Beth Hawkins in Twin Cities Reader (of Minneapolis/St. Paul):
…Janus makes a persuasive case that by throwing vast resources at a few offenders while hiding the true scope of sexual violence, sexual predator laws do more harm than good. Not only is the public not much safer than it was before civil commitment became widespread, he writes, but we’ve unleashed a political monster.
“No one is opposed to punishing people who engage in terrorism or commit rape, or to arresting people who are conspiring to commit terrorist acts or attempting to lure children over the Internet,” Janus writes. “Our sense of justice, our fear for our own rights, are soothed by the mental disorder label, the assurance that these folks are somehow different from us. But the only real difference is risk; and as the science of risk assessment improves and expands, the temptation to intervene earlier and earlier, with a broader and broader segment of the population, may be proving too hard for our political process to resist. We should stop the process now, before we create a legal monster we truly regret.”
More here. [Thanks to Akbi Khan.]