From The Editor

Martin Lasden
     
It should surprise no one that California?s newest facility for the care and confinement of sexually violent predators is located smack dab in the middle of nowhere: halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. What did surprise contributing writer Tom McNichol though, once he got inside, was the look and feel of Coalinga State Hospital. ?I expected a lot of razor wire and guard towers?-and, in fact, that is what you see when you first drive up,? says McNichol, who wrote this month?s cover story (?Trapped in the Treatment Mall,? page 22). ?But once you enter, it?s like the movie Blade Runner. It?s hypermodern, antiseptic, and a little surreal.? It also has a sunny, mall-like area with such amenities as a barbershop, a post office, and a cafe.
      Guantanamo it?s not. Yet like many of the detainees at Guantanamo, those who end up at Coalinga after completing their prison sentences are detained there for what they might do, rather than for what they?ve already done. These patients do not have the same due process rights as criminal defendants. For example, the state denies them the right against self-incrimination; does not allow an obvious defense against hearsay; and gives them no indication when, if ever, they?ll be released. Should the state, even in the interest of public safety, have this kind of power?
      With respect to terrorists, the U.S. Supreme Court addressed this question three months ago in Boumediene v. Bush. By a 5?4 vote, the high court ruled that the dubious review process in place at Guantanamo was not good enough to justify the suspension of habeas corpus. But during oral argument, no less a liberal than Justice Stephen Breyer, who voted with the majority, suggested that Congress could yet pass a constitutionally sound measure allowing for the open-ended commitment of enemy combatants?much as sexually violent predators are detained at Coalinga.
      Of course, it doesn?t exactly make legal sense to punish people for crimes they have yet to commit. Which is why, in the eyes of the law, what goes on at Coalinga is largely ?therapeutic.? But for most of Coalinga?s patient population, this appears to be little more than a pretense. Moreover, there is a real question about whether everyone who ends up in Coalinga really needs to be there. In fact, as McNichol reports, at least one state is much more permissive than California when it comes to treating sexually violent predators, doing it on an outpatient basis. Which state is that? If you?re thinking some tiny, East Coast bastion of knee-jerk liberalism like, say, Vermont, think again. It?s Texas.
      By the time McNichol completed his reporting, he saw the treatment of sexually violent predators as more than just a legal story. ?I definitely see a parallel between the detainees at Guantanamo and the men at Coalinga,? says McNichol. ?A lot of these people have done terrible things. But to me, how we treat the worst among us is a telling measure of our character.?
     

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