THE DANGEROUSNESS DEBATE AFTER THE FLOUD REPORT

Abstract

In 1976, the Howard League for Penal Reform established a prestigious Working Party on the Dangerous Offender, under the chairmanship of Mrs. Jean Floud, the Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge. The final report of this Working Party was published in the autumn of 1981 (Floud and Young, 1981)1 and is without any doubt a document ofmaj or importance both academically and in policy terms. It is important from the outset to see the Floud Report in the context of three earlier British reports which have focused upon the topic of dangerous ness (Scottish Council on Crime, 1975, Chap. 4, section 2; Home Office, 1975, Chap. 4; Advisory Council on the Penal System, 1978, Chap. 10), because major shifts have taken place since 1975 in the nature of the dan gerousness debate in Britain. The Scottish Council on Crime ( 1975) proposed a new and indeterminate custodial sentence (a public protection order ) as one of a range of measures which it believed offered some real prospect of securing, in the shorter term, a reduction in the incidence of serious crimes of violence (para. 73) ; the public protection order would be widely available, since defendants would be eligible if currently convicted of any crime of violence, however minor (including threats of violence and even breach of the peace when including violent threats), provided that they were also assessed as dangerous, and that there was some evidence of (but not necessarily a conviction for) past recent violence or threats. The Butler Committee on Mentally Abnormal Offenders in England and Wales, which also reported in 1975, was concerned with what it saw as a serious defect in society's defences which ought to be made good as regards mentally abnormal offenders who were released at the end of a determinate prison term but still considered dangerous by prison medical officers; the Com mittee proposed a new and indeterminate reviewable sentence to repair the perceived deficiency (Home Office, 1975). The offences minimally qualifying defendants for the reviewable sentence were more restrictive than those suggested by the Scottish Council, but one could still qualify if assessed as dangerous on a single conviction of rape or arson, or a current offence of possessing an offensive weapon in a public place plus a past conviction for endangering railway passengers (Appendix 4). The proposals of these two committees prompted one of us to enter the