Sex Offender Civil Commitment Policies in Context

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12329
• Published date: 01 August 2017
• Date: 01 August 2017
• Author: Kelly M. Socia

EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION

SEX OFFENDER CIVIL MANAGEMENT

Sex Offender Civil Commitment Policies

in Context

Kelly M. Socia

University of Massachusetts, Lowell

The purpose of civil commitment policies is to remove those individuals from society

who pose the greatest danger to themselves or to others, as well as to provide them

with treatment in a secure facility until they are successfully rehabilitated. The

original civil commitment policies were implemented more than a century ago in the United

States, and they have been used on sex offenders for almost as long (Jenkins, 1998; Leon,

2011; Socia and Rydberg, 2016). Although most of the early laws were eventually repealed

or fell into disuse (Davey and Goodnough, 2007; Janus, 2000), the “modern” sex offender

civil commitment laws have been actively used for almost three decades (Ackerman, Sacks,

and Greenberg, 2012).

Despite this lengthy history, along with several state and federal court cases concerning

these laws (see Harris, 2017, this issue), little criminological research has been aimed at

examining the process involved in civilly committing individuals. Jeffrey Sandler and Naomi

Freeman (2017, this issue) provide evidence that, at least for New York State, the civil

commitment screening process can successfully be used to identify convicted sex offenders

who pose an increased risk for sexual recidivism.

Key Research Findings

The results of Sandler and Freeman’s (2017) analysis find that the offenders who went

further along in the civil commitment screening process had a higher risk of recidivism (as

a group). Among the entire group of individuals who were screened (but not committed),

after 5 years, 4.6% had been rearrested for a sexual offense. This finding represents a 36.1%

decrease from the recidivism rate of a similar sample of offenders taken from before the

enactment of New York State’s civil commitment process (see McReynolds and Sandler,

2012).

Direct correspondence to Kelly M. Socia, School of Criminology and Justice Studies, University of

Massachusetts, Lowell, 113 Wilder Street, HSSB 4th Floor, Lowell, MA 01854 (e-mail: Kelly_Socia@uml.edu).

DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12329 C2017 American Society of Criminology 909

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 16 rIssue 3