Treatment of Sex Offenders

11 The Best Intentions: Flaws in Sexually Violent Predator Laws
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the American arguing that sexual offenders were committing crimes every 43 min in
the United States (J. Edgar Hoover, How Safe Is Your Daughter?, Am.Mag., July
1947 , at 32).
During the same time frame, academic journals published an ever-increasing
number of articles related to sex crimes. Between 1921 and 1932 approximately six
articles were published. Between 1933 and 1941 the numbers jumped by as many as
five times. Between 1942 and 1951, there were more than 100 articles published on
the subject (Tamara Rice Lave , “Only Yesterday: The Rise and Fall of Twentieth
Century Sexual Psychopath Laws”, 69 La. Law. Rev. 549, 551).
The public was outraged at this perceived upswing in violent sexual offenses and
demanded something must be done. Whether or not there was a sufficient basis for
the public’s fear remains the subject of some debate. While many law enforcement
agencies, including the FBI, reported increased sex crimes in the relevant time
frame, those reports have been criticized for decades because of sloppy data collection
and imprecise and unclear definitions. Regardless of the legitimacy of the public’s
reaction, legislators and law enforcement began to take action. For example,
the New York City Police Department began compiling a list of “known degenerates.”
Known degenerates included anyone in the city who had been charged but not
necessarily convicted with a sex crime over the past two decades. Police Making
List of Sex Criminals, N.Y. Times, Aug. 13, 1937 , at 19. Across the country in Los
Angeles, the chief of police created a bureau of sex offenses that included low-level
sex offenses under the theory that low-level sexual offenders were major sex offenders
in waiting.
The Rise of Civil Commitment Laws
In the mid-1930s Michigan passed one of the nation’s first “civil commitment”
laws. Defendants and criminal defense attorneys have long decried the nomenclature
of these laws. The court-ordered detention of an individual against their will in a
setting that both looks and feels like a prison is hardly “civil.” Legislators labeled
both sexual psychopath laws and sexually violent predator laws “civil” to avoid triggering
the numerous constitutional protections afforded to a criminal defendant
including the protection of the ex post facto clause (i.e., the constitutional prohibition
against laws making illegal an act that was legal when committed, increasing
penalties for breaking the law after the act was committed, or changing the rules of
evidence to make conviction easier)—no such protections are afforded a civil
defendant. Among the earliest litigation involving civil commitment laws and the
quasi- criminal consequences of such laws involves the case of George Frontczak.
On April 19, 1937, George Frontczak pled guilty to the crime of gross indecency
in Detroit, Michigan. Precisely what conduct Mr. Frontczak engaged in is unclear
from the records. The current definition of gross indecency in Michigan requires an
individual to engage in a “sex act with another person or in an act of masturbation
in a public or private place. Michigan Criminal Law 750. 338 , 750. 338 a and