Sexually Violent Predators

A sexually violent predator is defined as those who have been convicted of or charged with a crime of sexual violence and suffer from a mental abnormality or personality disorder which makes the person likely to engage in predatory acts of sexual violence.
In May 1987, Earl K. Shriner, a mentally handicapped man with a long criminal record, completed a ten-year sentence in Washington for kidnapping and assaulting two teenage girls. He had a 24-year history of killing, sexual assault, and kidnapping. Prior to his discharge, prison officials learned that he intended to torture children after he was released, and tried vigorously to detain him through the civil commitment laws covering mental illness. Unable to demonstrate the required recent overt act to prove dangerousness, the state had no option but to release Shriner. Two years after his release, he raped and strangled a seven-year-old boy in Tacoma, Washington, severed his penis, and left him in the woods to die.
After cases like these were going on in the state of Washington the governor decided to enact a control committee to help protect the community from predators such as Shriner. The Task Force held public hearings throughout the state and considered numerous ways to strengthen the states laws concerning sex offenses. The group’s recommendations became an omnibus bill to the 1990 Legislature, outlining sweeping changes in the penalties for sex offenses, enacting a sex offender registry and community notification provisions, and establishing programs to assist victims. The Task Force’s most controversial recommendation called for a new civil commitment statute authorizing the state to confine and treat a small group of sex offenders over whom the state had no existing authority. These civil commitment proposals, and the majority of the other Task Force recommendations, were passed unanimously by both houses of the legislature in February 1990.
The law authorizes prosecutors (or the Attorney General) to initiate civil proceedings for a person whose sentence for a sexually violent offense has expired or is about to expire, and that person: has been convicted of a sexually violent crime and is nearing the end of a criminal sentence; has committed a sexually violent offense as a juvenile and is about to be released; has been charged with a violent sex offense but has been determined to be incompetent to stand trial; or has been found not guilty of a sex offense by reason of insanity.
After Washington passed this bill states such as Arizona, California, Kansas and Wisconsin signed a similar bill in regards to sexually violent predators. The only difference is that Washington houses their predators who are being confined after their sentence in a prison mental health facility where the other states house their predators in more of a hospital setting. California is the only state that also has a time period they are held for which is two years where the other states do not have a strict time period.
Sexually violent predators are a very scary and concerning part of our justice system. There needs to be some type of help or confinement for individuals who are not going to change their ways. We as the justice system can not release them back into our society to harm others. I believe the confinement we are doing now is a great step, we just need to figure out a way to help change them or help them help society in some way.


http://www.dshs.wa.gov/hrsa/scc/SVP.htm
http://dcj.state.co.us/ors/pdf/docs/Final%20SVP.pdf