by Joe Diamond

About the author: Joe Diamond is the public affairs director for the Center for the Community Interest, a national organization that serves as a voice for the community on crime and quality-of-life issues.

In June 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a Kansas law allowing the state to confine sexual offenders to mental hospitals after they are released from prison. The case involved Leroy Hendricks, a 62-year-old pedophile who once told authorities that the only way he could stop molesting children was “to die.” ABC News got an unintentionally hilarious quote from Hendricks’ lawyer, who said his client was “shocked” by the ruling: “He and the other inmates [at the Kansas State Mental Health Correctional Facility] had gotten their hopes...