Post-Sentence Incapacitation of Sex-Offenders and the Ethics of Risk Assessment

The goal of community protection has led in recent years to the incapacitation of those considered at high risk of committing crimes through various preventive detention schemes (McSherry and Keyzer 2009). A number of countries such as Canada, England and Wales, New Zealand and Germany, as well as some Australian states, have laws that enable judges to make orders for the indefinite detention of “dangerous” offenders at the time of sentence. These laws have been criticized as offending against the principle of proportionality in sentencing (see, for example, Walker 1996, Pratt 1997) and studies have indicated that judges have been reluctant to use indeterminate sentencing powers (Henham 2001, Richardson and Freiberg 2004, Ashworth 2010).