UNGOVERNABLE MONSTERS Law, Paedophilia, Crisis Dave McDonald * In recent years, Australian jurisdictions have moved to address the risk of those deemed to be serious sex offenders through the implementation of post-sentence measures, including continued detention and supervision. Post-sentence preventative detention and monitoring are now realities in several Australian states. These moves have been described elsewhere as regimes of suspended rights; however, they also signify a suspension or reversal of legal principle: while the law historically has been concerned with actuality, post- sentence preventative detention and supervision of a particular class of sex offenders signal a shift away from actual conduct towards an increasingly rigorous preoccupation with possible future conduct at the conclusion of an offenderʼ s sentence. This article examines the parliamentary debates that accompanied the enactment of these laws. Situating these regimes within the context of the ʻ new punitivenessʼ and penal populism, it is argued that a perceived crisis surrounding the impending release of certain sex offenders contextualises and necessitates implementation of these regimes. This sense of crisis is compounded by the figure of the paedophile that underpins the lawʼ s imagination of child sexual assault. Specifically, via the signification of the serious sex offender as monstrous – as risk in extremis – the crisis the law is called to arbitrate is reinforced. This article uses serious sex offender reform as a means through which to examine both the claims made by law about the serious sex offender and some of the implications of their implementation. We are talking about sick, sick monsters. 1 A certain level of dangerousness takes a human outside the bounds of law … [and] makes that human into the state’s possession, infinitely detainable. What counts as ‘dangerous’ is what is deemed dangerous by the state, so that, once again, the state posits what is dangerous, and in so positing it, establishes the conditions for its own pre- emption and usurpation of the law. 2 * Lecturer in Criminology, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne. An earlier version of this article was awarded the prize for the best written paper at the University of Sydney Law School’s 2009 postgraduate conference. I gratefully acknowledge those who have commented on different aspects of this argument: Alison Young, Kirsty Duncanson, Peta Malins, Nesam McMillan and Lizzie O’Shea, as well as the anonymous referees. 1 Victoria, Parliamentary Debates, Legislative Assembly (23 February 2005), p 130 (Kim Wells). 2 Butler (2004), p 76.