Law & Order: Special Victims Unit/WMG

The reason why when the perp is deemed "Not Guilty" they are murdered at the conclusion of the episode
In case of a "Not Guilty" verdict or a mistrial, the DA mentally conditions victims and their families to murder the perp if he walks. "In the criminal justice system, sexually based offenses are considered especially heinous. In New York City, the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad known as the Special Victims Unit. These are their stories." That statement is pumped through every courthouse at above the limit of human hearing constantly at every trial. Sometimes the DA will recite this phrase to the intended mark. The conditioning is complete when the person hears the "Doing Doing" they are activated and commit murder. This is shown in the episode "Possessed".

SVU takes place in a alternate universe New York ala Sin City or modern Earth-1 New York
This theory makes perfect sense.

For years, as both a serious commentary and a sarcastic joke, fans, critics, and casual viewers have said that the number of extreme sexual crimes in the SVUniverse was ridiculous and probably higher then the entire national high crime average of the Real Life entire continental United States. A few years later, this was backed up by Real Life Statistics from the FBI and several other law enforcement agencies.

Therefore, SVU (and by extension the entire universe of Law & Order) takes place in an alternate nightmarish universe where there really are THAT many excessively violent criminals and predators in the world. SVU's version of NYC is only slightly less evil than Frank Miller's Sin City, with significantly more sex but fewer gang fights and public shootings.

Mayor Rudy Giuliani is frequently mentioned in the show, but it appears that the SVUniverse's version of him couldn't fight the city's tidal wave of extreme brutal perversion.

Basically, all New York City has a molester or serial killer on every corner and a rapist in literally every dark alley backway, possibly literally hiding in packs.

This doesn't explain why the SVUnit, especially in later seasons when the really violent criminals started showing four or five an episode, isn't made a better-armed and -protected Tactical SWAT Team-like squad/outfit. Then again, with this sort and type of crime rate, the city probably can't get the money in the budget for that.

The crime rate is similar to that of DC Comics's Metropolis and Gotham City of the 1930s and 40s. Thus, the SVUniverse is a possible "real life" version/basis/Hypertime version of Earth-1 and its fictional east coast supercities. After all, in the earliest issues of Superman and Batman, their respective cities were "dens of corruption" where extreme forms of criminality and violence ran so rampant that only a superpowered or super intelligent crimefighter could stop them.

Essentially, if the show continues as long as its parent series, by its finale either New York City or New York State will be nearly 2/3 empty: most of its population (not counting criminals from out of town or state) would be incarcerated, and as the crime rates escalated, the remainder of the populace would have left for safer cities and countries, leaving the city nearly deserted, leaving only officers Stabler and Benson to turn the lights off when they leave or move to greener pastures, which leads us to this doozy...

SVU New York is the Prison Colony from Escape From New York!!
That makes sense to since SVU New York (City or State) would be essentially abandoned and most of the States prisons full up there would be reason to turn all that empty space into something more practical also by the time it happened enough of the Twenty Minutes in The Future timeline of the film would have passed to coincide.
 * And Fin is The Duke.

Merritt Rook will be back
Come on now, a God Mode Sue like him has all sorts of tricks up his sleeve and then some. Also, he's Robin Williams. He's coming back, bitches.
 * This brings up a question: "When he comes back, will everyone at SVU and the DA's office still have an Idiot Ball glued to their hands, like during his first appearance?"

The special victims unit is really a team of serial killers with Cragen being the dominant one
Think about it how many times on this show have suspects died while members of the SVU were around, while they might clam it was self defense because they did not know that the brightly colored gun the man had was fake or that the person committed suicide with a small knife he brought with him into interrogation, but there are too many body’s for it to be a coincidence

They do not always kill the perps themselves and a lot of times will just put them in situations it is unlikely they will survive like telling a grieving borderline homicidal parent where the suspect will be or putting them in general population and telling the other convicts they rape children. They believe their actions are justified because the people they target are sex offenders and Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil even if they do occasionally kill an innocent man.

They might not have started out as killers but SVU is extremely mentally draining and after seeing a few perps walk and getting away with accidently killing a few they decided to combine two to make sure the guilty party suffers. The killings started shortly after Wrong is Right when they all admitted to wanting to kill suspects after Elliot was put under psychological monitoring for his homicidal urges but Cragen convinced the board that he could handle him.

Captain Don Cragen is the dominant member of the group he arranges for the kills and covers up for the SVU detectives if they are found out, but he douse not get his hands dirty.

Eliot Stabler is the main killer he has admitted to wanting to kill offenders before and has “accidently” done it a number of times because he thinks it has to be done. He has well known anger issues and because of his loyalty he is kept in the SVU

Olivia Bensen is more stable and keeps Eliot on a leash so he will not go off, but she is also a killer and if the situation calls for it she can be just as bad, but usually in a roundabout way now directly attacking the person. She knows to much to leave even after it becomes personal for her

Odafin Tutuola is violent like Elliot but a bit comer personally, he has a black and white view of morality that lends itself well to killers, he douse not exactly like the job and at one time wanting to transfer but because he can dispense justice he stays in the SVU

John Munch is not a killer and originally stayed around to try and stop Elliot and Fin from killing and even got promoted to sergeant in an attempt to get away from them but he knows too much and Cragen will not let him transfer out. He is now just sitting back trying to avoid the hits and waiting for the moment to either permanently leave or testify against them.

Chester Lake was already a killer before joining and because of that Cragen chose him for the team but he grow sloppy and even Cragen and Novak fixing evidence was not enough to stop him from killing a man in public

Dr. George Huang is not a killer himself but is fascinated by them, he was originally investigating them for the FBI but decided that this was a rare chance to see and observe active serial killers and told the FBI they were innocent but he would stay around just in case. Because of this he gives them a clean bill of mental health which allows them to continue killing and will even compromise his methods as a dr. to keep them free, and in exchange he can study active criminals.

Ken Briscoe and Monique Jeffries objected to the killings and they killed Kenny because he would have turned them in and as a warning to Monique who they gave a desk job to so she would not interfere, she was able to escape but knew she would be powerless to do anything against the rest of the SVU.

The lawyers and M.E. are in on it and agree to help because they are in over their heads and believe they might be next if they refuse to help them no matter what. This is why Novak was so willing to forge evidence for Lake because she was afraid of what would happen to her if she didn’t.

Olivia and Casey moonlight as practice heads for a barber college.
Casey gets the colourist. Olivia convinced Alex to try it once. She then spent the start of Season 5 orchestrating the whole Zapata/Valez affair just to get back at Oliva for that terrible fringe job.

Kathy has only ever been in paid work for that one episode in Season 3.
When was the last time she and Elliot had a fight about her doing double-shifts at the hospital? Even during the, there was zip on the money-problem front.

Kathy doesn't eat when her marriage is putting her under stress.
"Burned" and "Annihilated" are probably the best examples of this.
 * How would  affect this?

The key to Eli's parternity lies in his hair.
Theory spawned by someone on the USA Network forum. He's the only one with curls. He might be blonde; but Kathy and all the girls' hair is straggly to straight, even Lizzie when she was really young, Dickie has a bowl job and Elliot is balding. And Kathy never did explicitly answer Elliot's question.

Munch is an observing psychiatrist sent by Internal Affairs to keep an eye on Stabler.
After Stabler, an already-notoriously-violent police officer, is assigned to this delicate squad, Munch is given the task of keeping an eye on him.

The whole thing is imagined by Olivia in a mental hospital.
She did kill her mother, and the whole series is a medication-induced daydream/hallucination/dissociative state in a secure mental facility.

The colour schemes throughout the series match her moods. The other detectives are patients in the hospital, except for Elliot, who is a manifestation of all the things she feels she has missed out on -- for example, a loving father, romantic love, parenthood, etc. Cragen is an administrator, veering between immense frustration and deep empathy towards her. She imagines herself as a cop because she is getting justice/vengeance for her mother and other victims by association. Plus, she is imagining herself in power, triumphing over her confinement -- to her, the hospital feels like a prison.

Overall, the show is almost always depressing because Olivia wants the people in her fantasy to feel as bad as she does, something which is often cited as a reason for rape.

At first, she's on an upper like Prozac and possibly another mental stimulant, which explains all the one liners, why Elliot seems pretty content with his life, and why she doesn't appear to get any flack for wearing t-shirts to work. Although the drugs seem to be working, she goes through a number of different therapists, represented by the AD As; none of them seem able to get her to open up about her mother beyond the bare minimum (i.e. backstory, they probably would have guessed she had an abused childhood from her medical records).

Next, she gets new medication, one that has some non-threatening side-effects but not as much of a "Happy Pill" e.g. the change in hair and clothes - she's pushing the boundaries of her fantasy world. Alex becomes her permanent therapist, at least for a few years. She tries early on asking about her mother, and Olivia regresses into her daydream and has her mother suffer an accidental death, repressing the truth.

About season three, her medication is diluted, and again in series four. During this, she opens up to Alex about other stuff -- for example, her relationship problems.

At the start of Series 5, Alex has to leave due to extenuating circumstances that she won't tell Olivia about, intentionally leaving; possibly it was thought that Olivia needed a new doctor. Clearly, she doesn't take it very well, coming close to a psychotic break. Alex going into Wit Sec in her mind could represent Olivia rationalising that Alex could come back but that it's out of her hands and that she did not drive Alex away.

The doctors give her a strong one-off dose of an anti-depressant. Casey replaces Alex as her therapist. After some initial friction, she connects well with her. She hears about the Eldridge case on TV and it induces a brief few minutes of lucidity where she recounts the details of the murder, conveying a lot of remorse as she goes. However, when Casey reminds her that she is not responsible for her mother's death, it's not the absolution that she wants; she retreats into her mind once more, hearing "You didn't kill your mother, Olivia."

Season six is pretty much the same as those prior to Casey's arrival. But by seven, she has developed a tolerance to her current meds, so they rotate them. The new ones make her lethargic; hence, there are times when she or indeed a whole scene looks hazy, especially towards the end of the series.

In eight, they move her to another hospital, saying they can help her. In her fantasy, she inverts this, believing it is they who need her help. Whatever they do to her doesn't work, so she immerses herself in the lives of the other characters until they return her. Once she's back, they change her meds again; these make her more aggressive and give her mood swings, although maybe not since in her fantasy she beats the crap out of a suspect as well as her saying that she's been alone her whole life, whereas in reality she may have just yelled at someone. However this has worn off by the end of the series and these meds seem to work for her, in the sense that she's more docile, but still not ready to be released.

Nine and ten are dominated by the events of undercover, either trying to force it as far to the back of her mind as possible in reality as well as in her mind, where the idea of her imprisonment takes over, or experiencing the PTSD twofold. It most likely happened in reality, hence why the episode is so ominous the whole way through - she already knows the outcome. However, by the end of ten she has reached a plateau and is beginning to come to terms with what has happened.
 * This would make a KICK ASS fanfiction!
 * From now on, I will be watching the show under the assumption that this is true. It'll make it watchable again.
 * This theory is awesome. Insane, but awesome.
 * Would certainly explain why she always HAS to be the one whose right and never wrong. Although I would that Munch is actually a figment of her mind, but with an almost dangerous Genre Savy perception on reality that he hides beneath his 'strange' conspiracies.

Stabler is abusing his own children sexually.
All his over-the-top reactions and his violent hatred stem from his own misdeeds and the guilt he feels for them. Also explains his wife leaving him and taking the kids. The family scenes in which Stabler discusses his work while at home are particularly disturbing.
 * No, Stabler would likely implode at that, though he might have once done so and has repressed and overcompensated so much that he now acts the way he does.
 * Not sexually, but it's canon that he once hit one of his kids and flipped out over it, which is part of why he's so hard on anything that can be remotely seen as child abuse.
 * It was his oldest daughter after she spilled grape juice over a new carpet.
 * It would make more sense for him to have pedophilic urges that he constantly fights, which would explain his absolute hatred for those who act on their impulses.
 * I smell a darkfic in the making!

Huang is losing his marbles.
Multiple times this season, Huang, who is normally the voice of reason, has played faster and looser with the law than anyone else. He's clearly becoming too invested in these cases and will be recalled by the FBI after he screws something up royally.
 * I get the feeling he wasn't "all there" to begin with. Seriously, he tells Benson in "Wrath" that he specifically joined the FBI to better understand the more serious nutjobs and psychopaths. In the same conversation he says a patient nearly choked him to death: "It was a close call," he describes. So far, one guy smashed his head against the wall until he fell unconscious, two chairs have been flown at him, and another guy shoved him against the interrogation room table so hard his head bled and paramedics were called. We can only guess what else has happened to him offscreen.
 * That explains it, then: Huang is suffering from a traumatic brain injury that took place at some point between Pique and the next episode (perhaps the aforementioned choking incident?). Hence the sudden personality change. All further injuries have only made it worse, which is what led to that whole drug detox fiasco.
 * I've been hoping for an episode where Huang turns out to be a serial killer for years now. It just makes too much sense.
 * Huang does not strike me as the type that would go out and kill people he is too much of a voyeur, he is the type of person that would seek out and find a serial killer befriend him observe his behavior, maybe setup a few people for him to kill, but he would not kill them himself he is to cerebral.
 * Disagree. Huang seems like the kind of guy who has two sides: The perfectly put together Dr. Huang, and the unhinged George. Dr. Huang is a mild-mannered psychologist who studies rapists and serial killers because George, the other half, is a rapist/serial killer. His disturbed, fractured mind must be hidden beneath the mask of the calm, collective psychologist, lest he lose control and be forced to face the monster within. That's my Alternate Character Interpretation, and I'm sticking with it.

Big Bird will be the suspect for the series finale. Mulder and Scully will also appear.
X-files, The Wire, Homicide: Life on the Streets, Law and Order, Arrested Development, Sesame Street, and their respective spinoffs all share the same universe since Munch has appeared on each of them.
 * The reason Munch was able to appear in them all, he's a Timelord.
 * However when one considers the top of this pages theory and connect it along with this one its not really all that funny at all and gives it pretty strong doses of Nightmare Fuel and Fridge Horror if you think about it. Which pretty much means..

Sesame Street exists within the Law & Order SVU universe
It pretty much goes like this Sesame Street is or has pretty much a Great Valley like haven/secured neighborhood for all that remains of New York City's children within the svuniverse and probably was a natural habitat for its non human residents which pretty much explains why most of its residents appear to live in blissful ignorance (at least its children and child like muppets) of the far more lethal and torturous world around them.

Anyway after the sex crime rate got too high in New York Sesame Street went under some sort of martial law/lockdown order in order to protect the highest concentration of children in the city. Since the street is just a few blocks long its not too hard so heavily armed guards and roadblocks surround the neighborhood at all times which are never seen because their always just off camera and behind some of the buildings. And every once in a while either detectives Benson (whos pretty much Team Mom to most of SVU's victims) or Munch (who pretty much is the ONLY detective in SVU with a sense of humor, period.) go over to check if everyones still alright.

This also explains why for most of the shows early years NO ONE ever left Sesame Street (unless they were kids who grew up, went to collage, or moved away.) as most of their supplies and food would have been delivered straight to Mr. Hoopers store. And as for the young ladies who up till current work as part time help at the store? their undercover officers who work more directly with overseeing the neighborhood and its safety. Although to think about it most of their job consists of hanging out with small children and talking with Big Bird and Elmo even in the Real Life NYPD thats still a pretty cushy gig.
 * This troper thinks that is disturbing on so many many many levels. you know how many children grew up on Seasame street watching SVU? Well this troper for certain. I loved PBS.....next thing you're going to tell me is that Arthur, Clifford, and other cartoon shows on PBS and it's companion stations are actually shows created by the SVU and it's associates to keep children safe. Hell that alone is nightmarish.


 * The very first episode of Sesame Street, ever, in Nov., 1969, opened with a teacher (Gordon) at a local elementary school, walking one of the children home-- his home, not hers, without her mother's permission, and introducing her to his wife, Susan, who offers the girl milk and cookies that-- guess what?-- she just baked. Susan says she will call the girl's mother and let her know where she is, but we never actually see Susan do this. We also don't see this particular child again after this episode. Seriously, this would now be the opening of an episode of SVU. Also, because of it, the DVD for the first season of Sesame Street carries a warning that it is not suitable for small children.
 * Fanfic: CSI:NY, SVU, Sesame Street, triple crossover, where they find the girl's body 43 years later. Susan and Gordon are the last ones to see her alive. Ernie testifies that he saw her go into the apartment, but not come out. Big Bird remembers Gordon introducing him to the girl, and that it was in the afternoon, helping to establish the timeline. In a final twist, it'll turn out the actual perp was Mr. Hooper, and if they dig up the foundation of the store, they'll find more bodies, but he was blackmailing Gordon, who was AWOL from Vietnam, so Gordon was bringing children home from school for Mr. Hooper. He didn't know he was killing them "Just" touching them, though; when Gordon found out the whole truth, he murdered Mr. Hooper in 1982. Susan had no knowledge of any of it, except that Gordon was AWOL.

Stabler had an affair with A.D.A. Marlowe back when they were partners.
There was that odd moment when she asked Benson if she and Stabler ever hooked up, and the strange knowing look she had when Benson commented that he's married. Perhaps he was even the 'lover' she spoke of who left her because of her mastectomy. He almost looked guilty when he overheard that.

The quality of the show is inversely proportionate to the length of Benson's hair.
Season 1 had long hair and crappy writing; seasons two through four had very short hair and a lot of great episodes, after finally Growing the Beard (or, more accurately, cutting the hair); seasons five and six had fluctuating lengths between a pixie cut and a shaggy style, and the episodes fluctuated between good and bad; and from season 7 onwards, she's had long hair and a lot of the episodes have been total crap.

Elizabeth Stabler is dead
As noted under Chuck Cunningham Syndrome, both she and her sister Maureen have not been seen since Season 7 (Maureen is explainable because she's achieved her majority and has likely moved away), and far more tellingly, Dickie makes no mention of her when he complains about not having anyone his own age to talk with when he's her twin brother. It's possible that somehow, Elizabeth died for some reason (most likely an illness), and that's part of the reason that Elliot and Kathy's marriage was on the rocks-he was never there for her in her time of need, and probably was out investigating when Elizabeth died.
 * Explains his unpopularity. Twins are usually closer than regular siblings. Her death might have affected Dickie a lot, and who would want to hang out with the depressed kid with the dead little sister?

Elliot is, and always has been, a drug addict.
The constant sniffing, the mood swings, the PCP-esque violence, the rocky marriage...it would explain a lot.
 * Seconded. I think a PCP habit would probably be easier to maintain since no one really seems to think of it anymore, at least not in the media. When was the last time the show had a someone jonesing for the angel dust?
 * Oh my god, Elliot Stable is a VAMPIRE!

Huang has a twin brother who's also a profiler for the FBI
Consider how different he is in Pique from the rest of the episodes. I think he wasn't feeling well that day, or was busy, and thus did a Twin Switch with an unnamed brother. Then he switched in, explained that the FBI confused them and he was the one who was supposed to profile for them, and there you go.

The next season will feature Elliot and Olivia going undercover to catch a litterbug
Lately, 25% of the episodes have had Elliot and Olivia going undercover, 25% have had cases that were not special victims cases, and 25% had both. As they run out of plot ideas this season, a man will be suspected of raping a woman, but they won't be able to arrest him, so they'll go undercover to catch him, only to find that his only criminal activity is littering. This will lead them to a group that litters compulsively. They will stay with the case in order to catch those darned litterbugs.

Craigen or Stabler has naked pictures of the Chief of Detectives or another high up official
How else do you explain all the crap they get away with? Like in Baggage they assault a man, denied him his constitution right to an attorney, and drive him to suicide with a small knife they conveniently forgot to take away from him. All this happens while the Chief of D’s is in the building and complaining about them, yet he ends up doing nothing to them. Craigen tries to justify this by saying all One PP cares about are results and not how they get them but considering all the laws they break there has to be another reason the SVU hardly ever get in trouble for their actions.

The entire series is bad police procedural fanfiction being written by somebody that has never been in law enforcement.
How else can they explain why laws are routinely flouted or broken,suspect are coerced into confessions which would useless in a court of law,why police procedures are routinely ignored w/ little or no punishment (or prosecution)and how Stabler and Benson can not only defy their commanding officer but yell and scream at him while doing so? Given that their behavior in most episodes after Season 1 would have resulted in both Stabler and Benson being removed from the Special Victim's Unit and probably removed from the NYPD,they continue soldiering into new areas of lawlessness and incompetence. Since the viewers are expected to LIKE these characters despite their numerous flaws and shoddy police work, this can only be the work of a fan fiction writer that knows little or nothing of police work.Perhaps it's a web series.
 * A court/legal proceeding show that routinely ignores the law and features weirdly incapable protagonists who still manage to get the job done every time? SVU takes place in the same universe as Phoenix Wright.

Cragen is a 6-year-old with Progeria
It explains all of his idiot decisions.

Huang is a eunuch
Exactly What It Says On the Tin.
 * You are so mean.

Cragen has replaced pretty much every member of the team, other than Stabler, with physical duplicates at various points throughout the series.
It explains the drastic personality changes, and why Stabler is getting more and more neurotic. Along with replacing all of his superiors every time his unit screws up, thus wiping the slate clean, he's also done the following:
 * Huang was the first to go. He only made it through Pique before he was replaced. Cragen did so because the original Huang was creepy as hell, but found that he enjoyed it so much that he started replacing people for evil instead of good.
 * Alex was supposed to be next, but Cragen accidentally botched it and had to use the duplicate he created for that female rapist from an earlier season, hence Novak's arrival on the show. Alex had to go into hiding because she knew too much and feared Cragen would kill her to keep her silent. Later, he would replace Novak for one episode with a duplicate who wasn't a hardass about mental illness (in Blind), but accidentally killed her, forcing him to return the original for a little while. He replaced her with a second duplicate in Cold, who promptly got herself fired. He finally got around to making an Alex-duplicate, but gave up on making any more after she left the unit.
 * Both Munch and Fin were replaced circa season 6. The duplicates hate their jobs, and often skip work, which is why we see less and less of them.
 * Benson was replaced in season 7. The duplicate was overly-emotional, had difficulty getting along with Stabler and lacked the fem-balls awesomeness that the original Olivia possessed. Eventually, Olivia-2 got so annoying that she was sent away to another unit for a bit, then killed and replaced with Olivia-3, who was slightly less whiny and managed to get along with Stabler... most of the time. She still lacked the fem-balls, though. After she was sexually assaulted, Cragen replaced her again, which is how her PTSD magically disappeared after only a few episodes. Thus, Olivia-4 made her debut.
 * Stuckey was replaced because he was too annoying, but Cragen unknowingly had his duplicate-making machine set to evil.
 * Dani, Marlowe, Lake and Greylek were never replaced because Cragen didn't have enough resources at the time, what with all the Olivia duplicates he went through.
 * Stabler hasn't been replaced, hence his personality being more or less the same. All of the random personality changes have him on edge, however, which is exacerbating his pre-existing anger issues.
 * Cragen never got around to making duplicates for Jeffries and Cassidy because he accidentally replaced himself with a duplicate, who is unaware that either ever existed.


 * I think this could be considered Canon.

Stabler and Freakshow (from Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle) are the same person.
Freakshow is Stabler 10 years in the future, after he finally has a mental breakdown.

== All of the weird characterization mentioned on this page and the 'Just Bugs Me' page is actually foreshadowing for the EPIC final episode of SVU, in which almost all of the main characters are driven over the edge, killed or both. ==
 * Huang, after the numerous head injuries described earlier on the page, loses it and becomes a serial killer who gets off on raping and murdering AD As. He's already killed one woman (Marlowe, hence her unexplained disappearance) in the past, but has fought his urges since then, until a final head injury destroys his ability to control his actions. His second target is Casey Novak, who has taken to living on the streets because she can't find work. His next target is Alex, who has just returned to the US.
 * The loss of Alex drives Olivia to go after Huang without backup. Unfortunately, her plan isn't so successful, as confronting him sets off her PTSD and leads to a Heroic BSOD. Huang rapes and murders her.
 * Huang kidnaps Fin's son, blackmailing Fin into murdering Stabler. Unfortunately, Fin is unsuccessful in his assassination attempt. As he lies dying, he tells Elliot everything. Leading to:
 * Elliot is finally driven to the boiling point because of the loss of his long-time partner. He tracks down Huang and beats him to death, years and years of pent of rage finally coming out in the form of a violent ass-whooping. The police eventually show up to arrest him, dragging Elliot off to jail. As he sits in his cell, he looks out into the prison to see all of the perps he's collared over the years grinning at him, waiting for a chance to get their hands on him...
 * Cragen, completely broken down by all of this, returns to alcoholism.
 * Munch quits police work for good, retiring for real this time. In an ironic twist of fate, he is the only member of the cast to maintain his sanity, despite his ranting and raving about the government over the years.

The SVU is actually stuck in a Ravenloft-style Epiphanic Prison.
Hence the completely Crapsack World and our Cowboy-slash-Rabid Cops sticking around for so long. If they actually learned from their mistakes and made an effort to become better people instead of giving into to their personal demons, they could escape... Instead, they do what comes easiest and call it justice.

George is now an SVU writer
The episode "Gray" was written by George Huang. I think we all know what's going on here. Sometime during the last episodes, George got tired of Elliot's asshattery. He and Elliot then had angry sex, with George dominating Elliot from the bottom, but oh noes! Elliot went back to Kathy without a word. Frustrated beyond belief, George put in his transfer request with the FBI. But theeeen, they said he had to stay in NYC to keep and eye on the SVU detectives, because the FBI is watching them for their dirty practices (especially the crap they pulled in Baggage, which would have gotten them arrested in real life.) George finally faked a bout of psychotic depression, which got him kicked out of the FBI until he could get it together. Curious about what new career to pursue, he started writing fanfiction for fandoms such as Mulan, M. Butterfly, and Oz. Deciding he liked it, he submitted an application to the writers of Law and Order: SVU, because his knowledge of sex crimes and the legal and medical aftereffects was needed. He was hired a few weeks ago and is enjoying his new status. He is sure to exaggerate Elliot's character to be a total douche, as revenge for Elliot, well, being a douche.

Cragen is Stabler's real father.
This is why he lets Stabler get away with so much crap, and went out of his way to defend him after the season one psych. analysis fiasco, all the while tossing poor Jeffries to the wolves.

In the SVU verse, it is not against the law for a woman to sexualy assualt a man
In one episode, a women drugs men and shocks them with cattle prods to make them ejaculate so she can collect thier sperm. As pointed out on the JBM page, she is not arrested for this. In a much more recent episode, a woman anal rapes two men as revenge for having been raped by them when she was younger. She too, is not charged for this and the team focus on why she did it. Clearly, the SVU world is even more Crapsack the first thought.

Dana Lewis will actually kill Elliot Stabler.
Mainly by accident, but also by virtue of the fact that every time they run into each other, he winds up getting hurt. Olivia will have a hard time reconciling her need to get revenge for her slain partner with her inability to accept that women can commit crimes too.

Jack McCoy invalidated Dr. Huang's marriage in the Law&Order episode "Gov Love."
For the first five seasons of SVU (1999-2004), George wore a wedding ring during every appearance. Since he clearly stated that he was gay, not bisexual, and he's a psychiatrist, it's highly unlikely that he would have been married to a woman. The L&O episode that invalidated multiple gay marriages happened in 2004--the same year that George stopped wearing a wedding ring. This would explain why he is occasionally willing to go against the DA's office, and why he dislikes Elliot so much, as Elliot and Jack have some of the same crusader-like tendencies.
 * You, my friend, are a fucking GENIUS. I always wanted to find an explanation for the wedding ring that fit well in canon, and the only one I ever managed to do was him being married to a woman because he hadn't realized his sexual orientation yet- but I don't like the idea much. This idea makes so much more sense, though. :)
 * I'll second that. When I first noticed the ring (in a rerun), I figured it was some retconning after Wong came out. But I remembered the episode "Inheritance," and that Huang speaks Chinese, so I thought maybe he just married someone to help he stay in the US.

SVU is set in the same universe as Judge Dredd.
And Stabler is a relative of Dredd. C'mon, just compare the chins.

Elliot is Chris Keller under an assumed name.
He escaped through the morgue after faking his death; he planned the escape in case he ever became absolutely sure that Toby would never love him again. The real Elliot Stabler was killed in action while in the Marines; Keller just happened to be in the right place at the right time for someone to recognize "him" and bring him home. He felt it was his only chance to make a new start, so joined the police force in order to protect himself from ever going back to prison. That's why he has anger problems, and why he has a difficult time with Kathy-- she's not really his wife. In the episode where Lee Tergesen appeared as the killer of the day, he recognized Toby, but realized that after being paroled and changing his name to distance himself from his time in Oz, Toby had lost his mind, and he prayed with him that way as a way to say goodbye without saying goodbye.

One of the Detctives has a Death Note
What else explains why the perp/suspect ends up dead so often?

Interrogations are not taped in the L&O Universe.
Either that or the NYPD "disappear" all interrogation videos. Otherwise every single interrogation where Stabler tortures/assaults the suspect would be shown in court and wreck the entire case.

Elliot is going to abuse Little Eli, and end up an SVU perp.
Without his job to give him an avenue to work out his aggressions, Elliot will become increasingly frustrated and hostile while he tries to find a way to support his family. Since he'd never hit a woman and Dickie will have moved out of the house/enlisted in the military, his youngest child will become the only acceptable target in the house. Eventually, it'll get back to SVU, and Elliot will be on the other side of the two-way mirror...