Legislation in Victoria on sexual offenders: issues for health professionals

Dangerous and severe personality disorder and in need of treatment

The Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder Programme was born out of a populist law and order reaction, developed on false premises, but is now evolving into an exciting initiative for providing effective services to a group of offenders with mental illness who psychiatry, and the justice services, have so long ignored. Enthusiasm, flexibility and an evidence-based approach may yet lead to real progress towards the improved management of disturbed high-risk offenders, improving the psychological and social functioning of the offenders as well as delivering a safer community.

Calling the Tune Without the Music: A Psycho-Legal Analysis of Australia's Post-Sentence Legislation

Australian governments have introduced legislation to detain or supervise sex offenders whose sentences have expired but who are still considered to be dangerous. In the enactment of these controversial laws, governments largely overlooked a significant body of empirical knowledge on sexual offending and risk prediction. Consequently, these schemes are based on unexamined assumptions. Accordingly, an evaluation of the compatibility between these assumptions and the available science is warranted. To this end, the article will submit the central provisions of the legislation to a psycho-legal analysis whereby the assumptions underpinning the laws will be weighed against the empirical evidence. The article reveals that there is considerable disconnect between the laws' assumptions and the existing literature on sexual offending and risk prediction, such that the evidence suggests that the legislation will not achieve its aims in any meaningful and sustainable way. Future criminal justice policy in the area of sex offending needs to be collaboratively developed between policymakers and the relevant scientific communities and experts. It must be founded on cost-effective and empirically defensible approaches based on what we understand, rather than what we fear, about sex offenders.