One common thread, however, is the controversy of whether to use preventive detention at all. “The Constitution tends to frown upon punishing prospective behavior,” Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., the director of the Harvard Criminal Justice Institute, told me. “We punish past behavior that’s been proven. Here we’re keeping people in jail because we think they’ll be dangerous.” But Viktoria Kristiansson, an attorney adviser for AEquitas, cited the importance of the dangerousness hearing, claiming it “automatically provides a different context for a judge to analyze the evidence.”
