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Public Safety, Individual Liberty, and Suspect Science: Future Dangerousness Assessments and Sex Offender Laws

Original Article Melissa Hamilton University of South Carolina - School of Law Temple Law Review, Forthcoming Abstract: This article argues that the new preventive law focus in sex offender laws is largely ineffective and too costly to personal liberty. The application of sex offender laws involving civil commitment, sex offender registration, and residency restrictions is often based on an individualized analysis of future dangerousness, i.e., the risk the defendant will sexually recidivate. In assessing future dangerousness, experts and courts place heavy emphasis on the use of actuarial tools, basically checklists that mental health experts use to derive statistical estimates of risk. This article provides substantiation that actuarial tools, while enjoying the imprimatur of science, suffer from significant empirical faults...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sex Offender Issues on February 20, 2011 (boomark / email).