This is an extremely important and timely book written by a pre-eminent scholar in the field. Hazel Kemshall has a proven track record not just of exceptional scholarship but, equally importantly, of engaging effectively with policy and practice. Given the damaging synergies between media hype and public insecurities about 'dangerous' offenders, the evidence-based, measured and thoughtful analysis provided in this book provides a vital counterpoint to increasingly punitive and exclusionary discourses around public protection. In promoting a more balanced, humane and integrative approach to risk, the book deserves to influence not just scholars but also policy makers and practitioners facing the complex challenges of managing risk and dangerousness.

Series editor's foreword

Acknowledgements

List of acronyms

Introduction

Framing the problem: contemporary responses to high

risk offenders

Introduction

Who are high risk offenders?

Can we know them?

  Risk assessment tools

  The problem of risk prediction

  Differing interpretations of risk

  Criteria and evidence

  The rise of community protection

  Limits to the community protection model

  Protection or punishment?

  Exclusionary or integrative? Alternative approaches to risky

   offenders

  Notes

  Further reading

  Useful websites and key sources

  Differing perspectives on an old problem: how do we know

  the dangerous?

  Introduction

  The long view

  Framing risk and dangerousness

  Criminological and legal approaches to risk and

   dangerousness

  Psychological framing of high risk offenders and

   dangerousness

  Sociological understandings of risk and dangerousness

Governance: surveillance, social sorting and social regulation

The limits of governmentality, surveillance and social sorting

The social construction of risk and the role of the media

Conclusion

Notes

Further reading

Risk assessment: difficulties and dilemmas

Decision making on risk: the key issues

Categories and thresholds of risk

Systemic faults in risk assessment

Individual sources of error

Solutions for reducing error

What do offenders think about risk assessment?

Summary

Notes

Further reading

4 Protection through partnership

MAPPA: the statutory approach to public protection

Key issues in statutory partnerships

Public health and community approaches to protection

Partnerships with local communities: Circles of Support

   and Accountability (COSA)

Partnership with communities and public: building

   awareness and responsibility

Building awareness and responsibility

Protection through partnership: a summary

Further reading

Risk management

Introduction

Community protection risk management strategies

Supervision and monitoring

Cognitive behavioural treatment and intervention

   programmes

Evaluations of CBT

Beyond the punishment paradigm - PHA, 'good lives'

   and risk management

Prevention strategies and environmental/opportunity

   management strategies

Social inclusion and integration techniques, including

   prosocial statutory supervision

Relapse prevention

What is the potential for restorative approaches?

Summary

Notes

Further reading

Key issues in managing high risk offenders

Introduction

Risks versus rights

Ethical issues

Community notification

The situation in the UK

Supervision and monitoring

Evidence of effectiveness

Community protection or reintegration: competing or

   complementary approaches to the community

   management of high risk offenders?

Summary

Notes

Further reading

7 Concluding comments

Pulling the threads together

Blending protection

Glossary

References

Index