20 states, the District of Columbia and the Federal System place people accused of sex related crimes in Involuntary Civil Commitment. (Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin) and the District of Columbia have enacted laws permitting the civil commitment of those forensically evaluated as "dangerous.")
These states get around having to respect peoples rights under the constitution by claiming Involuntary Civil Commitment "Facilities" are not prisons and therefore are not "punishment" for the sex offenders forensically "evaluated" and sent there sometimes before they have even been actually convicted of any sex related crime. But adjudicated or unadjudicated the legislatures in these 20 states have statutes which allow "Forensic" Psychological evaluators to label inmates of these facilities as SVP (sexually violent predators) and other "diagnosis" which conform to the legislative construct rather than to any actual DSM psychiatric diagnosis (the American Psychiatric Association has come out against these state sponsored forensic "diagnosis" as Unethical)
Dennis Doren who, as they say "wrote the bible" Evaluating Sex Offenders, A Manual for Civil Commitment and Beyond, admits his made-up diagnostic labels are unethical (because they don't diagnose any real problem. They just claim someone may be "dangerous to themselves or others and may commit unidentified action in future. But, never the less Doren urges more "forensic evaluators" to get on board (it's a very lucrative field) These dangerous faux-evaluations keep/ send people with sex related convictions (or presumed future actions) inside non-prisons even after they've served their prison sentences. For those of us "on the registries" in one of the 20 states, it also means that should your loved one be deemed to have violated the rules and restrictions of the Registry, they might not be sent back to prison, but could be sent to one of these Involuntary Civil Commitment "facilities.
But these "facilities do not require a conviction or term of incarceration. Simply put, anyone sent to Involuntary Civil Commitment is incarcerated only with a Forensic Label NO life , no life-with-out sentence required: the forensic evaluations labels mean your loved one has an sentence of "Indefinite Detention. Put plainly, people are more likely to "be set free" in a pine box than to actually live to be set free from one of these involuntary civil commitment "facilities".
Please download and READ the report : Treatment Industrial Complex: How for profit prison corporations are undermining efforts to treat and rehabilitate Prisoners for corporate gain. (ufsc.org/sites/default/files/documents/TIC-report-online.pdf ) Or for more information please contact American Friends Service Committee ( clsaacs@afc.org.org ) or (520) 623-9141
I once thought just getting rid of prejudice against us and our families / finally making it off parole/ off state Registries was what family and friends on the "outside" needed to strive for but more states than "just" these 20 states have passed legislation enabling the spread of "Involuntary Civil Commitment" so perhaps to your state is next on the for-profit list using incarceration and faux therapy of human beings as a means not to make anyone "safe" but as an ever broadening income stream and a means of pleasing "stockholders" at our expense?
