Sexually Violent Predators: An Overview

Abstract

Sexually violent predator (SVP) laws are legislative reactions to high-profile sexual offenses, often against children, and the risk these individuals may pose for future sexual offending. These legislative reactions have been criticized as being hastily constructed responses intended to reassure legislators and their constituents that “something is being done” to address a heinous offense perpetrated by a single individual. These legislative responses can be an amalgam of poorly defined psycholegal constructs (e.g., “mental abnormality,” “highly likely to reoffend,” “volitional control”) and extant scientific knowledge regarding sexual recidivism. Such legislation is based on the assumption that some sexual offenders are too dangerous to be released back into society after having served the entirety of a prison sentence for their original crime or crimes. We highlight three significant issues regarding SVP legislation: because we have a meager understanding of factors that cause individuals to engage in sexual offenses, little is known about how to tailor our psychological interventions to the unique needs of each offender so that the individual will desist from all future offending; such legislation assumes dangerousness to be an attribute of the individual rather than the result of a complex interaction between the person and his environment; and SVP laws need to be reconciled with constitutional law. The purpose of this chapter and volume is to invite vigorous, scholarly debate about SVP issues with the goal of improving clinical practice, public policy, and jurisprudence in this domain.