ABSTRACT
This chapter offers when security stands as the justification for public and private action, to whom, and at what cost. It focuses on to identify several significant paradoxes entailed in the pursuit of security, whose attendant costs need to be taken into account. Security is sold as an end whose pursuit legitimates government action and private enterprise. The unattainable quality of security is further entrenched by the fact that understanding of crime itself has undergone a small revolution. Security promises the state of psychological well-being associated with freedom from fear and the anxieties attendant upon assessing and attempting to avoid risk. Punishment as pain inflicted by the state self-evidently requires special justification. It has rightly attracted the scholarly attention of moral philosophers, legal and penal theorists concerned to provide an account of why, how, and in what measure the state may exercise its punitive powers to inflict pain upon its citizens.
