Reasoning Schemes, Expert Opinions and Critical Questions. Sex Offenders Case Study

This paper examines in detail the argumentation features in the domain of sex offender with some applications to the scheme of “Argument from Expert Opinion". We build a model for reasoning schemes, critical questions and expert opinion on the question of “the degree of risk of a sex offender". We discover that in order to properly model expert practice in this area we need to use numerical argumentation as well as the new notion of “Attack as Information Input". The model is generic and we believe is not restricted to the sex offence area of expertise. Our paper also offers a more detailed example for Walton’s argumentation scheme of Expert Opinion as well as a bridge between the argumentation community and the community dealing with sex offenders. We offer an introduction to the student on the subject of determining the degree of risk of sex offenders. We also look at standard international tools for determining the risk of sex offenders and see how the argumentation community can integrate these tools

Dangerous Diagnoses, Risky Assumptions, and the Failed Experiment of “Sexually Violent Predator” Commitment

In its 1997 opinion, Kansas v. Hendricks, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a law that reflected a new model of civil commitment. The targets of this new commitment law were dubbed “Sexually Violent Predators” (SVPs), and the Court upheld indefinite detention of these individuals on the assumption that there is a psychiatrically distinct class of individuals who, unlike typical recidivists, have a mental condition that impairs their ability to refrain from violent sexual behavior. And, more specifically, the Court assumed that the justice system could reliably identify the true “predators,” those for whom this unusual and extraordinary deprivation of liberty is appropriate and legitimate, with the aid of testimony from mental health professionals. This Article evaluates those assumptions and concludes that, because they were seriously flawed, the due process rationale used to uphold the SVP laws is invalid. The “Sexually Violent Predator” is a political and moral construct, not a medical classification. The implementation of SVP laws has resulted in dangerous distortions of both psychiatric expertise and important legal principles, and such distortions reveal an urgent need to reexamine the Supreme Court’s core rationale in upholding the SVP commitment experiment

Dangerous Diagnoses, Risky Assumptions, and the Failed Experiment of Sexually Violent Predator Commitment

In its 1997 opinion, Kansas v. Hendricks, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a law that reflected a new model of civil commitment. The targets of this new commitment law were dubbed “Sexually Violent Predators” (SVPs), and the Court upheld indefinite detention of these individuals on the assumption that there is a psychiatrically distinct class of individuals who, unlike typical recidivists, have a mental condition that impairs their ability to refrain from violent sexual behavior. And, more specifically, the Court assumed that the justice system could reliably identify the true “predators,” those for whom this unusual and extraordinary deprivation of liberty is appropriate and legitimate, with the aid of testimony from mental health professionals

Dangerous Diagnoses, Risky Assumptions, and the Failed Experiment of Sexually Violent Predator Commitment

In its 1997 opinion, Kansas v. Hendricks, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a law that reflected a new model of civil commitment. The targets of this new commitment law were dubbed “Sexually Violent Predators” (SVPs), and the Court upheld indefinite detention of these individuals on the assumption that there is a psychiatrically distinct class of individuals who, unlike typical recidivists, have a mental condition that impairs their ability to refrain from violent sexual behavior. And, more specifically, the Court assumed that the justice system could reliably identify the true “predators,” those for whom this unusual and extraordinary deprivation of liberty is appropriate and legitimate, with the aid of testimony from mental health professionals

Evidence, Community Protection and Liberty in Australian Post-Sentence Protection Legislation

This article addresses a number of issues regarding post-sentence detention order regimes in the context of an analysis of a collection of publicly available judgments made under the Dangerous Prisoners (Sexual Offenders) Act 2003 (Qld). The article raises concerns regarding the accuracy of the psychiatric evidence presented to the court. However, itsuggests that the way in which the psychiatrists conduct their prisoner assessments, and the way in which judges have applied the main rules of expert evidence, have combined to ensure that the potential for unjust outcomes has been minimised. The article also suggests that judges havestruck a fine balance between community protection and prisoner liberty, by in most cases making supervision orders which allow prisoners to be released into the community under strict conditions, rather than making detention orders. As no prisoner released under a supervision order is known to have committed a further sex offence, it is the conclusion of thisarticle that the judges’ approach to cases under the dangerous Prisoners (Sexual Offenders) Act 2003 (Qld) has been highly successful, and may represent a solution to the serious problem of recidivist sex offenders within the community

Changing the way we think about change: shifting boundaries changing lives

The 2012 Australian and New Zealand Critical Criminology Conference was held in Hobart over two days from 12 - 13 July.   This conference was organised around the theme of ‘Changing the Way We Think about Change – Shifting Boundaries, Changing Lives’. There were five general plenaries, including speakers from Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, France and the United States, and the conference featured early career as well as experienced researchers. The plenaries included sessions on gender and imprisonment; the pursuit of truth and justice; Indigenous legal needs and justice reinvestment; policing and vulnerability; and migration and global security issues. This publication provides a sample of some of the presentations delivered at the 2012 Critical Criminology Conference

To Serve the Cause of Justice: Disciplining Fact Determination

As a part of a larger project called The Challenge of Change: Rethinking Law as Discipline, the authors seek to identify and examine current challenges to the conceptual underpinnings and methodology of the traditional legal paradigm. In focusing on the construction of \u27fact, the meanings of knowledge and the interplay between cultural understandings and the law of evidence, the authors note that the shifting boundaries of the discipline of law are engendering debates about what is marginal and what is core. They draw on challenges posed by the increasing diversity of producers and consumers of law in searching for the core idea of what lawyers do in contrast to, for instance, anthropologists, and argue that a core idea of law is to engage in legal reasoning that pays attention to the value of human rights in their broadest sense. In examining methods whereby the knowledge which grounds legal factual determinations can be made consistent with fundamental human rights such as equality and access to justice, the authors draw on a variety of legal topics-Aboriginal rights claims, sexual assault, contracts and self-defence

The Actuarial Subject: Legitimacy and Social Control in Late Modernity

The following thesis can be read as a socio-historical case study of the emergence of risk discourses within the Scottish Criminal Justice System, particularly in relation to offenders who are defined by their dangerousness. It focuses on the emergence of the Risk Management Authority (RMA) which was set up under recommendation of the MacLean Committee in 2000. The thesis examines the broader social and cultural forces from which the Risk Management Authority emerged by drawing on Hegel’s notion of ‘Ethical Life’ (Sittlichkeit) as a means of framing institutional change. By way of a re-interpretation of Hegel, through the lens of critical theory, it seeks to historicise and make problematic the concepts and assumptions surrounding our understanding of modernity. Through the concepts of reflexivity, legitimacy and indeterminacy it offers a critique of the existing sociology of risk, which places risk at the centre of debates on modernity, contingency and the self-understanding of society. This critique offers a conceptualisation of penal institutions as not just administering punishment, but as instrumental in the constitution of human subjectivity