NCJ Number
167766
Date Published
1997
Length
12 pages
Annotation
Laws related to sex offenders and violent sexual predators are examined with respect to their history and reemergence in recent years.
Abstract
One of the central motivations in Washington's Sexually Violent Predator Act was to confine certain sex offenders who were about to leave prison or who were already out, who had not committed new crimes, and who might not have been civilly committable as mentally ill and dangerous. Minnesota's sex psychopath law is patterned after the original legislation on the subject enacted by Michigan in 1937. Minnesota's law was reviewed and upheld as constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1940. The most notable feature of the newer laws enacted in Wisconsin and other States and modeled after the Washington law are that they provide for detention in addition to and not instead of a criminal sentence. The Minnesota law upheld in the legislatures in States such as Washington, Wisconsin, and Kansas have given the courts an extremely difficult set of problems. These commitment laws do not address the issue of how to find the most efficient means to identify, isolate, and offer treatment. Morse has proposed a new crime of reckless endangerment. Currently, however, the most appropriate approach to this issue remains the use of the traditional criminal law and to use long terms of imprisonment for the most recidivistic and serious offenders. 45 reference notes