Punished For Future Crimes? | Dr. Samantha Stein on DEVIANT

DEVIANT

Cold Open Media

Education, Documentary, Society & Culture, True Crime

4.8 • 610 Ratings

🗓️ 5 September 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Being punished for crimes you haven’t committed yet sounds like Minority Report. But in 15 states—including California—it’s the law. Under the Sexually Violent Predator Act (SVP), offenders who’ve already served their time can be held indefinitely if experts believe they’re likely to reoffend. In this episode of DEVIANT: Off Script, host Dan Szematowicz sits down with Dr. Samantha Stein, forensic psychologist and author of Evil at Our Table: Inside the Minds of the Monsters Who Live Among Us. Dr. Stein is one of the few evaluators trusted to decide whether violent sexual offenders should be involuntarily hospitalized after release. We dive into: How the SVP program actually works—and why it’s so controversial. The cases of “Joe” and “Luke Miller,” two offenders whose outcomes highlight the tension between public safety and civil liberties. The emotional toll of sitting across from serial predators—and why treating them can sometimes feel like prevention work. The broader questions society faces when deciding how to deal with people who’ve committed unthinkable crimes. It’s a rare, unflinching look inside a system that blurs the line between justice and prediction. Samantha Stein’s book, Evil at Our Table, is available wherever books are sold, including here: https://a.co/d/c7huoJB 👉 Subscribe for more deep-dive true crime conversations: https://www.youtube.com/@deviant.podcast 👉 Support the show + get exclusive content: www.deviantpodcast.com 👉 Follow us on TikTok & Instagram: @deviantdopodcast Copyright 2025 Cold Open Media LLC Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Being punished for a crime that you haven't yet committed, but may in the future, because someone determines that you may in the future, sounds like the stuff of science fiction or some sort of dystopian future.
0:10.3	But this is a very real program in 15 states, including California.
0:15.8	And there are important discussions to be had around it.
0:18.7	In California, it's specifically tailored to keep the public safe
0:22.4	from those with the history of violent sexual predation, violent sexual crimes. And there's a whole
0:28.6	process to determining who may be at risk of committing these crimes and whether or not to
0:35.8	involuntarily hospitalize them, to provide them mental health and to
0:40.5	keep the public safe. In California, one of the few people trusted with making these assessments is
0:45.8	Dr. Samantha Stein. She's a forensic psychologist specializing in sex offender treatment, and
0:52.0	she has worked with a lot of these individuals and offenders.
0:57.1	And today on Deviant Offscript, we're going to talk about how these decisions get made and
1:01.9	some of the weighty things that you have to think about when you're making them.
1:05.7	Yeah, it sounds a lot like Minority Report, but it's a lot more nuanced than that.
1:10.1	So let's get into it.
1:11.2	This is Dr. Samantha Stein on Deviant Offscript.
1:18.5	Dr. Samantha Stein is the author of Evil at our table. Inside the Minds of the Monsters Who Live Among Us is with us.
1:29.9	Thank you so much for being here on Deviant.
1:32.1	I really appreciate you being here.
1:33.8	Thank you for having me.
1:35.4	All right.
1:36.1	So we are going to talk about your book, which is a fascinating look into something we talk about pretty often here on Deviant,
1:45.1	which is serial sexual crime, violent offenders, sexual predators.
	...

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