ABSTRACT
Arie Freiberg (2000: 52) has observed that “like the poor, the dangerous have always been with us” and governments will continue to battle with the perennial issue of what to do with those considered dangerous. What is clear from many of the chapters in this book is that schemes for imprisoning or detaining people for what they might do are costly, likely to contravene international human rights obligations, and have not proven to be eective in reducing crime, particularly sex oences. Detaining more and more people gives rise to the risk that detention regimes will collapse under the weight of numbers.
