Linking Mental Disorder and Risk in Sexually Violent Person Assessments

A common criticism of sexually violent person (SVP) laws is that psychiatric commitment has been co-opted to continue the incarceration of dangerous criminals, not dangerous individuals with mental illness. This opinion may have credence because some forensic clinicians use a "silo" approach (i.e., diagnosing based on historical criminal behavior rather than current symptomatology, and formulating risk for future sexual violence based on actuarial scores rather than characteristics and features of the mental condition). A silo process fosters a missing link; namely, the absence of a nexus between the mental condition and risk. This approach violates the necessary predicate for involuntary civil commitment, that the symptoms of an individual's current mental disorder be linked to and support a present sexual danger to others. In this article, we provide a brief overview of SVP statutes; describe how the silo approach compromises accurate diagnosis and identification of relevant risk factors; and present actual and fictitious cases illustrating the presence and absence of the missing link.