ASSESSING THE LEGAL STANDARD FOR PREDICTIONS OF DANGEROUSNESS IN SEX OFFENDER COMMITMENT PROCEEDINGS

Advocates and courts legitimize sex offender commitment laws by claimi ng the laws confine only those who are ''highly likely'' to engage in sexual violence. This article proposes a definition of ''probability'' of future harm and assesses the legal probability thresholds commitme nt courts actually use. Using published information about recidivism a nd actuarial prediction, the authors concludes that moderate, but not extravagant, claims about legal probability thresholds are supportable but only on a rather optimistic set of assumptions. The authors recom mend that sex offender commitment courts use the proposed methods to q uantify judicial standards and findings about prediction. This will al low the claims for legitimacy to be more readily assessed.