Supreme Court ruling on indefinite detention.

[Badfish]

Supreme Court Reverses the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and Allows Federal Civil Commitment of Sex-Offenders

In United States v. Comstock, 130 S. Ct. 1949 (2010), the United States Supreme Court reversed and remanded the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit that Federal Statute 18 U.S.C. 4248 (2006) is unconstitutional by intruding on powers reserved for the states by the Constitution.

http://www.jaapl.org/cgi/content/full/38/4/615

States like California already have a indefinite detention program and hold people long after their sentence is up.

It has NOTHING to do with national security.

If the states can do it for reasons having nothing to do with national security , why can't the president of the USA do it for national security reasons ?

Discuss:

[mike_c]

1. anyone with sufficient power can do it-- we call that tyranny....

Indefinite detention is a crime against humanity. The authors of the constitution knew it. Our current leaders have apparently forgotten.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

2. Pedophiles cannot be cured.

This is not opinion. This is fact. Civil commitment of those people is good for society. There are some sex offenders that, like pedophiles, have an urge that cannot be sated to constantly rape. These people should not be walking free in society either. While these fact are troubling. That doesn't make them any less true.
Duckie

[Jackpine Radical]

3. Overall, about 6.5% of sex offenders reoffend within 5 years.

The diagnosis of pedophilia is particularly hard to establish with reliability, and many who meet the diagnostic criteria have never committed a sex offense against anyone.

People get committed for a lot of reasons besides molesting children.

There is no area of public discourse that is more fraught with misinformation and myth than that related to sex offenders.

[Badfish]

4. Where does that leave you ?

for or against indefinite detention ?

[YellowRubberDuckie]

9. Of Pedophiles? I'm for it.

For habitual offenders, I'm for it.

[Morning Dew]

17. Here's a habitual offender - arrested 20 times and convicted 14 times

A good candidate for indefinite detention - sure to reoffend.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/25/AR2010012502341.html

With her white hair and black glasses, Tetaz is a familiar figure to the Capitol Police and at the courthouse. Since 2005, court records show, she has been arrested 20 times and convicted 14 times of various offenses, including unlawful assembly, disorderly conduct, contempt and crossing a police line. As she and other demonstrators march around various parts of the District, from the White House to the Supreme Court to the Capitol, her protests center on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

19. I'm thinking sex offenders, you're on a different page.

This woman is nothing more than what I would call a loud advocate for some cause.
Duckie

[Morning Dew]

21. No, we're on the same page.

You don't like one crime, others don't like another.

Who will draw the lines?

[YellowRubberDuckie]

22. Well, hopefully not idiots, and someone who knows the difference between violent crime...

...and civil disobedience.

[Morning Dew]

24. Sure, hopefully.

But note that the case referenced in the OP isn't a "violent crime". Comstock was convicted of receiving child pornography.

[boppers]

28. We have this cool thing to draw the line called "law".

The people who draw the lines are judges and prosecutors, backed by the law.

[madinmaryland]

5. The question, is as a society, how do we make the sentences

equal to the crime? What we are doing is saying that these "people" who have served their sentence, now have to be re-sentenced? Why not just sentence them to life? Of course, who will be defined as one and more importantly what will be defined as such?

Given enough time, the 18-to-16 consensual sex will be considered sentence-able by life.

Slippery-slope?

[Badfish]

7. Ya , a weird question.

Are two rapes worse than one murder ?

If two rapes give you a life sentence while a murderer gets 20 years and serves 10 , then the punishment wouldn't fit.

[wtmusic]

8. Agree.

Stigmatization is cruel, unusual, and unconstitutional.

Put them in jail, or set them free.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

10. I understand the slippery slope thing...

...but who are getting committed? They are habitual, they are pedophiles, they are sick individuals who are not ever going to get better.
Anyone who is convicted of a sex crime gets out of prison and are pariah. They are not able to have a life once they get out anyway. Once they get out of prison they have to register as a sex offender. When people hear that they automatically think pedophiles. We don't let them have a life anyway, so at least commit them so they might at least be able to be safe.

[madinmaryland]

23. I agree that the offenders you are referring to may not be rehabiliatable.

On the other hand, how do weed these folks (who are a small and very definable group) from those that have other mental/drug issues or those who just got caught up in an 18-16 yo thing or the "minority" having consensual sex with a white person.

[TheMadMonk]

29. If objective reality concorded with your claims then perhaps.

The truth however is that less than 1 in 10 sex offenders is EVER convicted of a second sexual offence of ANY kind, and for violent offenders the figure falls as low as 1 in 40. (It may well be even lower for their reoffending in a like or worse manner.)

Your claims bear no resemblance whatsoever to objective reality.

The entire subject is so fraught with emotional baggage that extracting (or even finding) objective data beyond the raw figures is extremely dificult.

What can be determined with some certainty is that a limited number of offenders commit a large proportion of the most egregious and damaging offences, and that the vast majority of offenders are convicted for crimes which have a limited or no long term negative impact.

What you advocate is the permanent incarceration of ten to perhaps as many as 50 people who represent zero or negligible threat to individuals or society as a whole, simply to be certain of holding onto a single individual who presents an actual future threat. You want to deprive exacty how many children of a parent, families of loved ones just so you can have peace of mind?

A recent study showed that a lack of appropriate fear response to negative stimuli in three year olds is a very strong indicator of likely future criminal or psychopathic behaviour. Why not simply permanently institutionalise (or euthenase) all children who fail the test and eliminate virtually all crime (not to mention conscienceless bank managers and claims adjustors) for once and for all? Really why not? It's no different conceptually to what you advocate.

Moreover, I can show all sorts of likely positive flow on effects of such a policy, including sweeping up the vast majority of those offenders which seem to have you personally foaming at the mouth before they have a chance to commit even a first offence.

[classof56]

12. Good point.

In my state, an 18-year-old male who had sex with a 16-year-old girl was sentenced to 34 years in prison without possibility of parole. He has now in his 11th year behind bars with another 23 to go. Might as well be a life sentence, when you think about it.

Slippery slope indeed, but could be good for the economy since lots more prisons will need to be built and think of all those jobs.

:sarcasm: just in case it's needed.

Actually, not so much sarcasm as despair. Where the hell are we headed?

[AKDavy]

6. I'm always amazed at how people can make excuses for denying

civil liberties to others.

Personally, I fear zealots with good intentions more than I fear zealots with evil intentions.

The Gulags were full of the "incurably criminally insane."

I'll buy that "fact" stuff when psychology is a little less art and a little more science.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

11. I was thinking more along the lines of statistically, but whatever.

[wuushew]

15. Permament incarceration would elimate all data on recidivism

there must be variation, otherwise no valid conclusions can be arrived at.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

20. Good point...

But screw data. Preserving the innocence of one child is worth it. But that's just my opinion, constitutional or not. :shrug:

[AKDavy]

34. Maybe another category of "Too dangerous to release" with...

their own wing at Guantanamo.

[Poll_Blind]

14. +1

PB

[JonLP24]

16. The ones with good intentions can do far more damage

The ones with evil intentions are more obvious and therefore easier to stop.

[TheMadMonk]

26. Nor can homosexuality. So your point is?

As Jackpine points out, many meet the diagnostic criteria paedophilia without ever once offending. What should be done with these? Should we give all those failed "cures" for poofteritis another try to see if they work on a different type of pervert? Should we lock them up in preventative detention whenever we discover one, just in case they ever decide to give into their desires?

The recidivism rate for convicted sex offenders is as he notes about 6.5% (5%-9% comes up in my searches) and it is less than 1/2 that for violent sex offenders. Would you care to make a guess at the recidivism rate for other offenses? 50-60% of all jailbirds are 2 or more times losers. And for theft related offenses it rises to three quarters and above.

Would you really permanently incarcerate 15, 30 or more people to guarantee that one potential (but unidentified) recidivist amongst them is incapable of reoffending? What of those who's offences are more technical than real? The nineteen year old with a fiteen year old girlfriend. Or the 14 year old caught en flagrante delecto with a 12 YO by an angry father who demands that charges be pressed?

What you personally KNOW to be "absolute fact" is anything but. Are you willing to reexamine your position in the light of the above information? (google "recidivism rates" to confirm these numbers for yourself). Or will you like any good freeper, refuse to allow objective reality to interfere with your subjective worldview?

[boppers]

27. This case isn't about all sex offenders.

"Federal Statute 18 U.S.C. 4248 (2006) was originally enacted by Congress to establish guidelines for the civil commitment of federal prisoners or persons in federal custody who had been deemed "sexually dangerous." A "sexually dangerous person" is defined as one who has "engaged or attempted to engage in sexually violent conduct or child molestation and who is sexually dangerous to others; and suffers from a serious mental illness, abnormality, or disorder as a result of which he would have serious difficulty refraining from sexually violent conduct or child molestation if released" ( 4247 (a)(5)–(6)). On the basis of this statute, a mentally ill, sexually dangerous federal prisoner can be indefinitely civilly committed to the custody of the Attorney General, beyond his release date, by a district court until he is deemed no longer dangerous or able to return to his home state for his care, custody, and treatment."

http://www.jaapl.org/cgi/content/full/38/4/615

[TheMadMonk]

30. I am not arguing "This case". I am questioning specific wrongly held...

..."broad brush" beliefs.

Beliefs which already make reintegration of those offenders unlikely to reoffend an extremely difficult (if not impossible) proposition.

[boppers]

33. Ah. The OP was not about those unlikely to re-offend.

I must have missed the jump-off point.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

38. So, because I don't agree with you I'm a freeper?

Jesus Christ. I am willing to admit that I am wrong, but I am not. And if you see I was specifically talking about people who repeated molest and rape people. I never said to lock up people who had the urge or who were at risk of doing it. If you think I'm evil to think that people who repeatedly molest children or rape people have no place in society, then I'm evil. Fine.
Statutory rape was never mentioned in any of my posts. I even said I hoped whoever decided who was indefinitely locked up used common sense. READ WHAT I WROTE before you freak out on me and start calling me names.
Oh, and talk to any Psychologist and they will agree with me that pedophilia cannot be cured. You are more of a freeper than me bringing homosexuality into the same league as pedophilia.
Duckie

[TheMadMonk]

40. No because of the WAY you don't agree with me.

And your "correction" doesn't precisely help disabuse me of my opinion.

I quote: Pedophiles cannot be cured.

This is not opinion. This is fact. Civil commitment of those people is good for society. There are some sex offenders that, like pedophiles, have an urge that cannot be sated to constantly rape. These people should not be walking free in society either. While these fact are troubling. That doesn't make them any less true. /endquote

Cannot be "cured"? true enough in the same sense that hair colour cannot be cured. However, it can be managed.

You declare catagorically that ALL are incorrigible serial rapists. Not so. A very limited number of offenders commit the majority of the worst offences. Many offenders commit only a limited number of offenses. A good many more never directly offend against a child, but do make use of forbidden or questionable imagery. And then there's all the people who never offend outside their own skulls.

And we still haven't gotten into technical offences, such as where the crossing of a state line, the direction of that crossing and even which party is doing the crossing can make all the difference.

Another "technical" distinction is that which lies between the clinical, legal and societal definitions of paedophilia.

The simple truth is, violent (whether emotionally or physically) child rapists, particularly serial rapists, are proportionately no more common amongst paedophiles than similarly violent rapists are amongst any other type of fetishists.

What I am willing to admit, and what you APPEAR to be unwilling to admit, is that there is an entire spectrum of paedophilic behaviour and feelings that range from harmless to utterly despicable. That we needs must respond approriately AND PROPORTIONATELY to the harm done to the victims themselves and not the harm we perceive as being done to our own bloody personal sensibilities.

Too rigid a stance can only cause more harm than it prevents. A fifteen year old babysitter hearing the words "I'm gonna tell." in my world is about to deservedly get his or her arse kicked into next week (steel toe cap and lead insole optional). In your's? One word sums it up. PANIC. And a "body count" that can be turned around and pointed at as a reason for even further bloody "proactivity".

The point I was obliquely making with the homosexuality comparison, was that not too long ago the DSM included homosexuality right alongside paedophilia in the list of clinically recognised "sexual deviancies". What EVERYONE knows is sbsolutely wrong with every fibre of their being is as subject to almost as much variation as hemlines.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

42. OK...I'm going to do exactly what you want me to.

I'm wrong, you're right...now go away.

[TransitJohn]

39. Good to see that the Constitution only applies to those you deem it should.

:sarcasm:

[JonLP24]

13. I support the right of detainees to challenge their detention

If they have no evidence, let them go. Otherwise, I consider it kidnapping.

[walldude]

18. The difference is those people got a trial...

a lawyer, the ability to face their accusers in a court of law.


I am for indefinite detention when the person is proven to be a danger to society. Proven in a court of law where the accused has a chance to face his accusers. Preferably in front of a jury.


This is one of the most basic tenants this nation was founded on. The fact that you can't be thrown in jail on the word of the government, or on the word of an individual. To take this right away is a disservice to every single American, and the fact that people are debating on it shows that people have no idea what it means to be a citizen of the US.

To sit by and say that they government should be allowed to detain anyone they want on their word alone? That's crazy, you might as well throw in the towel now.

[Meldread]

25. I'm not against indefinite detention in all cases.

As a general rule, I believe that only the most dangerous people should be indefinitely detained. For example, I don't want Charles Manson, Omar Abdel-Rahman (The Blind Sheikh), or Ted Kaczynski (The Unabomber) walking free. The same goes for virtually every serial killer and terrorist out there. I'm not against giving them an indefinite number of appeals - that helps ensure that the innocent are not unjustly imprisoned.

However, since I'm against the death penalty, and these individuals are too dangerous to allow back into society I have to fall on the side of indefinite detention in at least some cases. I also believe that parole shouldn't be denied to those who can prove that releasing them back into society is safe.

All that being said, the fact that the United States prison system is set up to punish rather than rehabilitate offenders only undermines things in the long run. It hurts people who could potentially be safe to release, as it increases their chances of returning to prison for one reason or another.

On that same note, I'm ALWAYS against denial of trial. Everyone has a RIGHT to be heard in a court of law. My issue with people being held for "national security" concerns is not that they're being indefinitely detained, but rather that they're being detained without a trial. The government should only have the right to detain someone for a lengthy period of time AFTER they've been convicted of a crime; assumed guilt is not enough.

I'd rule that the government has the right to detain someone for up to three months before standing before a judge. They'd require a judge's approval to detain someone longer, and that approval must be regained each month until a trial takes place. The government must also prove that it's working to build a case, and show progress each month in collecting evidence, AND give valid reasons for the delays. On top of that, after each extension is granted the defense should be able to appeal to a higher court to demand an immediate trial. This ensures that individual judges - who may be corrupt or face political pressure - don't get the final say.

[upi402]

31. "Discuss:"

no

[JCMach1]

32. The state cannot do it unless there has been a trial...

[mmonk]

35. Because it usurps the rule of law and due process our Constitution was based upon.

[VoteProgressive]

36. It seems unfair that after serving your sentence you can still be locked up!

I would be for longer sentencing, but after serving your sentence, you should be free.

[TheKentuckian]

37. The decision is a distortion. You are in effect moving the goalposts after the game.

I believe that is a violation of the Constitution. Cruel and unusual punishment. If a person has served out then they must be released. If you don't like those conditions then call for longer sentences.

The Supreme Court is off its collective rocker. What is the point to laws and sentencing if in the end we (as a society) just do whatever suits us?

The President goes even yet another mile down the rabbit hole by indefinitely holding people without a trial which is just pure taking a shit on the Constitution and all up in the Bush/Cheney part of the field.

The entire concept is treasonous and playing fast and lose with crimes against humanity.

[BzaDem]

41. It can't be cruel and unusual punishment, since the punishment of life in detention is valid.

The 8th amendment refers to WHAT is being done, not WHY.

For the WHY, the relevant constitutional provision is the due process clause in the 5th amendment. So the real question is, is indefinite detention of sexual predators a violation of "due process?"

It would obviously depend on the process. Surely, indefinite detention would be completely constitutional if the sentence was life without parole. The way sentencing used to be in many states was that for many crimes, the sentence would be something like 5-life or 10-life, with the state having discretion over when the sentence ends within the range. That is essentially what is going on here, with some differences.

While you may wish the Constitution were written to mandate an exact, unchangable sentence for every crime, the Constitution actually doesn't say that at all (anywhere). And yet you equate disagreement with your policy preferences to "treason" and "crimes against humanity." :eyes:

[TheKentuckian]

43. It would certainly be cruel and unusual for jay walking.

You cannot say that any punishment is appropriate for any crime because it is reasonable for another one.

In the case of these convicts, they have received a sentence and served it, our law does not allow for just piling on later.

Still waiting on how it is okay to essentially sentence someone to life for any crime without a trial.