The British Home Secretary's proposals for tough new powers enabling the detention of unconvicted psychopaths and other "personality-disordered" individuals were slammed last night as "deeply problematic and quite shocking".
In a statement to MPs, foreshadowing a consultation paper to be published in the spring, Mr Jack Straw confirmed government plans to close the legal loophole which allowed hammer-killer Michael Stone to walk free until his conviction for the murders of Lyn Russell and her daughter Megan, even though he was considered a danger to the public.
Announcing plans for new "indeterminate but reviewable" detention orders, Mr Straw said society could not rely on the present "lottery" whereby some dangerous people with severe personality disorders were sent to prison or hospital, while others remained on the streets.
Acknowledging that the public was not currently properly protected from such people, Mr Straw warned they remained at large and without benefit of clinical intervention "unless and until they commit an offence".
In the short term, Mr Straw said, the government was putting in place an "early warning system" to give the authorities maximum time to prepare for a dangerous person's release from prison or hospital. In the longer term, he said, new powers were needed which would apply "whether or not someone was before the courts for an offence".
That rang alarm bells among lawyers, human rights watchdogs and mental health campaigners. Mr John Wadham, director of the human rights group Liberty, said Mr Straw's proposals were "deeply problematic and quite shocking".
He said: "They amount to detaining individuals not because of what they have done but because of what they might do in the future. Proving you are not dangerous is almost impossible and there is no doubt some people who are no danger will be locked up."
The Bar Council also expressed reservations about the Home Secretary's approach to "an extremely delicate" area of policy.
A spokesman said: "Plans to lock someone up before they have committed a crime need to be examined extremely carefully, given the presumption of innocence in our legal system. There are plenty of people who are potentially dangerous. Do we lock them all up?"
And the National Schizophrenia Fellow ship warned that people with severe illnesses could be wrongly diagnosed, particularly by hard-up agencies eager to wash their hands of difficult individuals.
Mr Straw acknowledged: "Depriving individuals of their liberty in such circumstances is a very serious step. The key aim has to be to protect the public while meeting the health needs of such individuals."
People detained under the new powers, he insisted, would enjoy "a robust system of checks and balances" and "regular quasi-judicial reviews of the justification for continued detention".
Mr Straw's proposed "third service" - outside the prison and health systems - could cover some 2,000 people, of whom an estimated 1,400 are at present in prison and 400 in hospitals.
The shadow Home Secretary, Sir Norman Fowler, said the Conservatives would support the plan, if a system could be devised which was fair and protected the public.
For the Liberal Democrats, Mr Simon Hughes said: "This should not be about locking people up and throwing away the key but about careful and continuous assessment in secure conditions of a small group of individuals."