Policy Implications of New York's Sex Offender Civil Management Assessment Process

• Published date: 01 August 2017
• Author: Andrew J. Harris
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12321
• Date: 01 August 2017

POLICY ESSAY

SEX OFFENDER CIVIL MANAGEMENT

Policy Implications of New York’s Sex

Offender Civil Management Assessment

Process

Andrew J. Harris

University of Massachusetts Lowell

In recent decades, sex offender civil commitment (SOCC) policies have become in-

creasingly common throughout the United States. Based on the principles of mental

hygiene law, SOCC offers a mechanism for state or federal authorities to maintain

custody and control of high-risk sex offenders, generally on an indefinite basis, after com-

pletion of their criminal sentence. Although SOCC statutes vary in their standards and

criteria, commitment is generally based on a court finding that the individual poses a risk

for future sexual harm as a result of a mental abnormality.

Preceded by state policies dating to the 1930s that permitted the psychiatric com-

mitment of “sexual psychopaths” (Sutherland, 1950), contemporary SOCC laws may be

traced to the 1990 passage of Washington’s Community Protection Act (CPA). The CPA

was drafted by a gubernatorial task force convened in response to a series of high-profile

crimes perpetrated by men with histories of sex offense convictions, and it was a bellwether

of contemporary sex offender management policy in the United States. Beyond establishing

statutory guidelines for the civil commitment of a limited group identified as “sexually

violent predators,” the law also included revision of the state’s sentencing structure for

those convicted of sex crimes and the nation’s first provisions for sex offender community

notification (Boerner, 1991).

In the wake of the CPA’s passage, several other states adopted SOCC legislation in

the early-to-mid 1990s, including Minnesota (1994), Kansas (1994), New Jersey (1994),

Wisconsin (1994), Arizona (1996), and North Dakota (1997). After the U.S. Supreme

Court ruling in Kansas vs. Hendricks (1997), which affirmed SOCC’sbasic constitutionality,

laws were passed in 13 more states, and in 2006, as part of the Adam WalshChild Protection

and Safety Act (AWA), U.S. Congress passed its own SOCC law to be applied to those

Direct correspondence to Andrew J. Harris, School of Criminology and Justice Studies, University of

Massachusetts Lowell, 820 Broadway St., Lowell, MA 01854 (e-mail: Andrew_Harris@uml.edu).

DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12321 C2017 American Society of Criminology 949

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 16 rIssue 3