| *I recently read an article (http://www.salon.com/topic/sexual_abuse/) about Sexually Violent Predators (SVPs) which I found intriguing and which led me to undertake some research to learn more about SVP legislation. The essay below discusses how (in my view and in 994 words) the SVP legislation is incoherent and troubling:
In 1990, Washington became the first state in the United States to introduce legislation for ‘Sexually Violent Predators’ (or SVPs), which authorized civil commitment of SVPs as part of the Community Protection Act. All Washington state sex offenders were required to undergo a psychiatric evaluation shortly before their scheduled release from prison. If the court (guided by the testimony of a forensic psychiatrist) concluded that the sex offender met the legal criteria for being an SVP, then the sex offender would be relocated from prison to a psychiatric facility for involuntary ‘treatment’. The SVP’s release from the psychiatric treatment facility would then be contingent on his mental health recovery. In other words, the only way that an SVP could be released from involuntary treatment would be if a judge believed that he no longer satisfied the criteria for being an SVP (i.e., that he no longer suffered from the mental disorder in question, or that if he did, it no longer made him dangerous). |