Dangerous and Long-Term Offenders

• Author: John Bradford
• Pages: 613-621



CHAPTER 28

Dangerous and Long-Term Of‌fenders

John Bradford

I. INTRODUCTION

Every society in the Western world, and most other parts of the world, has serious social problems with

high-risk violent oenders and the risk that they pose to public safety. In Canada, signicant concerns in

relation to high-risk violent oenders have been well documented in the media and have been the focus

of high prole inquests resulting in legislative amendments. Governments in various countries have

used a number of dierent methods to try to protect society against the risk of violence posed by such

oenders.

An approach employed in Canada (and the United States) has been the imposition of indeterminate

sentences, under various criminal statutes, to prevent dangerous individuals from being released back

into the community. More recently in the United States, where no criminal legislation governing this

issue exists, several jurisdictions have relied upon civil commitment in order to contain the risk these

individuals pose. is approach has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States as being

constitutional (e.g., Kansas v. Hendricks, 1996). An increasing number of states have enacted special

post-conviction commitment legislation for sexual oenders (Zonana et al., 1999). Most recently in sev-

eral American states sexually violent predator legislation has been enacted to deal with this category of

oender where they pose a risk for sexually violent oences.

In Canada, there has not been the same rush to pass sexually v iolent predator legislation or to permit

the use of civil commitment to keep potentially dangerous individuals out of the community although

legislative approaches have been similar. e historical background to the creation of solutions to this

problem began in 1947 when Canada passed the Habitual Oender Act, which was aimed at those with

lengthy criminal records and allowed them to be held for an indeterminate period (unfortunately it

ended up being used for lots of repeat oenders of a non-violent nature). en, in 1948 Canada passed

the Criminal Sexual Psychopath Act, which provided determinate followed by indeterminate sentences

based on the assessment of two psychiatrists (with a review every three years by the Minister of Justice

before parole was granted) (John Howard Society of Alberta, 1999). Unfortunately, the language of this

legislation was too vague given the burden of proof in criminal matters. It was dicult to secure a desig-

nation under this legislation because it had to be established beyond a reasonable doubt. Changes were

made to the law in 1960 to try and tighten it up and at that time the Criminal Sexual Psychopath Act was

amended and renamed the Dangerous Sexual Oender Act. In 1969 a Corrections Committee tabled a

report reviewing the two relevant pieces of legislation and held that the habitual cri minal legislation was

being applied inconsistently and for the wrong type of oender. In 1977 the dangerous oender Provi-

sions under Part XXIV of the Criminal Cod e of Canada were put in place (Bonta et al., 1996). e current

provisions deal with dangerous oenders in general without the need for the index oence to have been

of a sexual nature.

is change in focus was in response to criticism that those violent oenders not guilty of violent

sexual oences were being ignored by the focus on sexual oenders even though there were other violent