Written By Ed Zuckerman
Directed By Mariska Hargitay
Carisi goes undercover at a homeless shelter for sex offenders when a string of rapes break out nearby. While trying to determine if one (if any) of the residents is responsible, Carisi gets himself into hot water with members of the shelter and the community. When a shelter advocate is murdered, Benson debates pulling Carisi out, but they catch a break thanks to some fellow shelter members and the lawyer of one of them who might have more to hide than his clients.
Tropes
- Amoral Attorney: Thomas Zimmerman turns out to be the rapist, targeting the area near the sex offender shelter because he knew the residents would be blamed and attempting to frame Caskey once he realized SVU suspected him, and he might have gotten away with it if one of the victims hadn't overheard him talking to detectives and recognized his voice.
- Artistic License – Law: Caskey had no prior criminal record, he had one adult victim, he was a model prisoner, and he accepted responsibility for his crime. Caskey being a level 3 sex offender was rather implausible.
- Call-Back: One of the rapists in the shelter is Gregory Searle, the perpetrator from the Season 9 episode "Avatar".
- Not Me This Time: Despite the rapes occurring in close proximity to a sex offender shelter, some of them were not committed by any of the convicted offenders in the shelter; rather, by someone who was deliberately committing crimes near the shelters because he knew the residents would be blamed.
- Sympathy for the Devil: Carisi develops genuine sympathy for Richie Caskey, one of the residents in the shelter, due in large part to the fact that Caskey is genuinely remorseful and accepts the consequences of his actions, even confronting other residents who don't do the same. He loses said sympathy when it appears that Caskey has reoffended, but becomes more sympathetic than ever when it's revealed that Caskey didn't do it after all and was framed.
