Abstract
Karen Harrison, Dangerousness, Risk and the Governance of Serious Sexual and Violent Offenders, University of Hull, Routledge: London, 2011; 250 pp.: 9780415668637, £26.99
In Dangerousness, Risk and the Governance of Serious Sexual and Violent Offenders, Karen Harrison provides a comprehensive and detailed overview of the history, sentencing and management of offenders convicted of serious sexual and/or violent crimes in the United Kingdom. The central thrust of her discussions concerns a humane and therapeutically driven response to the care of such prisoners while advancing welfare based policies to properly combat the structural determinants that render many at risk for criminality.
The concepts of danger and risk are unpacked to illuminate their malleability over generations of use. She underscores the social construct behind criminal laws by examining the role of class hierarchy and the tendency to condemn the poor as dangerous and deviant. The disparity between the sentencing of ‘traditional’ crimes (i.e. theft or substance use) and white collar crimes are explored to highlight the passivity of political and state captains to incarcerate corrupt corporate officials.
Harrison analyses how ‘sentencing policy has thus seen a shift from a retributive penal philosophy where the emphasis was focused on what the offender had done to one where the prevention of crime is key’ (p. 27). The hallmark of this movement in the UK concerns the IPP: the indeterminate sentence of imprisonment for public protection enacted in 2005. She warns of the dangers of such public protection agendas, by drawing upon Nils Christie’s (2000) work. Harrison highlights how risk discourse and preventive sentencing that necessitates long term incarceration can be counterproductive as it segregates an ever-expanding population from normative society. Indeed, the use of IPPs and related policies has drastically reduced the parole eligibilities and release programs for offenders as parole board members have become increasingly conditioned to view such categories of prisoners as risk-bearers and potential threats to the safety of society if released. Yet, the commitment to indeterminate incarceration has led to acute emotional, social, physical and economical losses for the imprisoned and may raise their risks of committing future harms upon re-entry. Hence, from this frame of reference, ‘a government can be dangerous to its citizens’ (p. 9).
In exploring special prison populations under the rubric of dangerous offenders, Harrison underscores how mental health is becoming increasingly recognized by law makers and psychiatrists/psychologists as a risk factor for violent and sexual offending, thereby creating a space for the development of fruitful individualized treatment programs and intensive case management planning for rehabilitation and re-entry. However, she explains how many promising programs still remain in a stage of infancy, lacking comprehensive evaluation results. The case of women prisoners is presented and a plea is made for the advancement and amelioration of gender specific policies and specialized treatment that is responsive to the unique needs of female violent and sexual offending. Existing conditions of confinement, programming and risk assessment tools for women prisoners are criticized for being linear and male centered. For young persons and children, the absence of community-based alternatives to incarceration is explored with a view to promoting restorative justice and healing models, intensive supervision and tailored programming. Emphasis is placed on a return to the philosophy of treating ‘kids as kids’ as opposed to adults, in order to properly situate the dynamic life words of this population including their developmental capacities as well as any previous victimization endured as pathways into the criminal justice system.
While Harrison compellingly details the reigning forms of governance and intervention for dangerous offenders, and the role of political, social and class capital in such efforts, the book is limited to the context of UK dangerous offender legislation and has little to say about the experiences of prisoners in other developed countries such as Canada, the United States and Australia. The exponential size of the prison population in the USA as well as the state sanctioned penal clampdowns on its ‘dangerous’ violent and sexual offenders offers a useful frame of reference for which to consider the collateral consequences of such movements on urban communities, families and more generally, the welfare of society (Mauer and Chesney Lind, 2002).