GOVERNING THE DANGEROUS - AN HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF DANGEROUS OFFENDER LEGISLATION

This article provides an overview of dangerous offender legislation, d rawing on material from a range of English-based jurisdictions. It ill ustrates both the continuity of dangerousness as a modern penal proble m and the discontinuity in relation to behaviour thought to be dangero us and the tactics and technologies employed in its calibration. Such discontinuities are seen as the product of the shift in political rati onality from welfarism to neo-liberalism during the last two decades.