Cite as: 521 U. S. 346 (1997)
Breyer, J., dissenting
mistakes that would wrongly deprive a person of important liberty. Id., at 371-372.
If these obvious similarities cannot by themselves prove that Kansas' "civil commitment" statute is criminal, neither can the word "civil" written into the statute, § 59-29a01, by itself prove the contrary. This Court has said that only the "clearest proof" could establish that a law the legislature called "civil" was, in reality, a "punitive" measure. United States v. Ward, 448 U. S. 242, 248-249 (1980). But the Court has also reiterated that a "civil label is not always dispositive," Allen v. Illinois, supra, at 369; it has said that in close cases the label is " 'not of paramount importance,' " Kurth Ranch, supra, at 777 (citation omitted); and it has looked behind a "civil" label fairly often, e. g., United States v. Halper, 490 U. S. 435, 447 (1989).
In this circumstance, with important features of the Act pointing in opposite directions, I would place particular importance upon those features that would likely distinguish between a basically punitive and a basically nonpunitive purpose. United States v. Ursery, 518 U. S. 267, 278 (1996) (asking whether a statutory scheme was so punitive " 'either in purpose or effect' " to negate the legislature's " 'intention to establish a civil remedial mechanism' " (citations omitted)). And I note that the Court, in an earlier civil commitment case, Allen v. Illinois, 478 U. S., at 369, looked primarily to the law's concern for treatment as an important distinguishing feature. I do not believe that Allen means that a particular law's lack of concern for treatment, by itself, is enough to make an incapacitative law punitive. But, for reasons I will point out, when a State believes that treatment does exist, and then couples that admission with a legislatively required delay of such treatment until a person is at the end of his jail term (so that further incapacitation is therefore necessary), such a legislative scheme begins to look punitive.
In Allen, the Court considered whether, for Fifth Amendment purposes, proceedings under an Illinois statute were
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