The Return of Preventive Detention

I am grateful to Croslandite for this link to a piece about the new IPP sentences. It's a sobering thought that a lot of people are going to be locked up for a long time for fear of what they might do, and that the tools for assessing the risk they present are relatively untried.

Later:
By chance I recently met a member of the Parole Board, and this subject came up. He was very unhappy about it, saying that before an IPP prisoner can be considered for release at the end of the minimum term he will need to be assessed and that the resources to carry out these assessments simply do not exist in many prisons. He was adamant that almost no prisoner will just serve the minimum, and that many will stay inside for years simply for lack of anyone to carry out the necessary procedures.