In this era of unparalleled affluence, the dangerous offender has become a figure of collective anxiety for the citizens of rationalised Western societies. Questions of why sexual and violent offences seem so ubiquitous, and of how we should protect ourselves, has produced a glut of political and media rhetoric in recent years. Dangerous Offenders takes a different view of the problem. The image of the dangerous offender, and the idea that such individuals pose quantifiable 'risks' to the public are interrogated by scholars from the fields of criminology, sociology and law. The authors consider: * ideas of danger and social threat in historical perspective * legal responses to violent criminals * attempts to predict dangerous behaviour * why particular groups, such as women, remain at risk from violent crime. This collection invites us to rethink the received wisdom on dangerous offenders. it concludes that the control of these people has become such a potent issue in 'risk' societies as their apparently random offences represent the antithesis of the calculable risk. Dangerous Offenders will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of criminology and the sociology of Risk. Roderic Broadhurst University of Hong Kong, Mark Brown University of Melbourne, Australia, Nils Christie University of Oslo, Norway, Arie Freiberg University of Melbourne