Psychology Today: Do Sex Offenders Have A Mental Illness?
NOTE: As we’ve come to know from Smith v. Doe, Psychology Today is a lay magazine that will pretty much print anything. The following article was published in Psychology Today.
Sexual offenders have been despised in all cultures and the thought of release to settled neighborhoods is frightening. Although parameters around released sex offenders are put in place there is dubious trust in the judgments of the experts?
Treatment for sexual offenders is a controversial topic in our modern world. Media reports on serious cases of sexually motivated murder, rape, and child abuse have made people concerned about treatment, release and recidivism. A large majority of incarcerated adult male sex offenders will return to our communities. Finding ways to treat, manage, and supervise these offenders is imperative.
Florida has the most stringent treatment of sexual offenders. It is their focus on civil commitment laws when the state fears an offender could molest, assault or rape again if released. In Florida, it’s legal to lock someone up indefinitely for a crime they haven’t yet committed. But this process is reserved for those who were convicted of violent sexual offenses, completed their sentences, but then were judged to still be a risk.
In Florida, at the end of a sexual offender’s criminal sentence, they are psychologically evaluated by at least two people for a “mental abnormality” or “personality disorder” that would predispose them to commit another violent sex crime. If judged to be dangerous, they’re taken to await their commitment trial.
The trials are based on the predictive probability of future crimes. The hearing may not even include data from their previous crime. Being an expert witness in Florida is a lucrative endeavor. Florida maintains a punitive model of containment.
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unfortunately the title sex offender is a broad statement about a person and his/her legal issues, the psychiatric diagnosis and treatment of the sexual offender who is by neurotransmitter or impulsive behavior a sexual offender is a medical issue. The legal issues put the highest number of the population into the sex offender label. There fore secondary to the sex offender label comes the most diagnosis-able issues of the sex offender. The depression, anxiety, poor self worth and esteem along with restrictions to a normal lifestyle. This population is taken advantage of a mistreated by many employers, family member, community magistrates, sheriffs, law officers etc. Continue to work to have a voice,
Well, the, ‘THING’ that wrote this article is both a psyche and a lawyer!
Wow, this ‘THING’, as I am unable to identify its gender, really must be able to predict the future!..Wow….so, if this ‘THING’ can predict the future, lets pull all our monies and hire this ‘THING’ to invest in markets and make a 1000% of financial return!
Remember, as someone has previously stated, Psyche Today is a Grocery Store Tabloid piece of crap! It has NO redeeming value! Just a lot of wasted paper and trees that were cut down to publish this ‘THINGS’ personal toilet paper!
Stay Safe and Healthy!
Completely overlooked is that the law considers a person perfectly sane at the time an offense was committed, absent proof to the contrary. It’s not until a person is released that the court considers the offender in need of “treatment”, evidenced by the crime committed, even though the person was perfectly sane at the time (as verified by the court before trial/plea hearing and at sentencing).
Well, in many cases, it’s the so-called “judge” that slaps the “pedophile” label on a person at sentencing. Following this logic, since pedophilia is a mental illness recognized by the American Psychiatric Association, where’s my SSI disability check!
https://www.theravive.com/therapedia/pedophilic-disorder-dsm–5-302.2-(f65.4)