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16 Crim. Behav. & Mental Health 1 (2006)

handle is hein.journals/cbmh16 and id is 1 raw text is: Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health 16: 1-2 (2006) .-*-- y Published online in Wiley InterScience iterScieince (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/cbm.57 D SOM G Editorial Developing policies for 'psychopaths': can governments learn from experience? ROXANNE LIEB, Director, Washington Institute for Public Policy, Olympia, USA In 1977, Sir Anthony Bottoms delivered his inaugural lecture at Sheffield University on 'Reflections on the renaissance of dangerousness'. Bottoms's lecture, later published, revealed the history of criminological thinking on the question of future dangerousness by offenders, how and if it should be taken into account in sanctioning, and what was known about prediction patterns. Bottoms's lecture referenced the US experience with sexual psychopathy laws, noting that this topic was viewed as very remote from the debate of British penal matters. Moving forward to 2005, there is more reason for British policy-makers and criminologists to explore this history with sexual psychopathy laws. Efforts to contain the harm of dangerous offenders have once again moved into the politi- cal spotlight, in both the UK and US. The UK initiative surrounding Dangerous People with Severe Personality Disorder (DSPD) contains many elements similar to the sexual psychopathy laws. The sexual psychopathy statutes were initiated in the 1930s and eventually adopted by almost half of the states. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, however, most states either repealed the law or it was not operational (Leib et al., 1998). Why did these laws lose favour? To summarize: * Some programme graduates reoffended with spectacular crimes. In California, a former programme participant picked up a hitchhiker, severed her forearms and left her to die. In Washington, a programme graduate who had been hired as a group leader was identified as the assailant in a near-murder; later evidence revealed additional killings in the same location. * Studies revealed no recidivism reduction: When programme graduates were compared with similar offenders who went to prison, no reduction in recidi- vism rates was found. The treatment was not successful in changing reoffend- ing rates over time. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 16: 1-2 (2006)

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