ABSTRACT
In the sexually violent predator (SVP) context, the relationship between the law and science is particularly fraught. As we have shown in Chapter 2, science is key in furnishing the legitimacy that SVP laws need. Preventive detention is a threat to our normal order, but science seems to provide the categorical classifications that safely confine preventive detention to a small and distinctively different group of mentally disordered dangerous offenders. Of course, we emphasize that science “seems to provide” these classifications, because to a great extent as the law has used them, some of these “scientific” classifications are vague and illusory, lacking scientific substance. Thus, the promise of science in the SVP context is frustrated and unfulfilled. There is no reason to think that the population of SVP detainees is characterized by “mental disorders” that distinguish them from other recidivist sex offenders (or recidivist criminals in general). And while the evidence shows that SVP detainees skew as a population toward the higher end of risk (at least as measured by certain actuarial risk assessment (ARA) instruments), we have suggested that there is good evidence that the law is not in the driver’s seat when it comes to risk assessment.
