When a pregnant woman is kidnapped and carjacked, the squad thinks, at first, that she's the latest victim of a serial rapist, only to realize that she's the victim of an intricate ransom plot.
While investigating a school shooting that claimed the lives of two students, the squad realizes that the surviving victim is actually the shooter and the side effects of a medication may have caused his actions.
Police find a female forensic psychiatrist unconscious and bound in a basement, along with would-be rapists. She turns out to be the author of a book about rehabilitating convicted sex offenders. The detectives identify one of her patients as a suspect, and ask the doctor for his records, but they disappeared when her office was vandalized shortly after she left the hospital. A tape that disappeared during the break-in is brought to police by another suspect's sister, which leads the investigation to focus on victimology.
Investigating the brutal rape and murder of an undercover federal agent and forced to use discretion in order to protect the identities of those agents in the field, the detectives arrest a suspect highly connected with a Colombian drug cartel. As the case proceeds towards trial, Cabot is faced with death threats on herself and her family along with pressure to yield the case to federal authorities.
After a man is arrested for attacking his pregnant wife and then seeks to have her charged with neglect for drinking during her pregnancy, Benson learns that this is not the first time a child has been exposed to the devastating repercussions of the woman's uncontrolled alcoholism.
A gay man who had a brief stint in a Fundamentalist Christian-sponsored sexual re-education course is found murdered, and suspects range from the conversion program itself, a bigoted church group who kept sending him threatening letters, a group of psychologists studying the nature of homosexuality, and two of his ex-lovers, one of whom is the son of one of the professors.
A toddler seems to have been abducted from a park while her babysitter is several yards distant talking to a nanny. Searching detectives shortly after arriving on the scene find the child unconscious behind nearby bushes.
A pair of inmates jump a guard and escape from prison using the guard's clothes. One of the two kidnaps his own son's older half-brother, a son who was born after the escapee was imprisoned for raping the older brother.
The murder and sodomy of a local fraternity pledge master leads the detectives to his pornographic Web site, which features college girls at a local bar. Further investigation points back to the fraternity, whose members are not cooperating, and their code of conduct for prospective pledges.
When a schoolgirl's body is found in the trunk of a car, Stabler and Benson find themselves investigating allegations of bullying among her classmates.
When it becomes obvious that a forensics expert raped and murdered a student, the investigation focuses on a criminology professor that Cragen arrested decades earlier for similar crimes.
The investigation into the murder of a senior citizen leads the squad to suspect that the killer is actually a serial killer who preys on elderly women.
Novak enlists Clark's assistance in obtaining evidence to remove a judge from the bench after his bias in two child abuse cases leads to the death of a child and the wrongful incarceration of an innocent woman.
