DANGEROUSNESS AND ITS DISCONTENTS: A DISCOURSE ON THE SOCIO-POLITICS OF DANGEROUSNESS

• Pages: 49-74
• Published date: 28 April 2005
• Date: 28 April 2005
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S1521-6136(04)06004-X
• Author: Michael Petrunik

DANGEROUSNESS AND ITS

DISCONTENTS: A DISCOURSE

ON THE SOCIO-POLITICS OF

DANGEROUSNESS

Michael Petrunik

ABSTRACT

This article examines the socio-politics of legislationand policy for offenders,

notably sex offenders, who are viewed as so harmful to vulnerable members

of society such as children, that special measures are required to curtail

their risk. Particular attention is given to the rise of community protection

legislation in the United States since the 1980s and the narratives of danger,

fear, and loathing that underlie such legislation.

INTRODUCTION

In a body of work going back to the 1980s (Petrunik, 1982, 1984, 1994a, b, 2002,

2003; Petrunik & Weisman, forthcoming), I have developed a “socio-politics of

dangerousness” perspective toward the analysis of policy for offenders variously

designated by a variety of labels suggesting unusually high risk or dangerousness.

The sense I give to the term “socio-politics,” in combination with the terms “dan-

gerousness” and “high-risk,” involves a focus on struggles of power in defining

who is and who is not dangerous or “high-risk” and how those so designated should

Ethnographies of Law and Social Control

Sociology of Crime, Law and Deviance, Volume6, 49–74

Copyright © 2005 by Elsevier Ltd.

All rights of reproduction in any form reserved

ISSN: 1521-6136/doi:10.1016/S1521-6136(04)06004-X

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50 MICHAEL PETRUNIK

be handled. Such struggles are based on competing claims constructed in terms

of particular interests, values, and material and symbolic resources. I look at the

role played by politicians, criminal justice and mental health officials, the media,

civil libertarians, and victims advocacy groups in the developmentof a community

protection model (CPM) for sex offenders. This model which emergedin the 1980s

came to supersede the forensic clinical model (FCM) and the justice model (JM)

which were popular in earlier decades. The FCM stressed clinical diagnosis and

prognosis indeterminate incapacitation and treatment for dangerous offenders to

achieve public safety; the JM had an aversion to indeterminate controls based on

assessments of dangerousness and disorder and stressed due process concerns and

the rights of accused persons and the mentally ill; the CPM placed public safety

and the public’s right to know overconcerns with offenders’ rights, treatment, and

reintegration.

My understandings of dangerousness, risk, and disorder, the persons who re-

ceive such designations, and the measures deemed necessary to contain them have

been shaped by my involvementas a “participant-observer” in several professional

and volunteer contexts. From 1975 to 1984, while with Canada’s Ministry of the

Solicitor General, I did comparative research on dangerous offender legislation

as part of the development and implementation of dangerous offender legislation.

Over the past decade, I have continued to research dangerous offender issues and

had the opportunity to interview legislators,correctional and mental health officials

and individuals designated as dangerous. I have also been a volunteer in support

groups for high-risk offenders.

The notions of dangerousness, and risk are not objective, stable, and uniform

constructs. Rather,they are subjective and protean (Rennie, 1978, p. 4). Perceptions

of the degree of individual risk shift with a variety of contextual factors includ-

ing levels of community tolerance, political ideology, and the ways in which the

offense, the offender, and the victim are typified. A key feature of notions of risk

and danger is that they are a function not simply of the statistical likelihood that a

harmful event will occur but also of the perceived seriousness and salience of the

harm(s) thought likely to occur and perceptions of the nature of the perpetrator.

The perceived seriousness and salience of the harm(s) often vary in terms of per-

ceived characteristics of victims (vulnerability, dependency, and innocence) that

are linked to statuses such as age, sex, and disability. The younger and more vul-

nerable the victim is perceived to be, the more serious the harm (Best, 1990). With

regard to perceptions of the perpetrator a key factor is the sense that the perpetrator

lacks control over his actions due to a difficult to treat disorder.Particularly iconic

with reference to dangerousness (Surette, 1994) are notions such as psychopa-

thy, sociopathy, and anti-social personality disorder. These notions are often taken

to imply that the perpetrator is callous and indifferent to the consequences of his