266
Opinion of the Court
at 257. The Center operates under an injunction that requires it to adopt and implement a plan for training and hiring competent sex offender therapists; to improve relations between residents and treatment providers; to implement a treatment program for residents containing elements required by prevailing professional standards; to develop individual treatment programs; and to provide a psychologist or psychiatrist expert in the diagnosis and treatment of sex offenders to supervise the staff. App. 67. A Special Master has assisted in bringing the Center into compliance with the injunction. In its most recent published opinion on the matter, the District Court noted some progress at the Center in meeting the requirements of the injunction. Turay v. Seling, 108 F. Supp. 2d, at 1154-1155.
This case gives us no occasion to consider how the civil nature of a confinement scheme relates to other constitutional challenges, such as due process, or to consider the extent to which a court may look to actual conditions of confinement and implementation of the statute to determine in the first instance whether a confinement scheme is civil in nature. Justice Scalia, concurring, contends that conditions of confinement are irrelevant to determining whether an Act is civil unless state courts have interpreted the Act as permitting those conditions. By contrast, Justice Stevens would consider conditions of confinement at any time in order to gain "full knowledge of the effects of the statute." Post, at 277.
Whether a confinement scheme is punitive has been the threshold question for some constitutional challenges. See, e. g., Kansas v. Hendricks, 521 U. S. 346 (1997) (double jeopardy and ex post facto); United States v. Salerno, 481 U. S. 739 (1987) (due process); Allen v. Illinois, 478 U. S. 364 (1986) (Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination). Whatever these cases may suggest about the relevance of conditions of confinement, they do not endorse the approach of the dissent, which would render the inquiry into the "ef-
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