ABSTRACT
It is not difficult to trace a thread of public protection policy (and politics) back over the past two decades, whereby actions against serious – and increasingly labelled as dangerous – offenders have been key to party politics. Governments wishing to be viewed as tough on offenders have found it easy to progress measures aimed at those found guilty of having committed (and even sometimes only assessed as likely or probable to commit) the most serious of offences, frequently but not exclusively predatory sex offenders. These measures, though, have had wider ramifications and influenced criminal justice policy more generally, notably in terms of an upwardly punitive turn across the board. There have been significant changes to the way in which criminal justice agencies go about their daily business, notably in much closer working between the key protection services such as police and probation (see, for example, Nash 1999; Kemshall and Maguire 2001).
