Title: Sexually violent predator laws - Wikipedia
Headings: Sexually violent predator laws
Sexually violent predator laws
Contents
History
Civil confinement
Process
Controversy
Legal challenges
See also
References
Further reading
External links

Content: If the committed person's condition changes so he/she no longer meets commitment criteria, he/she must be released. In some circumstances, committed persons can be released to court-monitored conditional releases to less restrictive alternative placements (LRAs). Contents
1 History
2 Civil confinement
2.1 Process
3 Controversy
4 Legal challenges
5 See also
6 References
7 Further reading
8 External links
History
In 1990, the first SVP law was established in the state of Washington, following two high-profile sexual assaults and murders by Earl Kenneth Shriner and Gene Kane. In response to the attacks, Helen Harlow—the mother of Earl Shriner's victim—formed a group known as The Tennis Shoe Brigade in order to pressure the state government to change the laws related to sex offenders. Washington Governor Booth Gardner formed the "Task Force on Community Protection" to consider possible solutions. While the Task Force deliberated, serial killer Westley Allan Dodd kidnapped, raped, and murdered three young boys in Vancouver, Washington, for which he was executed by hanging. The state legislature, following the recommendation of the Task Force, enacted the "Community Protection Act of 1990." The United States Supreme Court declared the "civil commitment" of former sex offenders was "civil" and non-punitive as the high court's justices presumed as true the state's empirical claim that it had a means of identifying a class of individuals, labeled by the state "sexually violent predators", who were "extremely dangerous" due to their "likelihood of engaging in repeat acts of predatory sexual violence [being] high" (Kansas v. Hendricks (1997) 521 U.S. 346, 351). In order for the imprisoning of these individuals, without new crimes having been committed, the U.S. Supreme court indicated that states must be able to make a distinction, between (i) the class of sex offenders who must be released after having completed their prison sentences and (ii) those who could be "civilly" detained, as this later class (unlike the former) is made up of individuals who suffered from "mental abnormalities" which caused them to have "serious difficulty in controlling behavior", thus making them distinguishable "from the dangerous but typical recidivist" that must be released (Kansas v. Crane (2002) 534 U.S. 407, 413). Data culled over the several years these schemes have been in place have systematically demonstrated that "Sexually Violent Predator" laws were imprisoning individuals who had not been rationally differentiated from typical recidivists or from individuals who were among the overwhelming majority of former sex offenders who would not ever reoffend. ("