536 U.S. 24 (2002)
A prison treatment program may require disclosing past offenses, even uncharged ones, if the penalty for refusing is not severe enough to compel.
Good law. Still followed. Later cases may have narrowed it — see Scope. Binds every court in the country on the federal question it decides.
Kansas required an incarcerated man to join a sex offender treatment program in which participants had to disclose their offense history, including uncharged conduct, with no immunity. Refusing meant losing privileges and being moved to a more restrictive unit.
The Court held that these consequences did not amount to unconstitutional compulsion under the Fifth Amendment’s privilege against self-incrimination. The judgment rests on a four-justice plurality and a concurrence by Justice O’Connor, who agreed on the result under a narrower test.
This is why treatment programs — in prison, and often as a condition of probation or parole — can require disclosure of past conduct. The fight in later cases is over where the penalty for refusing becomes coercive: added prison time or revoked supervision can be treated differently from lost privileges.
It did not approve harsher penalties for refusing, such as a longer prison term or revoked parole or supervised release; Justice O’Connor, whose narrower concurrence controls, suggested added prison time would be compulsion.
Last verified against the sources above on September 30, 2026.
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