3 Review(s)

This volume offers an important analysis of dangerous offender (DO) legislation and related designations in Canada. It is a timely and important topic given the predominance of neo-liberal and neo-conservative conceptualizations of crime and its control in both contemporary Canada and the world, especially from the psychoanalytic point of view. The book develops a political economy of dangerousness through an examination of official definitions of "high-risk convicts". A series of case studies, interviews and literature reviews serve to demonstrate various applications of dangerousness, and situate these legal/judicial processes within their broader ideological and political context. This is a highly marginalized and disreputable penal population in criminology, and the book argues that the label of dangerousness obscures the social and economic conditions that many convicts experience throughout their lives.