Cite as: 521 U. S. 346 (1997)
Breyer, J., dissenting
substantive crimes or punishments to fall within the constitutional prohibition," Morales, 514 U. S., at 509; see also Halper, 490 U. S., at 447; id., at 453 (Kennedy, J., concurring). We have not previously done so, and I do not do so here. Rather, I have pointed to those features of the Act itself, in the context of this litigation, that lead me to conclude, in light of our precedent, that the added confinement the Act imposes upon Hendricks is basically punitive. This analysis, rooted in the facts surrounding Kansas' failure to treat Hendricks, cannot answer the question whether the Kansas Act, as it now stands, and in light of its current implementation, is punitive toward people other than he. And I do not attempt to do so here.
III
To find that the confinement the Act imposes upon Hendricks is "punishment" is to find a violation of the Ex Post Facto Clause. Kansas does not deny that the 1994 Act changed the legal consequences that attached to Hendricks' earlier crimes, and in a way that significantly "disadvantage[d] the offender," Weaver v. Graham, 450 U. S. 24, 29 (1981). See Brief for Respondent State of Kansas 37-39.
To find a violation of that Clause here, however, is not to hold that the Clause prevents Kansas, or other States, from enacting dangerous sexual offender statutes. A statute that operates prospectively, for example, does not offend the Ex Post Facto Clause. Weaver, 450 U. S., at 29. Neither does it offend the Ex Post Facto Clause for a State to sentence offenders to the fully authorized sentence, to seek consecutive, rather than concurrent, sentences, or to invoke recidivism statutes to lengthen imprisonment. Moreover, a statute that operates retroactively, like Kansas' statute, nonetheless does not offend the Clause if the confinement that it imposes is not punishment—if, that is to say, the legislature does not simply add a later criminal punishment to an earlier one. Ibid.
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