Opinion of the Court tally ill without appropriate procedures to prove that he was mentally ill. "The loss of liberty produced by an involuntary commitment is more than a loss of freedom from confinement." Id., at 492. Due process requires that the nature of commitment bear some reasonable relation to the purpose for which the individual is committed. Jones, supra, at 368; Jackson v. Indiana, 406 U. S. 715, 738 (1972). Here, according to the testimony given at the hearing in the trial court, Foucha is not suffering from a mental disease or illness. If he is to be held, he should not be held as a mentally ill person. See Jones, supra, at 368; Jackson, supra, at 738. Cf. United States v. Salerno, 481 U. S. 739, 747-748 (1987); Schall v. Martin, 467 U. S. 253, 270 (1984). Second, if Foucha can no longer be held as an insanity acquittee in a mental hospital, he is entitled to constitutionally adequate procedures to establish the grounds for his confinement. Jackson v. Indiana, supra, indicates as much. There, a person under criminal charges was found incompetent to stand trial and was committed until he regained his sanity. It was later determined that nothing could be done to cure the detainee, who was a deaf mute. The state courts refused to order his release. We reversed, holding that the State was entitled to hold a person for being incompetent to stand trial only long enough to determine if he could be cured and become competent. If he was to be held longer, the State was required to afford the protections constitutionally required in a civil commitment proceeding. We noted, relying on Baxstrom v. Herold, 383 U. S. 107 (1966), that a convicted criminal who allegedly was mentally ill was entitled to release at the end of his term unless the State committed him in a civil proceeding. "[T]here is no conceivable basis for distinguishing the commitment of a person who is nearing the end of a penal term from all other civil commitments.' Jackson v. Indiana, supra, at 724, quoting Baxstrom, supra, at 111-112. 999 Opinion of the Court Third, "the Due Process Clause contains a substantive component that bars certain arbitrary, wrongful government actions 'regardless of the fairness of the procedures used to implement them."" Zinermon v. Burch, 494 U. S. 113, 125 (1990). See also Salerno, supra, at 746; Daniels v. Williams, 474 U. S. 327, 331 (1986). Freedom from bodily restraint has always been at the core of the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause from arbitrary governmental action. Youngberg v. Romeo, 457 U. S. 307, 316 (1982). "It is clear that commitment for any purpose constitutes a significant deprivation of liberty that requires due process protection." Jones, supra, at 361 (internal quotation marks omitted). We have always been careful not to "minimize the importance and fundamental nature" of the individual's right to liberty. Salerno, supra, at 750. A State, pursuant to its police power, may of course imprison convicted criminals for the purposes of deterrence and retribution. But there are constitutional limitations on the conduct that a State may criminalize. See, e. g., Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U. S. 444 (1969); Robinson v. California, 370 U. S. 660 (1962). Here, the State has no such punitive interest. As Foucha was not convicted, he may not be punished. Jones, supra, at 369. Here, Louisiana has by reason of his acquittal exempted Foucha from criminal responsibility as La. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 14:14 (West 1986) requires. See n. 1, supra. The State may also confine a mentally ill person if it shows "by clear and convincing evidence that the individual is mentally ill and dangerous," Jones, 463 U. S., at 362. Here, the State has not carried that burden; indeed, the State does not claim that Foucha is now mentally ill. We have also held that in certain narrow circumstances persons who pose a danger to others or to the community may be subject to limited confinement and it is on these cases, particularly United States v. Salerno, supra, that the State relies in this case. Opinion of the Court Salerno, unlike this case, involved pretrial detention. We observed in Salerno that the "government's interest in preventing crime by arrestees is both legitimate and compelling," id., at 749, and that the statute involved there was a constitutional implementation of that interest. The statute carefully limited the circumstances under which detention could be sought to those involving the most serious of crimes (crimes of violence, offenses punishable by life imprisonment or death, serious drug offenses, or certain repeat offenders), id., at 747, and was narrowly focused on a particularly acute problem in which the government interests are overwhelming, id., at 750. In addition to first demonstrating probable cause, the Government was required, in a "full-blown adversary hearing," to convince a neutral decisionmaker by clear and convincing evidence that no conditions of release can reasonably assure the safety of the community or any person, i. e., that the “arrestee presents an identified and articulable threat to an individual or the community." Id., at 751. Furthermore, the duration of confinement under the Bail Reform Act of 1984 (Act) was strictly limited. The arrestee was entitled to a prompt detention hearing and the maximum length of pretrial detention was limited by the "stringent time limitations of the Speedy Trial Act." Id., at 747. If the arrestee were convicted, he would be confined as a criminal proved guilty; if he were acquitted, he would go free. Moreover, the Act required that detainees be housed, to the extent practicable, in a facility separate from persons awaiting or serving sentences or awaiting appeal. Id., at 747-748. Salerno does not save Louisiana's detention of insanity acquittees who are no longer mentally ill. Unlike the sharply focused scheme at issue in Salerno, the Louisiana scheme of confinement is not carefully limited. Under the state statute, Foucha is not now entitled to an adversary hearing at which the State must prove by clear and convincing evidence that he is demonstrably dangerous to the community. Indeed, the State need prove nothing to justify continued de Opinion of the Court tention, for the statute places the burden on the detainee to prove that he is not dangerous. At the hearing which ended with Foucha's recommittal, no doctor or any other person testified positively that in his opinion Foucha would be a danger to the community, let alone gave the basis for such an opinion. There was only a description of Foucha's behavior at Feliciana and his antisocial personality, along with a refusal to certify that he would not be dangerous. When directly asked whether Foucha would be dangerous, Dr. Ritter said only, "I don't think I would feel comfortable in certifying that he would not be a danger to himself or to other people." App. 18. This, under the Louisiana statute, was enough to defeat Foucha's interest in physical liberty. It is not enough to defeat Foucha's liberty interest under the Constitution in being freed from indefinite confinement in a mental facility. Furthermore, if Foucha committed criminal acts while at Feliciana, such as assault, the State does not explain why its interest would not be vindicated by the ordinary criminal processes involving charge and conviction, the use of enhanced sentences for recidivists, and other permissible ways of dealing with patterns of criminal conduct. These are the normal means of dealing with persistent criminal conduct. Had they been employed against Foucha when he assaulted other inmates, there is little doubt that if then sane he could have been convicted and incarcerated in the usual way. It was emphasized in Salerno that the detention we found constitutionally permissible was strictly limited in duration. 481 U. S., at 747; see also Schall, 467 U. S., at 269. Here, in contrast, the State asserts that because Foucha once committed a criminal act and now has an antisocial personality that sometimes leads to aggressive conduct, a disorder for which there is no effective treatment, he may be held indefinitely. This rationale would permit the State to hold indefinitely any other insanity acquittee not mentally ill who could be shown to have a personality disorder that may lead to criminal conduct. The same would be true of any con Opinion of the Court victed criminal, even though he has completed his prison term. It would also be only a step away from substituting confinements for dangerousness for our present system which, with only narrow exceptions and aside from permissible confinements for mental illness, incarcerates only those who are proved beyond reasonable doubt to have violated a criminal law. "In our society liberty is the norm, and detention prior to trial or without trial is the carefully limited exception." United States v. Salerno, supra, at 755. The narrowly focused pretrial detention of arrestees permitted by the Bail Reform Act was found to be one of those carefully limited exceptions permitted by the Due Process Clause. We decline to take a similar view of a law like Louisiana's, which permits the indefinite detention of insanity acquittees who are not mentally ill but who do not prove they would not be dangerous to others.6 6 JUSTICE THOMAS' dissent firmly embraces the view that the State may indefinitely hold an insanity acquittee who is found by a court to have been cured of his mental illness and who is unable to prove that he would not be dangerous. This would be so even though, as in this case, the court's finding of dangerousness is based solely on the detainee's antisocial personality that apparently has caused him to engage in altercations from time to time. JUSTICE THOMAS, however, does not challenge the holding of our cases that a convicted criminal may not be held as a mentally ill person without following the requirements for civil commitment, which would not permit further detention based on dangerousness alone. Yet it is surely strange to release sane but very likely dangerous persons who have committed a crime knowing precisely what they were doing but continue to hold indefinitely an insanity detainee who committed a criminal act at a time when, as found by a court, he did not know right from wrong. JUSTICE THOMAS' rationale for continuing to hold the insanity acquittee would surely justify treating the convicted felon in the same way, and if put to it, it appears that he would permit it. But as indicated in the text, this is not consistent with our present system of justice. JUSTICE THOMAS relies heavily on the American Law Institute's (ALI) Model Penal Code and Commentary. However, his reliance on the Model Code is misplaced and his quotation from the Commentary is importantly incomplete. JUSTICE THOMAS argues that the Louisiana statute follows |