I recently read an interesting discussion of the civil commitment of sex offenders in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law by Shoba Sreenivasan, Ph.D. and colleagues. I had some thoughts about the article I’d like to share with you.
Many states in the United States now have laws that allow for a sexually violent predator (SVP) or a sexually dangerous person (SDP) to be committed to a mental hospital or forced into outpatient supervision once they have completed their prison sentence. In these states, mental health professionals are asked to evaluate potentially dangerous sociopaths and decide whether there is enough risk to society to warrant either inpatient or forced outpatient treatment. If an offender is deemed to be a SDP/SVP they can be committed indefinitely, only California has a specified renewable term of 2 years.
To qualify as aSVP/SDP an offender (1) has to be convicted of the offenses determined by the state to constitute a sexually violent crime; (2) to suffer from a diagnosed mental disorder; and (3) as a result of that disorder, represent a risk to public safety if released to the community.
Notice that SDP/SVP laws are designed to detect the “mentally disordered” and to differentiate them from other offenders who are presumed to be normal (?). (Is anyone who commits a sexually violent crime normal?) The intent of the SVP/SDP laws is not punishment of the offender but protection of society.
The authors of the article point out that antisocial personality disorder (sociopathy/psychopathy) can be one of the mental disorders used to justify commitment. ASPD is recognized to qualify as “a congenital or acquired condition affecting the emotional or volitional capacity that predisposes the person to the commission of criminal sexual acts to a degree constituting the person a menace to the health and safety of others.”
Granted, not every sociopath is a sex offender, and not every sociopath who commits a sexual offense is deemed to be a SVP/SDP. For example if an offender breaks into a person’s home to steal things, discovers a victim and then assaults, that is different from the offender who breaks in to look for a sexual victim and doesn’t take the jewelry.
The idea behind these laws is that the mental disorder causes the person to offend and diminishes his/her capacity to resist reoffending. In Minnesota for example, “Sexual psychopath personality” means the existence in any person of such conditions of emotional instability, or impulsiveness of behavior, or lack of customary standards of good judgment, or failure to appreciate the consequences of personal acts, or combination of any of these conditions, which render the person irresponsible for personal conduct with respect to sexual matters, if the person has evidenced, by a habitual course of misconduct in sexual matters, an utter lack of power to control the person’s sexual impulses and, as a result, is dangerous to other persons.
These laws all raise the question of the sociopath’s choice with respect to behavior. They imply that the sociopath has diminished choice and that the predatory behavior is a compulsion.
I am very much in favor of these SVP/SDP laws. I just wish we applied the same reasoning to other compulsions sociopaths have. For example. What about con artists? Don’t they evidence, “by a habitual course of misconduct in truthful matters, an utter lack of power to control the person’s lying impulses and, as a result, is dangerous to other persons.” While we recognize the terrible impact of sexual assault on victims, we tend to minimize or not recognize the psychological rape perpetrated by con artists.
Many sociopaths are “criminally versatile” in that they compulsively commit many different classes of crimes. Why can’t we recognize that sociopaths have a personality disorder that indeed makes them dangerous to other people, and subject them to more careful supervision once they are released from prison?
The states that have SVP/SDP laws are Arizona, Illinois, Wisconsin, California, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, New Jersey, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Washington, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Dakota and Tennessee.
For more discussion see:Sreenivasan, S., Weinberger, L., & Garrick, T. (2003). Expert testimony in sexually violent predator commitments: conceptualizing legal standards of “mental disorder” and “likely to reoffend”. Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Online, 31(4), 471-485.
Encouraging development:
The repairs have been done correctly. It’s my nature to say something positive at this point, but I’ve come to fear seeming weak to the seller’s agent. As we all know, there are people in this world we can’t afford to give an inch to.
I just signed the paperwork and forwarded it. I can be nice after the closing!
OxDrover,
“Right now, too, there are not 100s of people standing in line for any repos or houses for sale,”
The Repos are dragging the whole market down. As a whole, they are bad buys. Most have been empty for years, and have all sorts of maintenance problems. The mortgage companies that own them will not make them habitable until a buyer drags them bare-arsed through brambles. Most of their “bargains” have severe water damage, hopelessly frozen central air units and leaking roofs. The plumbing usually leaks so badly the seller’s agents keep them “winterized” so they don’t have to pay hefty water bills and step over puddles when they show the properties. Watch for this trick! If the house is “winterized” when you show up with your home inspector, pitch a fit. The seller is hiding something, or a lot of somethings. Count on it.
Because the repos sell for below their city-assessed value, they drag down the market value of the nearby homes, even though those homes are a far better value.
Furthermore, the repos cause buyers to offer homeowners ludicrously low prices for their valuable, well-maintained homes. Buyers assume that sellers are desperate and will take just about anything.
Not so. The house we’ve owned for 10 years is also up for sale. We’ll take an honest offer, but we’re not giving it away. If we don’t get a serious offer in a month or two, we’ll rent the place for 2 years and sell it when the market turns around.
Our home is in good repair. All of the systems are under some kind of warranty, and have been meticulously maintained.
I offered a fair market price for the house I bought, and insisted the seller give fair value for my dollar. The same holds true when I sell this place. Fair is fair, and it goes both ways.
The repos and the banks that own them are dragging the entire real estate business down, and in more ways than one. I’m heartily sick of their monkey business.
The banking industry goons fouled up, and now the same miscreants wo created the banking mess are taking their incredible ineptitude, greed and dishonesty to the real estate business and fouling that industry up too.
Dear EC,
When I had to go into hiding, I had to leave my home vacant as well, and even though it had been less than a year, I had quite a bit of fix up to do. There is always something that needs doing to a house and if there is no one there it deteriorates horribly. Renters ARE a problem, believe me I was never so glad to sell anything as my rental units, but the buildings go to hell worse EMPTY. I was fortunate to sell mine at the PEAK before the big down turn, but it had started over the peak on the down side just a month or so before mine actually closed. I did okay, but can ONLY IMAGINE if I had waited 6 months to start the process to sell, as it was, it took me quite some time (6 months) to sell them both.
My guess is some of these repos will sit there til they rot to the ground.
Glad you got what you wanted though. You sound like a savy cookie! Good JOB!
It ain’t over ’til it’s over. We haven’t closed yet. Still, I’m guardedly hopeful now.
You know back to the original subject of this article, the “Civil committment” of violent offenders would be a moot point if the states would all just enact a “three strikes and you are out” (or IN for natural LIFE) because we know that statistically 20% of the criminals commit 80% of the crime and if that 20% were ALL locked up for LIFE without any chance of parole then, crime should go DOWN remarkably!
The non-psychopathic offenders could be kept separate from these HARDENED and violent criminals and so wouldn’t be preyed on by them in prison so much, or learn “skills” from them, and people who are REPEAT offenders and obviously not afraid of prison would be off the street.
Most of the ex-or-current-convicts I have known that I am pretty sure are psychopathic have MULTIPLE FELONY crimes. PRE-MEDITATED Murder or murder during a rape or other felony should be a life sentence, without parole, vs “manslaughter” or second-degree murder.
Think of the savings in cost by keeping these people incarcerated, the crimes they would NOT commit, the damage they would NOT do, the police and DA time not having to be devoted to bringing them in AGAIN and AGAIN.
I realize not every Psychopath does commit felonies or murder, but if we had the MOST VIOLENT and MOst criminal ones locked up forever, the prison population should actually go DOWN not up.
The most insane thing our courts do I think, is to not let a previous “criminal record” be used or even known about by the jury when someone is tried. There are PATTERNS HERE FOLKS, and a pattern says something about the person.
Ah, but I DREAM!!!!
I just went and did a little internet search on “three strikes” laws. There are currently 2 MILLION people in prison or jail in this, twice the number of a decade ago. So if we figure that 20% of them are psychopaths—wow, that’s a pretty good number of the.
California enacted the law in the early 90s in response to the death of a young girl by a paroled violent felon.
Since then they have incarcerated 4,468 people for 25 years to life as “third strikers”—also, SECOND strike sentences are DOUBLE the length of time of a FIRST offense.
While 75 % of the third strikers in California are not for VIOLENT crime (the 3rd strike anyway) and 50% of the second strikers are non-violent, mostly drug, breaking and entering, and theft, these 4500 “habitual criminals” are not out on the street. AND believe it or not, crime statistics are DOWN by a bit, even though the population has grown and grown.
Twenty-two states have adopted similar statistics and the feds even enacted a federal law similar, though most crimes we think of as FEDERAL crimes are not like “murder” and “theft” but more bigger crimes like interstate drug trafficing and money laundering.
We all, I think, know about “plea bargaining” the crimes down for a “lesser” charge, like the Trojan horse Psycopath had the attempted murder, attempted breakin and entering, idenity theft, computer fraud and so on dropped for the single charge of “felon in possession of a gun” which got him 5 years with 2 suspended though he had a 15 page rap sheet of CONVICTIONS along with 3 separate SEX charges against children. So the thing is, these people who are CONVICTED for plead guilty to a third felony have most likely committed MANY MORE crimes than they have been convicted for AND greater crimes.
If the TH-P had been in a 3 strikes state, he would have been put away A LONG TIME BEFORE he molested the last two children, I know that for sure, and he would not have been up here to attack us. My own dear son would also be in for “life”—real life, til he died of old age for first degree murder. No parole.
Even if a psychopath is not physically violent, we all know what they CAN do to people when they are out on the street. I say more power to all the 22 states with those laws, LOCK’EM UP AND THROW AWAY THE KEY!
Ox-
I think you are right in reading your last sentence. My ex is an ex-convict, although I justified it with ‘but he’s a non-violent criminal’. It took me QUITE a while to choke down the fact that he was locked up, and at some point, I just accepted it.
What is not realized though is that, in my opinion, an individual who ends up in PRISON, (with the exception of those who are wrongly convicted or were using self defense), didn’t get there from making one poor choice or being at the wrong place at the wron time. Someone (as in my ex’s case) who ends up in prison has had CHRONIC behaviors that have led them to that place. The behaviors may NOT be violent in nature, but the damage ‘non-violent’ crimes cause is significant none the less.
My ex went to ‘bootcamp’ at 21 for ‘being with kids who were stealing a car’. In most peoples eyes, this is non-violent in that no person or animal physically got hurt. True enough. But how did he get to the place AT 21 where, after ONE incident, he was to go to bootcamp? Well, there is a LONG line of these ‘non-violent’ crimes he had committed, although none of them severe enough to get any ‘time’. It finally caught up with him, as did his sentence of prison.
There should be a 3 strikes policy EVERYWHERE where the law is concerned-PARTICULARLY with non-violent criminals. The reason, again in my opinion, these people are allowed to wreak havoc and destruction is because they don’t do ENOUGH bad at one time to get caught. But what about all the little destructions they cause along the way?
I could press charges against my ex for stealing from me. It was ONLY a book, cologne he left at my house after our initial breakup and some DVD’s, of course, but with his history of forging checks and being locked up in the past wouldn’t you think that the system would look at him like ‘yup, he’s still the same person…a dirty, nasty, disgusting piece of trash. Let’s lock him up.” Nope! He’s gotta be REAL bad for that to happen…but nevermind all the problems he causes before that…and I say before because I KNOW (if not by the grace of god) that he’ll go back to prison.
I can only hope.
Dear R-babe,
Yep, and a few statistics that will “curl your hair.”
For every sexual attack on a child that is knownn about, 300 are committed. How does THAT sit with you? Probably the same way it does with me!
Okay, out of those that are “discovered”—how may are actually prosecuted and the perp sent to prison? Not sure, but I bet not a lot. Everyone I have ever had anything to do with the case, wasn’t even prosecuted. (I worked in family medicine for years in Rural lHealth clinics and reported several girls that had been molested) Sure they were investigated because I FOLLOWED UP ON MY GUT AND CALLED THE COPS, but without me most likely they would have never even been investigated. NONE prosecuted. The perps do children too young to be good witnesses. Doctors won’t cooperate, too much of their VALUABLE time!
It just makes my blood boil, that the Trojan Horse Psychopath ex con my P-son sent after me had been convicted 3 times, three children and sent to prison, so that means he did, what, statistically 900 “events?”
Charles Walls III (“Jackie”) from Arkansas used to work with my X husband in the little town of 3,000 we lived in in AR and he molested 1500 kids over a 20 yr period, got one to kill his parents after the kid “told”—big boy scout leader. I knew him, his family, his wife and kids, all wonderful people. I knew Jackie was a jerk, but I NEVER SUSPECTED he was a monster.
I’ve known personally others who were “upstanding” citizens and employees, “God fearing” church-going PERVERTS! I think they should be sent to Devil’s Island forever! Anyone who thinks a pedophile is not a psychopath doesn’t know them. They do not change, or reform. Even castration doesn’t help. We had a rapist here in AR who was castrated by the victim’s family before his arrest, he went to prison for several years, but got out and killed and raped another woman not long after his release on “compassionate grounds” by the governor. Wayne DuMond is his name.
Mike Huckabee was the governor that released him. He also has presidential aspirations and I will campagin against him with all I have in me. I would vote for Osama ben laden first!
Oxy, you have really given me something to think about with your ideas of crime reduction by implementing a 3 strikes rule, and with the assertion that pedophiles are psychopaths.
It is ’common knowledge’ that pedophiles minimize or deny the affect their actions have on their victims. In my lifetime it has also been ’common knowledge’ that they do what they do because of tragic abusive childhoods; I wonder where that idea comes from? How long has it been around?
When I was a kid sexual abuse wasn’t talked about. I had no words what so ever to describe my experiences. As a teen rape was spoken of (what would happen to us if we weren’t ’good girls’), and sexual abuse meant rape. They were inseparable and there was no gradation of anything being sexual abuse that wasn’t penetrative rape.
As we started to name things in the 1970’s ”“ as feminists started to name things, ’common knowledge’ shifted a bit. And in the 80’s there was an explosion of information and treatments, groups and self healing books for victims of domestic/ sexual assault, incest and rape.
I don’t know how this happened (I am trying to sort the trajectory and influences of our ’common knowledge’ of heinous behavior in north america) but some where down the line it became ’common knowledge’ that abusers were abused.
So much of people’s bad behavior became to be explained as the product of this domestic physical and sexual violence. And we became so f*cking understanding. We also started to think that if there was a cause, there must be a cure.
So what if, the paradigm is a bit different, what if: they diminish or dismiss the injury they cause because they are sociopaths, and they are this way because it is WHAT THEY ARE, NOT WHAT THEY BECAME because of environmental influences.
We all know stories of people with the worst beginnings in life who became incredible loving parents. And vsia versa. I am not saying that early intervention with p/s/n’s shouldn’t be undertaken or won’t make a difference – but that their behaviour is intrinsic.
On the spectrum of spaths we have those who will cause pain and suffereing just by living and interacting with people, those who are overtly sadistic, and those who are pedophiles – and cross over of areas of the spectrum is probable. huh, this makes me wonder (as we all know spaths will be sexual with anyone who they see as supply) if more of our spaths are pedophiles than we know. In much the same way we come to know that men that we thought were only with women, we are with men sexually, perhaps we will come to know that they are with children also. We know of many instances where they manipulate young teens as supply.
We also know they are ALWAYS projecting crap. I want to see a show of hands of spaths who say they were sexually abused as children”..yah, I thought so.
The spath of my aquaintance was ALWAYS AND FOREVER ON ABOUT BEING SEXUALLY ABUSED as a child ”“ by her father, her sister, her this, her that. If I ever find out that she has abused a child, I don’t know what I will do.
I say this sincerely Oxy: Thanks, I am one more step away from being a nice democrat girl.
does constant internoet trolling constitute this condition?
Hmm
I wonder if there is something here….if he gets identified as a P under the federal eval, they deal with it?