Um.
Does it occur to anyone else that civil commitment for sex offenders deemed likely to reoffend is… a bit of a civil rights infringement? You don’t get to indefinitely detain people! If someone is in prison for assault and is deemed likely to punch people in the face again, we don’t keep them in prison for a few extra years to see if they’ll get better– particularly since, as far as I know, we don’t have any evidence-based treatment for sex offenses that ensures that people aren’t likely to reoffend. That’s a violation of due process rights, particularly since many people never get released from civil commitment (in fact, in Virginia just 23 people have been released in the last eight years).
The Static-99 questionnaire used to assess whether people should be civilly committed is not very good, either. It led to the release of a patient who was concerned that he wouldn’t be able to control his compulsion to have sex with children; on the other hand, it’s also led to a huge increase in the number of people who can be considered for civil commitment. That seems like the opposite of a good assessment procedure.
And now a private prison company wants to take it over? Christ.
Private prisons make a profit, unlike government prisons. In addition, they advertise themselves as being “cheaper” than government prisons. What that means is that they’re cutting services– such as the treatment that is the whole fucking reason people have civil commitment in the first fucking place. Not to mention that the private prison company’s motivation is entirely based around profit. You can only increase your profit, if you’re a private prison company, by either cutting services further or by putting more and more people in prison. So they’ll lobby to put more and more sex offenders in civil commitment, and they’ll refuse to release the ones that are already there, a spiralling circle of cost increases and due process violations.
About ozyfrantz
Sorry, I’m going to disagree with the central thesis. We are a society, and members of this society get certain benefits (art, science, infrastructure, cops, etc.) in exchange for adhering to certain rules (don’t murder, rape, assault, steal, etc.). An individual who, because of severe mental pathology, is *unable* to comply with these rules is violating their side of the bargain that makes the entire system work, and therefore should not be part of society. Back when there were plenty of uninhabited places in the world, we could simply exile these people from society altogether, but now those days are gone, and we need to do *something* to prevent those who are clearly dangerous to others from actually causing harm.
To willingly let someone who is known to be a danger to others run free is negligent at best, and evil by inaction at worst. Yes, it sucks for those who, due to genetic defects, developmental flaws or environmental problems, have problems that render than a danger, but the alternative is to make all of society bear the risk and pay the price.
The right to free association is the core of any society, and all societies have a mechanism to exclude those who are dangerous to the group, whether it’s a troop of baboons driving off an overly-aggressive troop member or ancient city-states exiling criminals or modern civil commitment. An individual who cannot function in society without posing a danger should not be part of that society, period.
The problem with that is that it’s unfair.
And before you defend that with “But life is unfair!”, know this; just because life is unfair does not mean we cannot do our best to make it fair.
The institutions for people who commit such crimes should be devoted to their rehabilitation so that they can function in society, not to detain them permanently to protect the rest of us.
Yes, it is, and yes, life is unfair. Yes, we should try to mitigate that unfairness.
But some things will *always* be unfair. Kids will be born with mutations that cause them to get fatal leukemia by age 4. Women can get pregnant accidentally while men cannot. People will have experiences that mentally fuck them up for life. And for all that we can fund cancer research, support a woman’s right to choose, and help people get help for mental illness, some things cannot be fixed.
If individuals can be successfully treated with a low recidivism rate, fine, great. But if not, then what’s your answer? What do you do if it really is permanent and unfixable?
“But some things will *always* be unfair. Kids will be born with mutations that cause them to get fatal leukemia by age 4. Women can get pregnant accidentally while men cannot. People will have experiences that mentally fuck them up for life. And for all that we can fund cancer research, support a woman’s right to choose, and help people get help for mental illness, some things cannot be fixed.”
Not the same thing.
It’s unfair that some children are born blind.
It’s unfair that some people are imprisoned indefinitely for being a danger to society.
But the thing that IS unfair in the second case isn’t the same thing as why the first one is unfair. The first one is unfair because someone was born crippled, the second one is unfair because that person was judged based on something that he was born to do.
Let’s give you an extreme example to demonstrate what I mean.
Imagine that we chose to kill all children born with red hair. In such a world it’s unfair for those children who are born with red hair as they’d be killed… But the unfairness isn’t actually the fact that they’re born with red hair but rather the fact that we chose to kill them because of that red hair.
We can sigh and complain about how it’s unfair that redhead children are born, but that doesn’t change the fact that WE are the ones being unfair because we chose to kill them.
Wow, you fail at analogies.
If we assume, for the sake of argument, that being a sex offender has a genetic component, then the key difference is that the kid with cancer’s genetic defect harms only them, while the sex offender’s defect harms others.
Yes, it sucks for them. But if they are free, they will harm others. There is no zero-harm option – you can either harm the sex offender by imprisoning him, or harm multiple others by allowing him to run free. The best option is the one where the fewest are harmed, namely locking him up.
Also, technically, locking them up until cured may be only temporary – perhaps in 10 or 15 years, there will be an actual cure. He’ll, it would probably already exist if we were a sensible society that properly funded the NIH.
But that’s still you passing judgement! We could choose NOT to be unfair.
I’m not arguing that either option is wrong, what I’m saying is that what’s unfair here isn’t that people are born with red hair. It’s that people are killed for having that. My analogy doesn’t fail because it illustrates exactly the difference between being born with a HANDICAP, and being PUNISHED for being born with in a particular way.
The former is unfair because that’s the way some people are born. The second is unfair not because of how he was born, but because of how society treats it.
Whether or not it is a “HANDICAP” or not is irrelevant. Whether or not locking them up counts as a “PUNISHMENT” is irrelevant. The point MCA is trying to make is that IF we know for a FACT that a person will inevitably harm numerous people in a significant way, that we should take measures to prevent that, even if that means harming a single person in a significant way.
The goal is to protect a large group of innocent people. Not to punish. Locking up an innocent mentally ill person is an unfortunate side affect in the process of protecting people from rape, murder, violence, etc. Though it would better to use a public insane asylum rather than a private prison.
Of course MCA’s argument only works if we know with great certainty that the person in question will commit crimes, and the overall harm from those crimes are worse than life imprisonment. Also note it is based on utilitarian ethics.
No, it isn’t “passing judgement”.
You are trying to equate a wholly arbitrary standard (“kill the redheads”) with a logical assessment of risk based on extensive empirical evidence.
This isn’t a social convention, or an arbitrary rule. Whether due to genetics, environment, or a combination thereof, a subset of people are genuinely dangerous to those around them.
How is this so difficult to understand?
The motivation behind chosing to eliminate certain people from society is irrelevant to my point. It is the fact that we chose to do so based on some quality of the eliminated people that is important and what is important is that because we chose to do so we can choose NOT to.
If some people are born with genes that says they will be a danger to society then eliminating them from society is unfair to them because they have not made the choice to be who they are, and we can make the choice not to eliminate them. It wasn’t the fact that they were born rapist/murderer that is unfair, it’s the fact that we eliminate them for that.
Of course, not eliminating them might have some consequences but the consequences make no difference for my point which is that the selection process is what is unfair and not the fact that they are born to be rapists/murderers.
Therefore your original claim is wrong, because you said that this is no different from people dying from genetic defects or hereditary diseases.
I don’t believe that Society/the State/the Majority has any legitimate business ‘rehabilitating’ or otherwise trying to forcibly modify people’s behavior. Prisons are to contain criminals to prevent them from further crimes, and hopefully give them an environment where they can rehabilitate themselves. I believe that freedom of conscience is the one absolute freedom that humans have, and if the criminal never repents, the prison is where he can stay, but I don’t believe in messing with prisoners’ heads in any way.
Why not fix them and contain them? Yes, conscience, but what if they are legitimately mentally ill, like pretty much all sex offender’s, and cannot get better on their own?
How would society really suffer if the sentence for sex crimes was “one year in prison and we place a permanent inhibitory electrode into the amygdala on your brain”.?
I feel as you do that dangerous individuals should be contained indefinitely, but I am also open to, and even optimistic about, the possibility of a cure. Neuroscience has made great strides in the past 20 years, and continues at an ever accelerating pace; the ability to fix a defective brain as we fix a defective knee is not far off.
A decent society gets to detain people long-term for a couple of reasons 1) They chose to, of their own free will, commit a crime. There is a ore-defined penalty. You do NOT exceed this. This is a strictly regulated authority; if you don’t control it strictly we get Stalin. 2) Someone is sick and is a danger to them self or others. It is not their fault they are dangerous; they are just sick.
This situation is a problem. If those people were charged with crimes and convicted they CHOSE to do something wrong. Of their own free will, NOT because they were uncontrollably dangerous. At least that is what the state argued. So either the state convicted a bunch of innocent people, or it is falsely detaining people under a false pretense of them being uncontrollably dangerous. Either way its doing something horribly wrong.
You fail to consider the most likely case – the state is sending those who should be in the loony bin to the prisons, possibly because we, as a society and individuals, still harbor numerous delusions about the extent to which we have control of our own brains, or because we thirst for vengeance cloaked as justice, thus spurn rehabilitative programs. In this case, the same number of people would be detained, and the only difference being the proportion in each setting.
Yes, it is a violation of their civil rights… but virtually no one cares about that because they are sex offenders, so any effort to fight on their behalf will not get much support. As for it applying to other crimes, I think it does. It is probably used more often for sex offenders, however, I believe that if a person were deemed uncontrollably violent they could be held indefinitely. The state can also have the person mentally evaluated and held in a mental facility, so there is a work around for the state should any indefinite imprisonment laws get repealed.
Before you present a lofty, philosophical defense of sex offender civil commitment policies, consider the staggering intellectual dishonesty involved. The state, in prosecuting and convicting them, claimed that they were legally responsible for their actions; if they weren’t, they’d be not guilty by reason of insanity. But then, after they’ve served the sentence, it turns around and claims that, you use your words “because of severe mental pathology, [they are] *unable* to comply with [society's] rules.” When the state wants them to be criminals, they’re responsible for their actions; when the state can no longer hold them as criminals, they’re unable to control their actions and hence need involuntary psychiatric commitment.
The insanity defense has strict requirements that have little to do with recidivism or even the presence or absence of mental illness. There’s a reason why Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and Jeffrey Dahmer either didn’t use that defense (Bundy) or did but were found guilty and sent to prison (Gacy & Dahmer).
Funny how Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and Jeffrey Dahmer could all be handled in the Justice system, without recourse to “civil commitment.”
Per Kansas v. Hendricks, involuntary commitment is only allowable for those “unable to control their behavior.” The Model Penal Code holds that “an individual is not liable for criminal offenses if, when he or she committed the crime or crimes, the individual suffered from a mental disease or defect that resulted in the individual lacking the substantial capacity to…conform his or her actions to requirements under the law.”
It’s true that some states use criteria more stringent than that of the Model Penal Code, or even disallow the insanity defense all together. I suppose, technically, it’s less intellectually dishonest to simply admit that you have no problem with criminal punishment for people who don’t have control over their actions. Although, oddly enough, Virginia does allow the “irresistible impulse” version of the insanity defense, which is to say if the defendant had an “irresistible impulse” to commit the action, they are not guilty by reason of insanity.
Of course, the dishonesty doesn’t end there.
Again, per Kansas v. Hendricks, one of the reasons for the Kansas statute was that “[t]he legislature further finds that the prognosis for rehabilitating sexually violent predators in a prison setting is poor.” You might think such a finding would be relevant in deciding whether to send people to prison in the first place, but the state won’t let that stop them.
Only because murder carries a life (or death) sentence, while molesting a child doesn’t, though why not is beyond me.
You’re also attributing to my opinion a good deal more rigidity and legal specificity than is present. I care only that these people are removed from society, and have little concern for how – prison, involuntary commitment, exile to a desert island, fired out of a cannon into the sun, ground up and made into pet food, whatever. As long as there is some mechanism for identifying those who, due to mental defect, present a persistent and incurable danger to society and then removing those individual from society, great. Rehabilitation would be nice, but I am not aware of any evidence that it is possible for sex offenders, so until a reliable and effective mechanism is developed, it must remain a secondary concern.
“Only because murder carries a life (or death) sentence, while molesting a child doesn’t, though why not is beyond me.”
So why not agitate for that?
“You’re also attributing to my opinion a good deal more rigidity and legal specificity than is present. I care only that these people are removed from society, and have little concern for how”
You don’t think that, perhaps, some processes might be more amenable to abuse than others? You trust the sort of people who come up with a system like that to make honest determinations about the people subjected to that system?
Why do you assume I don’t agitate for that as well?
I don’t dispute that not all systems are equal, or that errors and abuses can occur at different rates under different systems. I only care that some system exists, and leave the details to those who have made an intensive study of such systems.
Essentially, this is locking people up for something that they may do in the future, not for something they have done. Ultimately, it’s locking people up because of the desire to do something. It’s locking people up because of an attraction they have. No matter how repellent the fantasies, people should not be locked up just because of their fantasies.
Does anyone seriously think this kind of approach will stop at sex offenders? If it’s acceptable to punish people for what they are likely to do in the future, then I don’t know where we would draw the line. If “better safe than sorry” is taken to its full logical extreme, then we ought to detain just about everyone in the country. Any kid who pulls the wings off flies would need to be sent straight to prison – you know what Dr. Phil says about the warning signs of being a future serial killer….
Good Lord, the U.S. and Iran are becoming more and more like each other every day.
Enjoying your fallacy of reductio ad absurdium?
There’s a huge difference between punishing random thoughts and deep-seated behavioral compulsions – the former can be overridden by self control, the latter by their very nature cannot be controlled or suppressed more than temporarily.
Risk of reoffending is a very complex and large part of a Judge’s role when a case comes to the sentencing stage. The reason sentencing happens much later than the actual conviction is because sentencing is a very time consuming matter – Judges have very very strict rules to adhere to. Sentencing is a huge area of law within itself.
This article makes it appear as though Judges have unilateral subjective power to decide on the possibility of reoffending. This is untrue – risk of reoffending is a major issue when a sentence is imposed. In cases where a Judge finds a convicted criminal having a high likelihood of reoffending, that Judge has a public responsibility to ensure that person is not released. This decision is based upon many factors including criminal record, psychological/psychiatric reports and statements made by the defendent throughout the case and during assessments, plus statutory rules of guidance and application of common law. Judges are under very strict observation during this process. If someone ends up incarcerated for life then they have shown by their previous actions, mental state and behaviour that there is a very high lilklihood of reoffending and that the public would be at high risk if released. Judges do make mistakes and usually it’s to the public’s detriment. It’s not a decision taken lightly. Sex offenders particularly have to be taken very seriously, since most are convicted on average after their 7th sexual offence.