ABSTRACT
Sex oender commitment laws are not new in the United States. e nation’s sexual psychopath laws from the early twentieth century required that psychiatrists make a determination of whether or not an individual met oen vague criteria based solely on clinical judgment. Although most of these sexual psychopath statutes have been overturned or repealed, the sexually violent predator laws of the 1990s require that clinicians determine risk of re-oending as one component for commitment. Findings from the classic Hanson and Bussiere meta-analysis (1998) identied static or historical risk factors that predicted sexual re-oense, which allowed for the development of actuarial instruments. ese instruments evidenced improved predictive accuracy over clinical judgments regarding sex oender risk. Increasingly, courts are requiring these actuarial instruments when making decisions about the civil commitment of sex oenders.
