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Science 14 November 1997:
Vol. 278. no. 5341, pp. 1248 - 1249
DOI: 10.1126/science.278.5341.1248
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Policy Forum

The Civil Commitment of Sex Offenders

Howard Zonana

The U.S. Supreme Court recently found the Kansas "sexual predator" statute constitutional. This statute permits the confinement, in mental hospitals, of sex offenders after the completion of their criminal sentences if they have a mental abnormality that might lead to future dangerous behavior. The broad definition of mental abnormality, includes both serious disorders and personality disorders that may reflect only antisocial traits, coupled with the fact that past behavior which occurred years before, is an adequate predicate for confinement. This represents a significant expansion of traditional civil commitment and a blurring of the boundaries of mental illness and deviance. The costs for this confinement are three to four times the cost of customary civil commitment and compete with costs for treatment of the seriously mentally ill.

The author is at the Yale School of Medicine and is Clinical Lecturer in Law, Yale Law School, New Haven, CT 06519, USA. He is currently the chair of the American Psychiatric Association's Task Force on Sexually Dangerous Offenders. E-mail: howard.zonana{at}yale.edu

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Are Sex Offenders Treatable? A Research Overview.
L. S. Grossman, B. Martis, and C. G. Fichtner (1999)
Psychiatr Serv 50, 349-361
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