The inmates serves his sentence and then is scheduled for release. But before he is released the state files a petition to have him committed to a mental institution. There is a procedure, an evaluation, various steps in a process in which psychologists, psychiatrists, prosecutors, judges, and juries decide whether to label the offender a sexual predator with a mental abnormality that makes him likely to commit a sex offense in the future. If the offender is so labeled, off he goes to an institution where he can be confined for life unless he demonstrates that he has changed to such an extent that he will be no danger to the community. Now, sex offenders are nobody's favorite group.
Few people care about their rights.
Even fewer will fight for them. But rights tend not to be confined to a particular group. The trampling of rights, even if it's those of sex offenders today, can easily mean somebody else's rights being trampled tomorrow. This is why civil rights must be jealously guarded. Let's examine the legal objections to civil commitment statutes.