380
Breyer, J., dissenting
of crimes is to keep them from inflicting future harm, but that does not make imprisonment any the less punishment"); 1 W. LaFave & A. Scott, Substantive Criminal Law § 1.5, p. 32 (1986); 18 U. S. C. § 3553(a); United States Sentencing Guidelines, Guidelines Manual, ch. 1, pt. A (Nov. 1995).
Moreover, the Act, like criminal punishment, imposes its confinement (or sanction) only upon an individual who has previously committed a criminal offense. Kan. Stat. Ann. §§ 59-29a02(a), 59-29a03(a) (1994). Cf. Department of Revenue of Mont. v. Kurth Ranch, 511 U. S. 767, 781 (1994) (fact that a tax on marijuana was "conditioned on the commission of a crime" is " 'significant of [its] penal and prohibitory intent' " (citation omitted)); Lipke v. Lederer, 259 U. S. 557, 561-562 (1922). And the Act imposes that confinement through the use of persons (county prosecutors), procedural guarantees (trial by jury, assistance of counsel, psychiatric evaluations), and standards ("beyond a reasonable doubt") traditionally associated with the criminal law. Kan. Stat. Ann. §§ 59-29a06, 59-29a07 (1994).
These obvious resemblances by themselves, however, are not legally sufficient to transform what the Act calls "civil commitment" into a criminal punishment. Civil commitment of dangerous, mentally ill individuals by its very nature involves confinement and incapacitation. Yet "civil commitment," from a constitutional perspective, nonetheless remains civil. Allen v. Illinois, 478 U. S., at 369-370. Nor does the fact that criminal behavior triggers the Act make the critical difference. The Act's insistence upon a prior crime, by screening out those whose past behavior does not concretely demonstrate the existence of a mental problem or potential future danger, may serve an important noncriminal evidentiary purpose. Neither is the presence of criminal law-type procedures determinative. Those procedures can serve an important purpose that in this context one might consider noncriminal, namely, helping to prevent judgmental
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