Q: What is a Sexually Violent Predator?
A: A person unlikely to commit another sex crime.
State laws that allow sexually violent predators to be locked up even after they have served their sentences are based on questionable assumptions that they continue to pose a danger to society, according to a study published in the American Criminal Law Review.
The study focused on California where, according to the authors, research indicating that sexually violent predators (SVPs) are less likely to re-commit crimes than other offenders was suppressed because it challenged the constitutional legitimacy of the state’s SVP laws.
The research in the mid-2000s by Dr. Jesus Padilla, a clinical psychologist at Atascadero State Hospital, a California maximum-security institution that houses mentally ill offenders, found that just 6.5 percent of untreated sexually violent predators were arrested for a new sex crime within 4.8 years of release from a locked mental facility.
Read the full article and at the Crime Report.