Civil Confinement

Civil Confinement

P30 [10] "The Percy Foundation has launched a major new initiative to document the abuse of Article 10 [under New York State's 'Mental Hygiene Law'] post-sentence civil commitment proceedings to keep even low-level sex offenders permanently detained in facilities that are even more restrictive than the prisons where they had already completed their sentences, which were in many cases shorter than the time they have continued to be confined after their sentence had ended. This Kafkaesque system violates fundamental human rights on multiple levels. Gay sex-offenders are disproportionately targeted for this grotesque gulag that effectively exists in a realm beyond the writ of habeas corpus .

"We have particular concerns about the policies and practices in effect at the Central New York Psychiatric Center in Marcy, which is upstate between Utica and Syracuse. Inmates routinely have their mail and telephone privileges cut off as a form of punishment and mind control. The institution's management arbitrarily and without notice refuses to allow inmates mail contact with long-time personal friends, including those to whom they have entrusted their affairs, on the dubious grounds that they are a bad influence. We are now developing evidence of systematic mail tampering to make perfectly lawful correspondence disappear. Such isolation of individuals, many of whom have been disowned by their families, does not conform to any standard of psychiatric care, and is arguably even a form of psychological torture."

"The institution has also banned a long list of common publications, including such innocuous titles as Family Circle, Field & Stream, Men's Health, National Geographic and Rolling Stone . Most prisoner rights or gay rights publications are also banned, as well as some common automotive and fashion magazines. Even major newspapers like The New York Daily News and The New York Post are excluded. There is no discernible rhyme or reason to which publications are disallowed on the grounds of somehow being deemed 'counter-therapeutic,' a vague and elastic term which falsely presumes that any real therapy is occurring at this institution, which inmates assure us is not happening.

"The Percy Foundation is also banned from sending any materials into this institution. Curiously, we are able to mail our materials into the neighboring prison in Marcy, which is under different management and shares its campus with the supposed 'psychiatric' center. The federal court rulings that have upheld civil commitment in the U.S. were later justified by [U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony] Kennedy on the false premise, refuted by all scientific studies, that sex offenders almost universally recidivate. However, they stipulate that such confinement should be less restrictive, not more restrictive."

[11] "The Albany Times Union and other media outlets have reported serious problems with staff discontent, complaints about poor training and use of underqualified staff in therapeutic positions, drug distribution by personnel, violence by inmates who feel they have no future, and falsification of records by psychiatric professionals."

W2 [342] "The concept of using the mental health system as a response to sexual crime ad deviance dates back to the early 20th century...Summarizing the prevailing sentiments of the era, Jenkins (1988) cited a 1915 New York Times editorial: 'Moral degenerates are easily discoverable without waiting until acts of violence put them in the category of criminals. [It is simply wrong to permit such men] to roam the State without any attempt to segregate them. . .It is high time that the State provide adequate places of custody where they may have treatment by skilled physicians.' (p. 41)"

[343] "With behaviors such as homosexuality designated as psychiatric disorders, the statutes permitted the roundup and preventive detention of many individuals who presented little or no imminent danger for committing sexually violent acts. (Miller, 2002)

"[T]he Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry (1977) adopted a formal position statement in 1977 disavowing psychiatry's role in such civil commitment schemes...By the 1980s, sexual psychopath statutes had been repealed or fallen into disuse in most states."

K7 [554] "These seemingly harsh and barbaric practices [forced sterilization for eugenics purposes] were attempted to be justified by modern science. Similar to the reliance on the science of risk prediction and mental disorder diagnosis to justify the civil commitment of sex offenders, the use of 'incontrovertible statistics and scientifically proven theorems' on the grave dangers the unfit people [allegedly posed] were used to 'sweep away any discomfort methods like sterilization might cause.'" *

C11 [727] "As one scholar stated, current civil commitment of sex offenders 'is bad law, bad social policy, and bad mental health.'" **

P18 [1248] "Legislation passes within days of introduction and without debate, statutes are quickly upheld, and we feel, somehow, that we are 'doing something' to combat the most nightmarish, least understandable, and least excusable criminal behavior. What we are doing is ominously returning to the days of what many of us had thought was a less enlightened, and thus discarded, past.

"Kansas v. Hendricks [in which the U.S. Supreme Court gave the green light to civilly confining some sex offenders after their prison terms had ended] returns us to this past and does so with a vengeance. For Hendricks...is not simply, in my mind, a constitutionally indefensible and intellectually muddled opinion. It is also a pretextual opinion. Mental disability law is permeated by a kind of meretricious pretextuality that is outcome-driven, acontextual and amoral.

"The United States Supreme Court's decision in Hendricks is a confused and confusing opinion...I am convinced that the Hendricks decision is a bad decision. It is bad law, bad social policy, and bad mental health."

[1250] "Our social policy in dealing with individuals like Leroy Hendricks has been a failure -- a total failure. We seek to remediate those failures by the enactment of new legislation...and label those enactments as a success (in spite of a startling lack of empirical evidence supporting that label). The reality, I have regularly concluded, is that such laws are a failure (in some important ways, even more of a failure than what preceded them)."

[1252] "My thesis is simple: the entire relationship between the legal process and mentally disabled litigants is often pretextual. By pretextuality, I mean simply that courts accept, either implicitly or explicitly, testimonial dishonesty and engage in dishonest decision making. This pretextuality is poisonous. It infects all those involved in the legal process, breeds cynicism and disrespect for the law, demeans participants, reinforces shoddy lawyering, inviates blasé judging, and, at times, promotes perjurious and corrupt testifying."

[1253] "Pretextuality helps create a system that: (1) accepts dishonest testimony unthinkingly; (2) regularly subverts statutory and case law standards; and (3) raises insurmountable barriers that ensure the allegedly 'therapeutically correct' social outcome and avoidance of the worst-case-disaster fantasy, the false negative. In short, the mental disability law system often deprives individuals of liberty disingenuously and for reasons that have no relationship to case law or to statutes."

[1258] "Police officers perjure themselves in dropsy cases 'to ensure that criminals do not get off on "technicalities,"' and trial judges condone such behavior 'to mediate the draconian effect of imposed-from-above constitutional decisions,' such as Mapp v. Ohio. In the same way, expert witnesses in civil commitment cases often impose their own self-referential concept of 'morality' to insure patients who 'they believe should be certified' remain institutionalized. Judges accept this testimony in light of their own 'instrumental, functional, normative and philosophical' dissatisfaction with [certain higher court] decisions...Just as judges...express doubt that the police testimony in dropsy cases requires special scrutiny, they also express astonishment at the assertion that expert testimony in involuntary civil commitment cases may be factually inaccurate."

D10 [47] "Convicted sex offenders, at the conclusion of their criminal trials, were deemed sufficiently in control of their behavior to be deemed responsible for their sex offending and punished. But when these same sex offenders max out their criminal terms, having committed no further sex offenses, they may be found so volitionally impaired as to warrant indefinite incarceration because they are dangerous but not mentally ill."

Throughout this site, for purposes of brevity sources are abbreviated ('A1,' etc.). However the titles of some are so good, they bear repeating outside of the 'Bibliography' itself. The following is one of them:

"Rational Enough to Punish, But Too Irrational to Release: The Integrity of Sex Offender Civil Commitment"

C11 [703] "[H]ow can someone be rational enough to warrant punishment through criminal means, but then lack the ability to comprehend the nature of his or her actions and require civil commitment?"

[705] "[U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin] Scalia noted this contradiction in his [Kansas v.] Crane dissent, stating that a substantial inability to control sexual behavior would invalidate any effects of deterrence because a mental abnormality would prevent the rational decision making required by criminal punishment and deterrence... A sex offender cannot be responsible and rational enough for the purpose of criminal sentence while simultaneously non-responsible for the purpose of civil commitment ...Courts which deny defendants the right to use a diminished capacity defense at their criminal trials for a sexual offense and then use evidence of lack of volitional control in their civil commitment hearing commit 'a mockery of justice which places both. . .systems. . .in disrepute.'" *** [Emphasis added.]

S5 [36] "There is currently a strange dichotomy between the assignment of responsibility at the time of trial and sentencing and at the time of pending release. At the time of sentencing, the offender is being held responsible for his actions. He is believed to have acted deliberately. He should be considered sane enough to stand trial. Therefore, he should be capable of being rehabilitated. Yet at the time of his release, the same offender is somehow considered not responsible, unable to control his actions, and therefore incapable of being rehabilitated. This is a contradiction and should not be legal. Either the offender is responsible for his/her actions and, therefore, rehabilitatable, or they are not responsible for their actions due to mental illness. If the latter is the case, then bypassing traditional incarceration and placing the individual in civil commitment for the duration of their sentence makes much more sense."

And here's another title that bears repeating:

"The Evil That Men Do: Perverting Justice to Punish Perverts"

M11 [1207] "'[I]t seems perverse,' wrote [Stephen] Morse, 'to claim that a person is responsible enough to deserve criminal punishment -- the most serious, afflictive state intrusion on liberty -- but is not responsible enough to avoid preventive confinement for potential harmdoing.' [from FN66:] Elsewhere, Morse wrote: 'It is utterly paradoxical to claim that a sexually violent predator is sufficiently responsible to deserve the stigma and punishment of criminal incarceration, but that the predator is not sufficiently responsible to be permitted the usual freedom from involuntary civil commitment that even very predictably dangerous but responsible agents retain. . .'"

"The line between civil and criminal is obliterated if a state can punish a person as criminally responsible for his actions and then, upon completion of that sentence, civilly commit him as mentally abnormal and unable to control his dangerousness. Hendricks jettisons culpability and non responsibility as predicates for confinement and declares open season on pure prevention detention without admitting or perhaps even recognizing that it is doing so." ****

K7 [556] "The sex offender is seen by the public as too sick to interact with society, but not the correct formula of sick to justify treatment instead of harsh confinement."

D10 [37] "In Hendricks, the Court...found that a sex offender can...be involuntarily civilly committed when the mental disorder renders him [38] substantially, but not completely, unable to control his sex offending behavior."

H15 [352] "In its 1996 ruling, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that Hendricks' [a twice-convicted child molester] commitment violated substantive due process, and it further cited the inconsistency between the law's implicit intent and its purported civil nature, stating, 'it is clear that the primary objective of the act is to continue incarceration and not to provide treatment.' [In re Hendricks, 1996]

"In June 1997 the [U.S. Supreme] Court issued a 5-4 ruling in Kansas v. Hendricks, overturning the lower court's ruling and essentially ushering in a new stage in the application of SVP ['Sexually Violent Predator'] civil commitment in Kansas and elsewhere. The court ruling stated: 'Those persons committed under the Act are, by definition, suffering from a "mental abnormality" or a "personality disorder" that prevents them from exercising adequate control over their behavior...'"

L7 [1347] "In Hendricks, the defendant's dangerousness was proved by his diagnosis of pedophilia and his own statement that he could not control his urges when stressed out."

H15 [354] "The [U.S. Supreme] Court's ruling in the [Kansas v.] Crane case, issued in the Soring of 2002...failed...to clarify a workable definition or standard for lack of control, effectively ceding these determinations to state and federal district courts...[355] Hence, the Crane ruling effectively relegated volitional impairment to a rhetorical concept with little substantive bearing on the commitment process. Just as the concept of mental abnormality may be driven largely by the nature of the individual's prior behaviors, the volitional impairment criterion may in turn be viewed as similarly circular in its logic and application."

L7 [1347] "Crane held that Hendricks requires volitional impairment as a separate step in the SVP evaluation and asserted that the State does not need to prove that the offenders have a complete inability to control themselves, but rather some sort of volitional impairment."

[1348] "Unlike Leroy Hendricks, who himself admitted that he was unable to control his urges to molest children when he was 'stressed out,' Michael Crane did not make any such statement."

[1349] "Justice Breyer, writing for the [Crane] majority, stated that 'our cases suggest that civil commitment of dangerous sexual offenders will normally involve individuals who find it particularly difficult to control their behavior' and 'it is often appropriate to say of such individuals, in ordinary English, that they are "unable to control their dangerousness."'

"Only those offenders who cannot control themselves to some degree must be placed in civil commitment and treated until they can control themselves.

"The [Crane] Court [wrote:] '[T]here must be proof of serious difficulty in controlling behavior.'"

C11 [695} "In January 2009, the...Fourth Circuit...in United States v. Comstock, [found] that '[t]he Constitution does not empower the federal government to confine a person solely because of asserted "sexual dangerousness" when the Government need not allege (let alone prove) that this "dangerousness" violates any federal law.'"

L8 "State appellate courts regularly simply invent non-scientific decisional factors that make upholding sex offender commitments a certainty every time."

K7 [552] "Both the United states and Germany seem to be skewing the proper balance between protecting society and protecting individual liberties. Each country's system of preventive detention raises constitutional concerns seemingly at odds with their own notions of justice."

L8 "[S]ex offender commitment [is unconstitutional], as a matter of both substantive and procedural due process denials, and [is] an overlooked imposition of a forbidden 'bill of attainder.' (U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Sections 9 and 10)"

"[When one] compares the sex offender commitment process to the rights of defendants in criminal cases, [one concludes] that, as such commitment laws are administered, one is accorded no procedural rights at all, even though the result is probably lifetime incarceration."

"[S]ex offender commitment is effectively a natural life re-sentencing, dooming old men to eventual death in high-security pseudo-prisons, as if raging animals bent on escape and rape."

"[B]ureaucracy and...politics...together ensure that commitment of sex offenders for treatment really just means permanent detention."

L7 [1347] "Psychiatry argues that a pedophilia diagnosis does not necessarily mean that an individual has volitional impairment because the DSM's definition of pedophilia includes individuals with self-control and without self-control."

S58 [The following is a West Virginia case, involving a six-year-old boy:] [552] "[T]he State's expert witness, Dr. Russell Heinlein...testified at a pre-trial hearing that defendant suffered from pedophilia, which he characterized as a mental illness . However, when called by the State as an expert witness to rebut the appellant's evidence of insanity, Dr. Heinlein testified that pedophilia was not a mental illness ." [Reversed (for this and other reasons).]

F12 [450] "Do not assume that diagnosis of a paraphilia [including pedophilia] implies volitional impairment...[I]t is important to understand that having a diagnosis of a paraphilia does not imply that the person also has difficulty controlling his behavior...While it is true that some individuals with a paraphilia have difficulty controlling behavior associated with it, many do not."

D8 [695] "[M]any state courts have wrongly [equated] a likelihood of future violence with a lack of control; the equation is wrong because it assumes that all sexual violence results from the predator's inability to stop himself. But a jury could find that a defendant has a mental disorder and was likely to re-offend, yet, still believe that he could control his behavior. This is the 'irresistible impulse' versus the 'impulse not resisted,' a distinction the Supreme Court has pointed out."

D10 [37] "The key to proving dangerousness legally is to prove an offender suffers from a mental disorder, but sex offenders do not generally suffer from florid psychiatric disorders that render them completely unable to control their behavior."

L8 "Unlike any other type of commitment laws, these laws are not based on any mental illness, any hallucinations, any maniacal urges, or any uncontrollable impulses, but instead simply on what are deemed one's propensities or sexual attractions."

L7 [1355] "Psychiatry recommends that 'mental health professionals testifying as "experts" in SVP commitment trials must caution triers of fact that 'there is no professional consensus in the field of mental health concerning what constitutes volitional impairment nor even what constitutes adequate psychiatric or psychological evidence of it.'" *****

L8 "Although words like 'urge' and 'impulse' appear in some of the sex offender laws of the 20 states (and the federal government) which have them, in that context those words are taken to mean merely any sexual motivations, no matter how abstract, attenuated, and strictly confined to fantasy they may be."

H15 [354] "The concept of volitional impairment, and the requirement that states establish the inability to control his or her impulses as part of civil commitment proceedings, has continued to engender significant debate in both legal and clinical circles. (Hamilton, 2002) Organized psychiatry has long maintained that volitional impairment is an untenable concept..."

L7 [1347] "Psychiatry argues...that because the volitional impairment concept is too difficult to operationalize, the requisite lack of self-control should be limited to extreme lack of self-control."

K7 [552] "These [civil commitment] laws accord with the general, but flawed, notions that risk prediction is extremely accurate and that sex offenders cannot be treated effectively."

D10 [38] "Despite a cautionary statement in the American Psychiatric Association's...(DSM-IV-TR), that psychiatrists should not use the diagnostic categories to predict dangerousness, the purported expertise of psychiatrists is the cornerstone of the State's and the defendant's claims.

"Barefoot v. Estelle and the briefs filed in the case are almost a quarter-century old, but the difficulty of reducing dangerousness, or risk of sex offense recidivism, is now even more evident than it was in 1983. Well-designed studies have shown that clinical judgment is no better than chance at predicting violent crime recidivism risk. [from FN61:] Monahan concluded that mental health professionals are: 'accurate in no more than one out of three predictions of violent behavior over a several-year period among institutionalized populations that have both committed violence in the past (and thus had high base rates for it) and who were diagnosed as mentally ill.'" @

[46] "[T]he American Psychiatric Association (APA) has stated unequivocally, most notably in its amicus curiae brief in the Supreme Court's Barefoot v. Estelle, that '[t]he unreliability of psychiatric predictions of long-term dangerousness is now an established fact within the profession."

[47] "In SVP hearing courts...the APA warnings against psychiatrists predicting dangerousness and empirical studies that support the APA reservations go unheeded."

L7 [1337] "Psychiatrists themselves admit that they do not have enough information in what they have called the most 'difficult call in mental health.'" @@

L8 "Unlike the near- certainty of imminent, violent actions needed for ordinary commitments, sex offender commitments are statutorily permitted merely on a 'risk' of 'eventual' commission of another sex crime, speculated as possibly occurring at any unknown time before a given sex offender's death...[E]ven short- term predictions of weather phenomena are inaccurate, and no one would take seriously any prediction of weather years into the future. Predicting future human actions is even more preposterous than that...[One sees that the] disgraceful, troubling spectacle of forensic psychologists -- who often have never even met a given sex offender -- citing nothing more than his past record as 'proof' that he will commit future crimes."

"[T]he darkest secret of those who hold out their 'clinical' opinions of likely recidivism [is that] research has consistently shown 'clinical risk assessment' ('CRA') to be mere guesses far less accurate than a coin toss. Even the newest 'actuarial risk assessment' ('ARA') tools -- effectively just checklists of past and present 'factors' -- are shown to be no better than pure chance guessing at predicting future recidivism."

"[T]wo of the most commonly used actuarial tools [are] the 'Static-99R,' and the 'MnSOST-3.1,' and their respective versions...[which contain] pure 'junk science' assumptions in [their] factors and procedures..."

"In particular, the 'coding rules' for the MnSOST-3.1 factors are wildly unscientific and inconsistent. Existence of 'male victims,' which both of these tools rely upon, is..[tied to] a myth of greater recidivism contrary to the observed facts."

"[T]he 'dirty secret' of the Static-series tools [is that each] allows a rater to simply choose whether to predict higher or lower likelihoods of recidivism based on [the] use of alternative tables furnished with that tool."

"More generally, the overall premises of such actuarial tools, 'adding probabilities,' along with using a single total predicted possibility that equates completely dissimilar offenders, are laid bare for the scientific frauds they are.

"Moreover, these ARA checklists either utterly overlook or radically underestimate factors against future re-offense, most crucially including the radically recidivism-reducing impact of aging."

L20 [224] "When people think of a sexually violent predator, most think of someone like Richard Allen Davis, the repeat sex offender who kidnaped Polly Klaas [225] from her bedroom window, then raped and murdered her. The reality, however, is quite different. To begin with, no state requires that a person have committed multiple crimes to qualify as a sexually violent predator. Indeed, the laws specifically state that one conviction of a qualifying offense is enough.

"Even more striking, although states require that an individual be convicted of at least one 'sexually violent offense,' what is classified as such need not be either sexual or violent. Nine states [out of the 20 with civil commitment laws at the time (2011)] do not even require any actual sexual contact between the sexually violent predator and the victim.

"In addition, nineteen [of the 20] states [including New York] classify certain sexual contact as a sexually violent offense even if there was no violence."

[234] "R. Karl Hanson and David Thornton created the Static-99...[which] is the most commonly used actuarial instrument for assessing the risk of sexual recidivism."

[239] "Since the belief that it is better to free ten guilty people than to punish one innocent has been a bedrock principle of the United States criminal justice system, it is worth looking at the ratio of false positives to true positives. Using the U.S. Department of Justice figures [2003 -- based on those released in 1994], the ratio between false positives (275) and true positives (38) is 7.24 to 1. That means that for every person that the Static-99 correctly predicts would recidivate, it would wrongly condemn 7 to continued incarceration. Of the 53 people who would in fact recidivate, the Static-99 misses 15, or 39 percent.

"The ratio of false positives to true positives is even more dramatic when child molesters are considered independently. The U.S. Department of Justice found that, of all child molesters released from fifteen states, 3.3 percent of those recidivated within three years. Recidivism is defined as being arrested for a new sex offense against a child within three years of release. Thus in a population of 1000 convicted child molesters, [240] DOJ data estimates that 33 would recidivate and 967 would not. The Static-99, however, would estimate that 23 of the 33 would recidivate (true positive) and falsely predict that 10 would not (false negative). It would also correctly predict that 687 of 967 would not recidivate (true negative) and would falsely predict that 280 of the 967 would recidivate (false positive). Thus, if used for custodial commitment or continuation, the Static-99 would recommend releasing 10 people who would recidivate and committing 280 people to a locked mental health facility who would not.

"Referring to the Department of Justice figures...the Static-99 would correctly predict that 23 child molesters would recidivate against a child. However, it would incorrectly recommend the incarceration of 280. Dividing 23 by 303 equals 0.076; this means that the Static-99 would correctly predict which child molesters would recidivate only 8 percent of the time.

"The ratio between false positives (280) and true positives (23) is 12.17. Thus, for every child molester who the Static-99 correctly predicts would recidivate, it would condemn 12 people who would not. Of the 33 people who would recidivate, the Static-99 misses 10, or 30 percent."

[247] "Hanson and Thornton created the Static-99 by using data from four sample populations in Canada and Great Britain. These samples had significantly higher recidivism rates than samples of sex offenders in the United States, at least as determined by the 2003 U.S. Department of Justice study described above.

"For instance, the first sample Hanson and Thornton used was from a maximum-security psychiatric facility, the Institut Philippe Pinel in Montreal, Canada. It included data on 344 sex offenders released between 1978 and 1993. On average, there were four years of follow-up and the recidivism rate (defined as convictions) was 15.4 percent. The second sample, from the Millbrook Correctional Centre...was 35.1 percent. The third sample was from a maximum-security psychiatric facility, the Oak Ridge Division of the Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre in Ontario, Canada. It contained data on 142 sex offenders referred to the program between 1972 and 1993. The sexual recidivism rate, defined as any charges or readmissions over ten years, was 35.1 percent. The fourth sample contained follow-up information on 563 sexual offenders released from Her Majesty's [248] Prison Service in England and Wales in 1979. The sexual recidivism rate, defined as convictions over sixteen years, was 25 percent.

"These total recidivism rates are three to seven times higher than rates found by the U.S. Department of Justice. The differences would have been even more extreme if the English and Canadian studies had measured recidivism by the number or rearrests, as was done in the DOJ study, instead of reconvictions, because many arrests do not result in conviction. The much higher recidivism rates make it appear that the samples used by Hanson and Thornton were biased upward.

"Since these sample populations are used to predict the degree of risk posed by individuals from the United States being released now, it is imperative to determine whether this discrepancy can be justified. One possible explanation for the higher recidivism rates in the Hanson and Thornton sample populations is the longer follow-up period. The Pinel data contradicts this theory, however, since it found the recidivism rate (defined as conviction for a new sex crime within four years) to be 15.4 percent, three times higher than the DOJ study, which was also of three years and measured recidivism in terms of rearrest and not conviction.

"Another explanation for the difference is the Hanson and Thornton sample are different than the sex offenders that the DOJ studied. Certainly two of the Hanson and Thornton samples, Pinel and Oak Ridge, seem different as they are both secure psychiatric facilities. As discussed in the previous section, Hanson has acknowledged that the child molesters studied in the Millbrook sample were an 'extreme group.'

"This is a very significant problem. Jurors in sexually violent predator cases are being asked to determine whether or not a person poses the risk of future dangerousness. In making its case, the state offers expert testimony that the individual in question has received a certain score on the Static-99, and that score places him with a group of offenders who recidivated at a certain rate -- even though that rate of recidivism is significantly higher than that of American sex offenders."

[249] "Despite the fact that Karl Hanson is aware that the samples he used to create the Static-99 have abnormally high recidivism rates as compared with the United States, he still recommends that these numbers be referred to in court."

[257] "One of the comments that defense attorneys make about the Static-99 is that a person would get the same score after he died -- and was certain not to reoffend. This means that facts such as how an individual is doing in treatment, whether his mental disorder has abated or gotten worse, or whether he states a desire to reoffend are not taken into account in the Static-99 score.

"Hanson has recognized the deficiencies with using only static factors and has specifically called for more research into the dynamic factors associated with recidivism...Examples of dynamic factors include deviant sexual preferences and substance abuse. [258] One of the goals of treatment is to try to address these factors to lower the risk of re-offense. Yet if a person is doing well in treatment, his Static-99 score will not change. Other dynamic factors associated with lowering aggressive behavior include religious convictions, social relations, self-esteem, and acceptance by parents. The Static-99, however, fails to take into account any dynamic factors, and as Hanson points out, 'the consequence is that there is much more evidence to justify committing offenders than there is for releasing them.'"

[262] "Turning to another currently available actuarial instrument will not solve the problems associated with the Static-99...[T]he instruments most commonly used are the Rapid Risk Assessment for Sexual Offense Recidivism (RRASOR), the Structured Anchored Clinical Judgment (SACJ), the Sex Offender Risk Appraisal Guide (SORAG), and the Minnesota Sex Offender Screening Tool-Revised (MnSOST-R)."

[263] "Both the RRASOR and SACJ are less accurate than the Static-99.

"Although the SORAG was more accurate than the Static-99...it was still only moderately predictive, which will also lead to a high ratio of false positives to true positives.

"The MnSOST-R is widely used by behavioral scientists in civil commitment procedures for sex offenders...Although the developers of the MnSOST-R reported that it had a high degree of accuracy, these results were not replicated by peer-reviewed studies.

"Furthermore, when the MnSOST-R was evaluated from a cross-validational perspective, results showed that the original risk predictions were greatly inflated. Risk estimates using the MnSOST-R were compared with those of the RRASOR and the Static-99, and the difference was startling: in the same population, MnSOST-R predictions for future re-offense averaged about 75 percent as contrasted with about 35 percent for other instruments. 'These considerations suggest that predictions based on the MnSOST-R may have unnecessarily placed the freedom of many individuals in jeopardy.'" §

[264] "Hanson and Thornton's attempts at making the Static-2002 more accurate than the Static-99 did not succeed. Although the Static-2002 was more accurate at predicting violent recidivism, there was no marked improvement in its ability to predict sexual recidivism.

"Thus all of the instruments have similar deficiencies with regard to accuracy. Not surprisingly, some commentators have questioned what the motive is in using these actuarial tables in civil commitment proceedings: 'We must consider whether there may be a political bias to overestimate the degree of accurate prediction achieved in order to justify keeping some offenders imprisoned. In other words, are these actuarial scales being misused by some who have already made up their minds to keep an offender incarcerated for crimes they have not yet committed.'" §§

[265] "The American Psychiatric Association created a task force to evaluate the sexually violent predator laws; in 2005 they published their findings. After reviewing the laws as well as the science behind the notion of the sexually violent predator, the task force concluded that sexually violent predator laws are bad for the offender and psychiatry in general:

'In the opinion of the Task Force, sexual predator commitment laws represent a serious assault on the integrity of psychiatry, particularly with regard to [266] defining mental illness and the clinical conditions for compulsory treatment. Moreover, by bending civil commitment to serve essentially nonmedical purposes, sexual predator commitment statutes threaten to undermine the legitimacy of the medical model of commitment. In the opinion of the Task Force, psychiatry must vigorously oppose these statutes in order to preserve the moral authority of the profession and to ensure continuing societal confidence in the medical model of civil commitment." §§§

"Stories about dangerous sex offenders pervade the media and the public consciousness. These stories lead many to believe that sex offenders are monsters incapable of controlling themselves who will continue to prey on innocent women and children unless they are locked away forever. The reality, however, is quite different. The reality, however, is quite different. The U.S. Department of Justice statistics show that recidivism rates in the United states are low, which means that many sex offenders can and do control themselves ." [Emphasis added.]

[267] "[P]redictions of future danger are used in SVP hearings to decide whether or not a person should continue to be detained after he has completed his criminal sentence. Since the Constitution states that he cannot be punished twice, the only grounds for committing him is that he is mentally ill and dangerous. Since the whole architecture of SVP commitments rests on whether a person is dangerous, it is critical that we be able to predict dangerousness accurately." [Emphasis original.]

[268] "[E]ven if a more accurate instrument could be devised, it might still pose problems from a constitutional perspective. Both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution protect against deprivation of life, liberty, and property without due process of law. Yet in their very construction, actuarial instruments like the Static-99 undermine this protection. Rather than being provided with due process of law, a prospective SVP is evaluated on the basis of historical characteristics that predict recidivism in other populations. These characteristics don't include any rehabilitation that the individual has subsequently undergone, any treatment he has completed, or any physical changes that might have occurred such as aging, voluntary chemical castration, or even paralysis. Thus, other than getting older, there is nothing the individual can do to change his score on the Static-99.

"Not only do the sexually violent predator laws undermine basic values and protections, but they also do so at an enormous monetary price. Because they demand tremendous financial resources to operate, they divert funds from addressing the lion's share of sex crimes that are perpetrated by family and friends. They also strip money away from parole, probation, and sex offender treatment programs that have been shown to reduce recidivism by as much as 30 to 40 percent. Given that state [269] budgets are limited, spending more money on confining SVPs means that resources are not available for other social programs like education and health care.

"In a world of limited resources, states spend hundreds of millions of dollars locking up individuals for crimes that they might commit instead of spending money solving crimes that have already happened.

"What is at stake goes beyond money and the lives of a few thousand people. By confining people without due process, the SVP laws erode our constitutional regard for liberty. They play on our deepest fears, and in so doing tell us that it is acceptable to treat human beings as if they are monsters. In the process, the SVP laws destroy two of the fundamental underpinnings of democracy: equality and respect."

H15 [356] "Research on the predictive accuracy of SVP forensic evaluations suggests that, although forensic psychologists show some ability to predict general violence, predictions regarding sexual violence may be no more accurate than chance. (Jackson, Rogers, & Schuman, 2004)"

L7 [1335] "Psychiatric associations vehemently oppose the legislatures' 'mental abnormality' conception of mental illness, protesting that it leads to the nonmedical use of civil commitment. These psychiatric arguments come in the form of amicus briefs in [Kansas v.] Hendricks and position statements to [1336] legislatures. A task force of the APA released a statement two years after the decision in Hendricks announcing its opposition to SVP statutes."

H3 [356] "[T]he predictive accuracy of clinical risk assessments was unimpressive for sexual (.10) recidivism..." [squared, accounts for only 1% of variance]

H10 [109] "[I]t is worth considering Grove and Meehl's (1996) caution about the use of unverified clinical opinion, which they compare to the Inquisition's methods for identifying witches. 'All policy-makers should know that a practitioner who claims not to need any statistical or experimental studies but relies solely on clinical experience as adequate justification, by that very claim is shown to be a non scientifically minded person whose professional judgments are not to be trusted." @@@ [Emphasis added.]

H12 "[T]he average predictive accuracy of professional judgment to predict sex offense recidivism is only slightly better than chance...Some researchers have even argued that the accuracy of prediction is sufficiently low that it threatens the very basis of risk-based legal sanctions for sex offenders..."

J12 [1443] "[T]he demand for specialized risk assessments...has produced a 'cottage industry of forensic psychologists'..."

[1455] "A recent paper reported on a meta-analysis of 136 studies in which predictions [were made] in the realm of science or medicine (i.e., all predictions involved human behavior or medicine), and in all instances the clinician and the actuarial expert had access to the same predictor variables and made their predictions on the basis of the same criterion.

"In only eight out of the 136 studies was clinical prediction superior to actuarial prediction...Across all of the studies, whether the clinician had access to more data did not significantly alter the superiority of actuarial prediction. [Emphases original.] Moreover, in those instances in which the clinician had access to a clinical interview, the superiority of actuarial prediction was even greater. The authors concluded:

'Even though outlier studies can be found, we identified no systematic exceptions to the general superiority (or at least material equivalence) of mechanical prediction. It holds true in general medicine, in mental health, in personality, and in education and training sessions. It holds for medically trained judges and for psychologists. It holds for inexperienced and seasoned judges.'" @@@@

"Two recent meta-analyses further support the conclusion that actuarial assessments of risk are generally superior to risk assessments. Both meta-analyses reported very small (non-significant) correlations between clinical judgments and recidivism, and stronger correlations between actuarial assessments and recidivism...[I]n an aggregation of 61 sexual offender recidivism studies (in which the number of subjects studied was an impressive 23,393), the correlation ( r ) between clinical assessments and sexual recidivism was .10 [var. = .01]...Actuarial methods, in contrast, were much more strongly associated with recidivism ( r of .46 [var. = .22] for sexual recidivism...)."

[Comparing the two variance figures, actuarial methods were almost 22 times more accurate in predicting recidivism than clinical methods.]

[1457] "Based on this, and similar, empirical evidence, many scholars have concluded that the predictive efficacy of actuarial methods of risk assessment is superior to clinically derived assessments of risk. Monahan and his colleagues, for example, stated: 'The general superiority of statistical over clinical risk assessments in the behavioral sciences has been known for almost half a century.' A similar conclusion was expressed in a review paper published by the Solicitor General of Canada, where '[o]ne of the most consistent findings is that evidence-based, actuarial measures are more accurate in the prediction of offender re-offending or recidivism than professional, clinical judgment.' Another recent article notes, 'In literally hundreds of comparisons over many domains including the prediction of recidivism, clinical judgment has essentially never been found to be superior to actuarial methods, whereas the converse has most often been demonstrated.' In commenting on the demonstrated superiority of actuarial over clinical judgment, Meehl remarked, 'I do not know of any controversy in the social sciences in which the evidence is so massive, diverse, and consistent.'

"Clinical risk assessment is, by definition, an exercise in human judgment. The susceptibility of human judgment to error has been the subject of considerable empirical scrutiny. Although by no means exhaustive, the following sources of error in clinical judgments have been noted: (1) ignoring or using incorrect base rates, (2) assigning suboptimal or incorrect weights to information (e.g., over-weighting 'high profile' but relatively non-predictive information), (3) failing to take into account covariation, (4) relying on illusory correlations between predictor variables and the criterion (i.e., basing decisions upon the presence or absence of information that is unrelated or only weakly related to the criterion), (5) failing to [1458] acknowledge the natural bias among forensic examiners toward 'conservative' judgments, defined as an increased potential for incorrect judgments of dangerousness associated with a reluctance to find someone not dangerous, and (6) failing to receive, and thus benefit from, feedback on judgment errors...To be sure, ARA has its faults, and some ARA tools are better than others. Yet, even the weakest of the actuarial assessment methods appears to be systematically better than clinical judgments." [Emphasis original.]

"Given the courts' routine reliance on clinical risk assessment to support long-term liberty deprivation, it is illogical to exclude demonstrably more reliable ARA tools. In making determinations with serious implications for individual liberty, courts must adopt state-of-the-art methods. As the above discussion indicates, a corpus of empirical evidence demonstrates the predictive superiority of ARA over clinical judgments."

K7 [554] "Perhaps this apparent reliance on science provides sufficient cover of [555] the real reason for SVP laws, namely fear and panic, so as to minimize the discomfort involved in confining these offenders past the expiration date of their criminal sentences."

[561] "[T]he accuracy of actuarial instruments aside, judges or juries may not even listen to the actual formulas, but instead be driven by politics and emotion, and rely on the experts whose prediction agrees with their own subjective sense of responsibility or guilt."

D10 [46] "The psychiatrist's job...is to circumscribe the predators in our midst, and provide ground[s] for segregating them. The DSM-IV-TR provides the language in which sex offending may be externalized as an object of disgust. The forensic function of diagnostic categories is to disguise the emotional context of SVP statutes."

L7 "[S]o-called 'treatment' in sex offender commitment facilities [is] not intended or able to actually 'ready' anyone for release, but instead purely as a means to thwart release. Such treatment is deeply [in]fused with anti-sexuality -- and it invariably miscasts pedosexuality as if it were an addiction ('relapse prevention' therapy). It proceeds on the false premise that all atypical sexual attractions ('deviance') must be extinguished or somehow magically converted to an 'acceptable' sexuality before release is authorized. This, of course, is no more possible than the recent attempts to 'treat' homosexuals to turn them into heterosexuals. And such treatment also falsely presumes that any 'deviant' attraction is inherently an irresistible impulse that will, with certainty, result in future sex crimes -- defying the experience of millions for whom pedosexuality is experienced only through visual media and fantasy."

"[The civil commitment industry is comprised of] quacks [posing] as supposed 'therapists,' repeated failed experimentation substituted for treatment, attempts at 'brainwashing,' demands that one give up forbidden 'thinking errors,' serial demotions in treatment levels as a means to thwart progress toward release, [and] plethysmography and misuse of polygraph testing to justify such demotion."

G15 "[T]o a lawyer, or at least to a prosecutor in a state with sexually violent predator (SVP) laws, which allow diagnosed sex offenders to be kept in 'treatment units' even after they have served out their sentences, a diagnosis based on behavior alone is an opportunity to protect (and score political points with) a public disgusted and frightened by sex offenders. The DSM-IV-TR diagnosis has turned into a different kind of opportunity for mental health experts, spawning a cottage industry of doctors ready to testify that the offender has indeed offended, and that this behavior is the symptom of a mental illness. Their practice is not limited to pedophiles. Because Sexual Sadism, Exhibitionism, Voyeurism, and Frotteurism all have the same behavior-only criteria as Pedophilia, rapists, flashers, peepers, and humpers can all be put away until they are 'cured' -- which may well mean forever."

N2 "[T]he solutions to sexual predation are not solutions at all, but frustratingly inadequate, and often legally and ethically murky, tools. Continuing to hold offenders, after their prison sentences are completed, under the guise of 'treatment'? This punishes people for crimes they have not committed, awaiting cures that never happen, at huge expense."

H15 [340] "Mental health professionals and advocates have...expressed concern regarding the co-opting of the psychiatric profession to fulfill a criminal justice function..."

[438] "[Today there are] increasingly blurred lines separating the criminal justice and mental health systems."

[458] "Beyond addressing conditions of treatment and confinement, the courts have also influenced the manner in which states address the issues of transition and release. The federal judge presiding over the Washington case [Turay v. Serling, 2003] writes: 'A continuing major flaw in the SCC program is the lack of what experts call the light at the end of the tunnel. Mental health treatment, if to be anything more than a sham, must give the confined person hope that if he gets well enough to be safely released, he will be transferred to some less restrictive alternative.'"

D10 [37] "[T]he sexuality of a sex offender is widely regarded as monstrous. We do not merely hate the sin; we hate the sinner, and we want the sinner to be removed from our presence, because the sex offender crosses boundaries that secure our sense of sexual identity and order...To mask the injustice of these statutes, what were once regarded as acts so evil they triggered horror, have been reframed as mad acts and fitted into a pattern of natural causes. But, mad or bad, sex offenders function as scapegoats."

K7 [552] "The complicated issue of managing sex offenders must continue to be addressed, but in a rational way that appreciates the available research and is not dominated by fear and disgust of the outsider."

[556] "The current system of managing sex offenders in the United states is not a system of managing risks and rehabilitation of sex offenders but of managing public fear."

P5 [376] "There are four scientific studies that have specifically examined changes in recidivism rates in sex offenders over a large range of age-at-release, and these studies confirm substantial reductions in recidivism over the lifespan. (Barbaree et al., 2003; Fazel, Sjostedt, Langstrom, and Grann, in press; Hanson, 2002; Thornton, in press)

"The samples of sex offenders that have been used in the development and validation of risk assessment instruments have included a preponderance of younger offenders. The average years of age at release in these samples are in the mid-30s. Therefore, it could be reasonably argued that the use of the actuarial instruments is inappropriate in estimating risk in the aging sexual offender. Professional standards guiding the use of psychological tests warn against the use of tests if such use may be discriminatory on the basis of age, race, culture, and so forth. Clearly, if recidivism risk decreases with age and if the actuarial instruments estimating risk were developed with young sex offenders, then the use of these instruments with older offenders could be considered to be discriminatory. On this basis, it could be argued that actuarial instruments should not be used with older offenders and to do so might be considered to be a breach of the standards of professional practice."

[377] "[I]t is clear that the risk levels (% likelihood) suggested by the Static-99 are too high for older offenders."

[385] "We are witnessing, in dramatic relief, the unfolding of two outcomes in SVP hearings: (1) the loss of the integrity of the adjudicative process with testimony that is, at best, opaque, and at worst, dissimilative; and (2) the loss of the integrity of science itself. Like the king who appeared before his startled minions wit transparent lack of attire, the fact finder is frequently confronted by expert testimony that is energetic in spirit but naked in substance. Like the king, the experts sport a well-tailored suit of opinions, which often are diaphanous. The net result is an expensive process that has a veneer of legal and scientific polish but ignores both the norms of a just society and the solid guidance that good science could furnish. The tolerance by the legal system for nonstandard and non authoritative diagnoses suggests strongly that the legal system's reliance on diagnostic testimony is largely pretextual. Vast sums are spent on SVP proceedings and programs. If these resources are guided by pretextualism, by a pseudoscience shaved and extruded to fit a politically expedient approach to public safety, we can expect less than optimal return on our investment. What is worse, however, is a distinct risk that the application of science itself will be distorted, that the opaque and transient needs of SVP cases will warp its findings, and that the fact finder will be faced with highly unreliable testimony cloaked in the mantle of science.

"Poor science may survive judicial scrutiny because good science will embarrass the only politically viable stance, maintaining the appearance of being tough on sex offenders."

L8 "[An] impossibly high standard [has been] set to qualify an offender for release from such commitment. [Let us now look at] the success of prison release programs at preventing sex-crime recidivism. Such programs ('intensive supervised release') require sex offenders to undergo treatment after release, and impose strict rules upon released sex offenders, such as house arrest, location monitoring, and nearly constant surveillance. Such release programs have prevented new sex crimes by those who would have been committed elsewhere -- and at a total price of only pennies to the dollar spent for such commitment facilities on a per-detainee basis. In short, 'commitment' of sex offenders is an unnecessary boondoggle."

H15 [363] "[Civil commitment] costs were generally four to five times higher than costs associated with housing a state prison inmate in those states. (Gookin, 2007)"

M11 [1207] "Bruce Winick suggested that if pedophiles can be labeled by legislative fiat as unable to control their strong sexual urges -- although no theoretical or empirical support exists for this determination -- then Hendricks, broadly construed, permits legislatures to invent categories such as 'violent hotheads,' 'violent terrorists,' 'persistent kleptomaniacs,' 'dangerous pyromaniacs,' and 'persistent compulsive gamblers,' and subject those so identified to post prison civil commitment." @@@@@

D10 [47] "There are, I submit, no public reasons -- reasons that all similarly situated citizens can agree upon -- for civilly committing this special class of offender. The arbitrariness of isolating the class of sex offenders to involuntary civil commitment is a ground for any rational, impartial citizen to bar such commitments. There is no reason to believe that other grounds for finding a person civilly committable will not one day be discerned, and any citizen may be in the class of committable persons."

D11 [50] "Law professor Eric Janus has argued that sex offender commitment statutes may serve as a template for intrusive government on a massive scale. A preventive state may be the result of what appears to be the application of preventive detention to a limited, and despised, population. From the point of view of those who believe a preventive state is an effective way to protect the public, security seems more important than liberty. Creating classes of outsiders -- and framing them as monsters -- who warrant not simply heightened surveillance, but virtual exclusion from civil society, may seem limited today to sex offenders, but on the horizon looms a far more extensive use of these strategies of social control."

L8 "[S]ex offender commitment needs to be abandoned, before it sets a precedent which will lead to a totalitarian future in which anyone can be locked up forever, not for any crime, but just for dangerous' thoughts or emotions."

C11 [707] "[T]he civil commitment system might be most effective with robbers. Robbers have a higher detected recidivism rate than those who commit sexual offenses against children, so an indefinite commitment of robbers might prevent more future crimes than indefinite commitment of sex offenders.

"If all DSM disorders served as mental abnormalities justifying civil commitment, not only would kleptomaniacs be committed, but also [708] alcoholics and, until recently, homosexuals."

P3 "She was Juror Number 6, a woman with some mighty definite ideas about right and wrong. She's a conservative Republican, a law-and-order woman who doesn't want criminals coddled. And she's appalled that the state can lock people up for what they might do. 'Do you remember the movie where you got arrested for future crime?' Kathy Martin asked. 'I didn't realize in America you could be given an indefinite sentence. They hide you in a hospital, but that's the only difference.' Similarities between the recent civil commitment trial of Robert Richard Sanzone in St. Augustine [Florida] and the 2002 movie 'Minority Report' became unmistakable as the three-day trial progressed, said Martin. 'I'm not a bleeding heart liberal, but I would like to think someone can't incarcerate me because they think I might do something.'...Martin is a registered nurse who works with troubled youngsters at daniel in Jacksonville, reportedly the state's oldest child service agency. It spells its name in lower-case letters. 'I was surprised I got picked (for the jury) because daniel (in Jacksonville) deals with problem-kids, anywhere from 5 to 17, who are sexually active,' said Martin. 'They have been abused or are abusers.' Sanzone was convicted of endangering the welfare of a child in 1996 after reportedly having sex with a 12-year-old girl in New York. He was 20 years old. That conviction got him six months in jail and 5 years probation. He was sentenced in St. Johns County [Florida] to five years in prison for lewd and lascivious battery and lewd or lascivious molestation in 2004. He had been convicted of having sex with one 15-year-old girl and trying to coax another 15-year-old into also having sex...Under Florida's Jimmy Ryce Act, sex offenders who are determined to still be a danger to society may be held indefinitely while they get treatment...[I]t was passed in 1998 in reaction to the 1995 rape, beating and shooting death of a 9-year-old...'The person who did that to that boy, Jimmy Ryce, deserved the death penalty as far as I'm concerned. But what happens is these laws aren't used the way they were intended to be used. Not once (in Sanzone's case) was there any weapon involved, not even physical force. I don't like the law, not that I've heard of it. You can lock somebody up, throw away the key for an indefinite period of time?...At the closing of the state's case, I knew I was going to vote for the defense.'...When the Sanzone jurors left the courtroom to consider their verdict, they took an immediate vote. It was 4-2 against commitment...Martin said she understands why horrific crimes lead to new laws, but she doesn't like the practice. 'When a brutal case occurs, the pubic wants to do something. It makes us feel better that we passed a law,' she said. 'This law had unintended consequences that can come back and bite someone's behind. I think these laws are just feel-good measures. Before I was called for jury duty, someone was talking about safety in society. I was saying there has to be a balance. Because if you go to North Korea, you're not going to have a lot of crime. You go into one of these societies that's so closed and so restrictive, you want to be safer there?'"

N13 [In an edition of All Things Considered on National Public Radio (NPR), a U.S. State Department official complained about a Cuban law that criminalized not an act actually committed , but those people considered likely to commit crimes some time in the future .]

---------------------------------------------

* [from FN14:] Harry Brunius, Better for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America's Quest for Racial Purity (2006), at 13.

** [FN249:] Michael L. Perlin, "There's No Success Like Failure / And Failure's No Success at All": Exposing the Pretextuality of Kansas v. Hendricks, 92 NwL.Rev. 1247, 1249 (1998).

*** [from FN103:] In re Linehan, 518 N.W.2d 609, 616 (Minn. 1994) (Gardebring, J., dissenting).

**** [from FN68:] [Stephen J.] Morse, Fear of Danger, Flight from Culpability, 4 Psychol. Pub. Pol'y & L. 250 (1998), at 258, 259.

***** [from FN247:] Michael B. First & Robert L. Halon, Use of DSM Paraphilia Diagnoses in Sexually Violent Predator Commitment Cases, 36 J. Am. Acad. Psychiatry L. 443, at 451.

@ Monahan, J. (1981). The Clinical Prediction of Violent Behavior: A Monograph Series. Rockville, Maryland, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (pg. 14).

@@ [from FN255:] Allen Frances & Shoba Sreenivasan, Commentary, Sexually Violent Predator Statutes: The Clinical/Legal Interface, 25 Psychiatric Times 49 (2008), at 49.

§ Richard Wollert, The Importance of Cross-Validation in Actuarial Test Construction: Shrinkage in the Risk Estimates for the Minnesota Sex Offender Screening Tool-Revised, 2(r) J. Threat Assessment 89, 96.

§§ Thomas Grisso (moderator), Neil M. Malamuth, Howard Barbaree, Vernon Quinsey & Raymond Knight, discussants; comments by Dr. Malamuth, Risk Assessment: Discussion of the Section. 989 Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 236, 238 (2003).

§§§ Grant T. Harris, Marnie E. Rice, Vernon L. Quinsey, Martin H. Lalumiere, Douglas Boer & Carol Lang, A Multisite Comparison of Actuarial Risk Instruments for Sex Offenders, 15(3) Psychological Assessment 413 (2003).

@@@ Grove, W.M., Meehl, P.E. (1996). Comparative Efficiency of Informal (Subjective, Impressionistic) and Formal (Mechanical, Algorithmic) Prediction Procedures: The Clinical-Statistical Controversy. Psychology, Public Policy, & Law, 2, 293, at 320.

@@@@ William M. Grove et al., Clinical versus Mechanical Prediction: A Meta-Analysis, 12 Psychol. Assessment 19 (2000), at 25.

@@@@@ [from FN62:] Bruce J. Winick, Sex Offender Law in the 1990s: A Therapeutic Jurisprudence Analysis, 4 Psychol. Pub. Pol'y and L. 505 (1998), at 525-530