ABSTRACT
Our purpose in this chapter is to look at two aspects of the relationship between criminal justice risk assessment and ‘risky masculinities’. The first aspect is the way in which criminalized identities are constructed in the processes of risk assessment; the second is the real risks to which the bearers of these identities may be exposed. Issues have been raised about correlation between factors used in risk assessment and race (Morris 1994), and the part played by the increased orientation of penal strategies towards risk control in rising rates of imprisonment of black Americans (Tonry 1995), but little attention has been given to the dynamic processes of risk assessment and construction of ‘risky’ identities. Exploring these questions means engaging with criminological themes which are not usually present in work on risk and criminal justice: masculinities, and the construction of criminalizing discourses of race and otherness.
