In the last twenty years the clinical prediction of dangerous behaviour has become an increasingly contentious issue in psychiatry. Several studies have called into serious question the ability of mental health professionals to predict the possible future dangerous behaviour of their clients. These results have caught the attention of lawyers, and been cited in several challenges to individual practitioners. Psychiatrists and psychologists have had to realize that if they claim predictive competence they will be called on to accept the legal and ethical consequences. Dangerousness represents a much needed attempt to draw together the most recent views of the legal scholars, social scientists, and clinicians who have thought most deeply about these problems. It aims to help the reader decide what degree of responsibility the mental health professions should accept as they offer influential opinions which on the one hand may result in unfair confinement of patients and prisoners, but on the other may expose society to unwarranted risk.
