Revisiting the politics of dangerousness.

Just over a quarter century ago, Michael Petrunik, Senior Research Officer in the Research Division of the Ministry of the Solicitor General of Canada, wrote an article entitled “The Politics of Dangerousness.” The specific impetus for Petrunik’s paper was the then recently enacted 1977 Canadian Dangerous Offender Legislation. He sought to explain the political underpinnings of recent legal developments in Europe and North America aimed at controlling this population. Petrunik adopted the title of his manuscript from, among other concepts, the previously used but undefined political psychopathology and the role of political factors in the enactment of the 1977 Canadian legislation. He argued that psychopathology, as used in this context, involves the influence of social control ideologies and interest group pressures and pragmatic political adaptations. For example, he noted that the law did not classify offenders causing harm resulting from pollution, shoddy manufacturing, child abuse and neglect, and drunk driving as dangerous, whereas harm resulting from personal or sexual violence was so classified. The law then directed more stringent social control toward the identified dangerous group. Petrunik noted that the term dangerousness, as applied to criminal offenders, had been used in three major ways: as a product of mental illness; as a product of either actually committing or threatening to commit a violent or sexually violent act; and to describe the dangerous state (l’état dangereux). In general, the first type of dangerousness gives rise to involuntary civil commitment, the second type gives rise to legislation aimed at violent or violent sexual offenders, and the third type gives rise to laws dealing with habitual or persistent offenders. In the first sentence of his final paragraph, Petrunik concluded: “In the end, whether we decide to retain or abolish legislation based on the dangerousness standard, ultimately the question is a moral one and a social policy one: Where do we draw the line in establishing a balance between individual rights and social protection?” (Ref. 1, p 246).