This book argues that the compulsory detention of people on the grounds of mental illness should be restricted to those who pose a serious and continuing threat to the safety of others based on previous acts of violence or the commission of dangerous offences. Current government policies are bringing about a return to the convergence between the penal process and the hospital system, characteristic of the Victorian era's desire to remove the troublesome in order to achieve social uniformity and acquiescence. The current emphasis on risk prediction with its sheen of scientific respectability is not only deflecting psychiatry from its true purpose but is obscuring the need for an open debate about the nature of social control and the proper balance to be struck between individual liberty and the public interest.