ABSTRACT

Like the poor, the dangerous have always been with us. The dangerous, those who persist in their crimes because of their psychological, biological, economic, alcoholic, drug dependent or political condition or simply by their rational choice, have long posed difficult problems for Anglo-Australian jurisprudence. On the one hand, their persistence, resistance or sheer unamenability to traditional criminal justice interventions stands as a stark reminder of the system’s failure to deal with a small, but highly visible group of offenders. Courts and penal authorities, past and present, need no sophisticated criminological analysis to identify the core of offenders who are multiple recidivists. Judges, in sentencing, have before them the offender’s prior record which so often is a depressing litany of defeat, disappointment or defiance. Prison authorities know that fifty to seventy per cent of their intake are repeat customers.