PRESCRIBE JUSTICE The government has published a White Paper outlining proposals to detain people diagnosed as suffering from a personality disorder.

People who do not have a recognised mental illness may be detained indefinitely, this being supposedly justified by the perceived risk that the individual concerned will commit a crime in the future.

Also being discussed is the possibility that those released, who were sex offenders whom are deemed by psychiatrists to pose a high risk of re-offending, should be re-imprisoned before they have chance to re-offend.

To many, these proposals seem commonsensical, given that a precautionary principle seems to be an overriding criterion in public policy in today's risk- obsessed age.

The common theme of these proposed reforms is the increase in use of management tools, such as risk analysis, and a departure in the due process of judging an individual based upon evidence of their acts for the criminal charges at issue.

It is important that the justice system operates in an entirely different manner to the subjective way individuals form their own opinions about people.

We recognise that individuals are not about a set of facts relating to an incident.

We would be uneasy about trusting someone whom we know has breached such trust on a previous occasion or who exhibits bizarre personality traits.

However there is no place within our justice system to elevate risk aversion, as presented by doctors, into a formal degradation of freedoms.

The suggested safeguards against arbitrariness include legal representation at tribunals where medical evidence can be adjudicated.

The intrinsic problem for such hearings is the underlying principle which provides that punishment is reasonable if experts dictate that an individual belongs to a risk category.

Given that there will be no prizes for keeping people out of jail, and serious consequences for failing to anticipate a future incident, the precautionary principle will inevitably reign supreme - the burden of proof effectively being reversed.

Darryl Bickler, legal researcherFreedom and Law, London WC1