Post-sentence continued detention of high-risk terrorist offenders in Australia

In December 2015, the Council of Australian Governments agreed to implement a nationally-consistent post-sentence preventative detention regime for convicted terrorists. This scheme will allow for the continued imprisonment of high-risk terrorist offenders in a similar way as the existing sex offender and violent offender continuing detention order regimes. This article will assess whether the introduction of a continuing detention order regime for terrorism is possible and defensible, based on the requirements and justifications provided for the sex offender and violent offender regimes. Specifically, it will be considered whether psychometric risk assessment for terrorist offenders can validly estimate which offenders are at a high-risk of reoffending and pose a threat to the community and whether the introduction of an effective rehabilitation program for terrorism is possible.