The Newly Found Compassion for Sexually Violent Predators: Civil Commitment and the Right to Treatment in the Wake of Kansas v. Hendricks

In light of heart-wrenching stories of sexual abuse and public demands for safety, the Kansas v. Hendricks case presented the Supreme Court with compelling facts on which to uphold the Kansas commitment strategy. After all, the statute prevented the release of a man whose history of sex crimes, incarceration, and institutionalization spanned nearly two decades, and who admitted he still had sexual desires for children but could not control his urges. Faced with that evidence, the Court would have been hard-pressed to strike down the Kansas statute by finding that such a predator received inadequate treatment for his disorder, or that perhaps he could never be treated effectively. Nevertheless, this Note argues that the issue of treatment of sexual offenders committed to psychiatric facilities cannot, on a constitutional level, and should not, on a policy level, be so readily dismissed