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.
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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.
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
“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.
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… Read more »
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).
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
“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… Read more »
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,… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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.… Read more »
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… Read more »
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,… Read more »
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.