls Of Justice, Robert C. Boruchowitz

Seattle University Law Review

In this Symposium Article, the author discusses his experience as a defense attorney with Washington’s Sexually Violent Predator Act, RCW 71.09.060.

Sources Of Security, Julie Shapiro

Seattle University Law Review

The fixable problems relating to the specifics of the stat- ute thus do not raise the hardest questions that a statute like this one presents precisely because they are fixable. If I agreed that the general idea of the statute was a good one, I still might find the specifics of this statute unacceptable. But I would be able to propose an acceptable statute that accomplished the same basic purpose. Thus, although the specifics of this statute are of enormous importance to the legal questions pending in the courts and to those who must litigate under the statute, the specifics …

Sexual Predators: Mental Illness Or Abnormality? A Psychiatrist's Perspective, James D. Reardon, M.D.

Seattle University Law Review

In this Symposium Article, the author discusses Washington’s Sexually Violent Predator Act, RCW 71.09.060, from a psychiatrist’s perspective.

A Psychiatric Perspective On Washington's Sexually Violent Predators Statute, Robert M. Wettstein, M.D.

Seattle University Law Review

This Article will critique Washington's Community Protection Act from the perspective of a clinical and forensic psychiatrist. Part II of the Article will address and examine problems with the statute's definitions and consider some of the problems in conducting evaluations of proposed sexual predators. Part III will then discuss some of the many difficulties inherent in providing treatment under the statute. Part IV will review the potential abuses, costs and risks to the participants presented by the statute. Finally, Part V will focus on the ethical issues in providing expert medical testimony pursuant to the statute.

Limits On The State's Power To Confine "Dangerous" Persons: Constitutional Implications Of Foucha V. Louisiana, James W. Ellis

Seattle University Law Review

This Article does not attempt a complete analysis of all the constitutional implications of Foucha,nor does it attempt to provide a definitive answer to the question of the constitutionality of Washington's sexual predator statute. Rather, because Foucha addressed important due process and equal protection questions relevant to the Washington statute, the Article is an attempt to analyze the case's basic constitutional holdings and discussion on the issue of state deprivation of physical liberty.

So What's In A Name? A Rhetorical Reading Of Washington's Sexually Violent Predators Act, J. Christopher Rideout

Seattle University Law Review

In this Article, I will examine this socially constitutive function of narratives in the enactment of Washington State's Sexually Violent Predators Act.'0 This Act is a prime recent example of how social narratives-in this case, narratives of violence, pain, and outrage-lie behind the official language of the law. As Winter would point out, narrative was the vehicle that prompted legal change. The question for this Article, however, is what happens once the story has been recast into another form, here that of a statute? How well do the immediacy of the details and the authorial voice of the story lend …

Proceedings Under Washington's New Statutory Scheme Providing For The Indefinite Involuntary Commitment Of Sexually Violent Predators Are Civil, Not Criminal, In Nature, Timothy Michael Blood

Seattle University Law Review

In this Symposium Article, the author discusses the constitutional importance of classifying Washington’s Sexually Violent Predator Act, RCW 71.09.060, as a civil commitment and not a criminal sanction.